Networking for VMWare Administrators (Vmware Press Technology)

This is a fantastic book for VMware administrators who need to get a better handle on networking. Chris Wahl and Steve Pantrol do a great job unpacking the networking world where it intersects with virtualization. Coming from someone with a considerable background in VMware administration, I don't fancy myself much a network administrator, but it was clear that I had a pretty good handle on things after I went through a few chapters. What is great about the book is that it will certainly fill in the gaps for anyone who comes from a server administration role and who is trying to pickup the necessary networking concepts needed to be successful with VMware. The book is very well written and easy to follow. The concepts are presented and explained well. As with anyone who has ever met Chris Wahl or read any of this posts online, his humor comes through and it makes the book enjoyable to read. The beginning of the book starts at the beginning and while this may be remedial to many users, I'm sure its needed for others. The authors have done an admirable job recapping the basics of networking and a historical view of how we get to where we are. The middle of the book contains a great deal of good stuff about standard and distributed vSwitches and how VMware translates the physical network world into vSphere. It includes everything needed to truly understand the intersection of the networking world with vSphere. The lab scenario is also a fantastic resource since a home lab environment may be the first time many VMware administrators are left alone to design their own networking - since many will have the assistance of dedicated networking staff to augment their knowledge in their daily jobs.

Good reference.

Networking for VMware Administrators is just that, a detailed explanation of Networking for VMware Administrators. At the start the author details that this “should” be mandatory reading for people who are involved with networking for the VMware environment, this includes the Server Engineers who now have some domain of responsibility in the Network and Network Engineers who need to interface with the Virtualisation Engineers on a regular basis. I found the book set out correctly, crawl, walk, run type progress between the chapters. This is very good, while the book assumes you know a fair amount about virtualisation, it does assume you know very little about networking. Which is good for us who have achieved our CCNAs and let them expire and never touched networking again. If you are looking for an NSX book this is not for you, it does not contain NSX and wouldn’t be appropriate for the target audience. All over I liked this book helpful a great prep to improve my own vSphere environments. I will be reading any further books the authors have put out. From my quick search on Amazon this is the first book these guys have come out with, great job guys!! Criticism A little repetitive at times, laying foundations each scenario, easy to ignore information when presented this format. However I fully acknowledge the all people learn differently and someone may benefit from this where I did not.

This book really is the soup to nuts guide for networking in a VMware environment. It is a rare find to get a book that brings newcomers in, and is also a perfect desk reference for current VMware administrators. Since networking and storage are almost always the two areas which are misunderstood, and often improperly configured, I would recommend that this needs to be a book that is readily available to every VMware shop. Even though I have been working in VMware environments for a long time, I still jumped at the chance to get this book. It is as much about the way that it is told, as it is the content in here. Chris and Steve provide a guiding voice as you work through the different features and implementation scenarios. I can definitely say that if I lost this book, I would re-buy it. Hands down. Great book and I will definitely recommend this.

no problems

The book is a few years old and references ESXI 5.x and things, but the basic network foundation and concepts in ESXi later versions is still very useful. I feel it is one of the best ESXI books I have seen on the topic matter it covers. Now if one can find a good over all book for ESXI 7 and 8. If you are week on networking skills and concepts this is a good book to get, and even in later versions of ESXi it still has value.

This book is a great book which introduces networking and networking concepts to VMware admins. Chapters 1-6 could serve as a primer to networking fundamentals and is a nice refresher, but honestly this can really be skipped by any admin which has a CCNA or several years of expierence in system administration. Chapters 7-10 are great for understanding how networking works in VMware, describing what different terminology which is unique to VMware enviornments such as VMkernel ports, distributed switching, or converged infrastructure. Chapters 11-19 are great chapters for designing different networks which inlude NFS or iSCSI for storage. Along withe designing concepts which include thorough write ups of use cases and great amounts of detail on how to configure these two types configurations. Overall the book a is a good book, but I feel as though is lacking some important pieces: Troubleshooting - I really wish there was a troubleshooting chapter which maybe walked through common mistakes or cumbersome issues which the author has come accross in the field, and then steps he took to troublshoot the cause and then finally the overall fix. Fibre Channel networking - This book went into great depths in discussing NFS and ISCI, but then when it comes to FC, it told you to refer to the Storage Implementation in vSphere 5.0 book (http://amzn.com/0321799933). I have not read this book, but its 700 pages in length, and surely the author of this book could have covered the basics of setting up fibre channel storage discussinging WWN's, HBA's, and zoning for fibre channels switches. There was no mention of what hard and soft zoning is why you would choose one over the other, nor was there any mention of best practices in setting up the fibre channel path policies such as fixed paths, round-robin, or most recently used. I realize that different vendors have different practices depending on what FC SAN is purchased, but he could have easily described the most common practices the way he did with the Cisco UCS and HP Blade netorking concepts he mentioned in other parts of the book. Lastly, I really wished the author discussed VMware vShield vCloud Networking and Security and its pending NSX replacement. There was no mentions of anything in vCNS or NSX at all in this book, and being that this is a newly published book I really see it as an major oversight. Perhaps it is because these two products are in a weird state of one ushering the other out, but still both could have been mentioned along with the technologies in each.

This book is great as a refresher or as a starting point for VMware admins. The content was well rounded and they got to the point in a clear and concise manner. I also enjoyed that there was humor involved. My only complaint about this book is that everything was shown in the web client. It would have been great to see correlating esxcli commands but there was only one instance and that was creating a vSwitch. But the authors do state that this was a not to be used as a learning tool so I forgive them.