In the background over the past few months I have been working with the great minds of Scott Lowe and Forbes Guthrie. Scott and Forbes were both authors for the original VMware vSphere design book. Times progressed and a follow up revision needed to happen. Scott and Forbes were already hard at work with the 2nd Edition when they thought, maybe we should incorporate a chapter on vCloud Director design. I am thankful that these two reached out to me.
I have never written anything that was ever published and it was a very humbling experience. The team over at Sybex/Wiley did a tremendous job and we can't forget the technical reviewer Jason Boche that keeps the BS levels to a minimum :).
I only did a single chapter in the book, and in my opinion, it's a doozy of a chapter. If my calculations are correct, there are 52 pages of goodness all about vCloud. The book itself is over 400+ pages! My vCloud Director chapter will cover the following topics:
- Differences between cloud and server virtualization
- Role of vCloud Director in cloud architecture
- vCloud Director use cases
- Components of the vCloud management stack
- vCloud cell and NFS design considerations
- Management vs. consumable resources
- Database concepts
- vCenter design
- vCloud management physical design
- Physical side of provider virtual datacenters
- Logical side of provider virtual datacenters
- Virtual network switch
- Network pool decisions
- External networks
- Designing organizations, catalogs, and policies
- Correlating organizational networks to design
- End users and vApp networking
- Designing organization virtual datacenters
- Multiple sites
- Backup and disaster recovery
Quite an expansive list. The book is available via Kindle right now, and the paperback version will be ready soon. Head on over to Amazon and purchase your own copy of VMware vSphere Design - 2nd Edition
I appreciate every single one of my readers and I hope my contribution to this book serves you well. Look forward to another blog giveaway in the near future!