Comprehensive introduction and guidance to implementing VMware App Volumes
582021
I'm currently engaged in a consulting engagement with a large French-German corporation that is implementing App Volumes together with VMware's Horizon View 7. Peter's book proves an invaluable aide in this project. His book is not only covering App Volumes in-depth per se, but also describes in detail how to integrate App Volumes not only with VMware's own VDI environment, Horizon View, but also with Citrix XenDesktop, XenApp and Microsoft RDSH environments. Highly recommended for anyone dealing with AppVolumes!
4532991
Reviewing the chapters I see a good coverage of the ESXi feature set. Reading the book I found some good examples/use cases for some of the configuration options, one such as example is when to use load balancing policy Source MAC hash. Most chapters really go in-depth is provide tons of practical step by step information on configuring the features.

Great points in the book
Limiting who can login to DCUI while host is in lockdown mode.
Using  VMware vSphere Update Manager Download Service
Lots of details  even for very small features such as SNMP

Some room left for improvement
Screenshots for some lessons are from the old vSphere Client while other lessons are from the new vSphere Web Client. I wish they had kept them uniform (vSphere Web Client).
How to actually use authentication when ESXi host is joined to active directory is missing (group ESX Admins)
The book mentions default roles in VMware vCenter but lists too many (normal installation there is no default roles called View or Anonymous)
Details on how to preventing virtual machine disk shrinking is provided, however this is not even possible on ESXi 5 [...]
While discussing Private VLANs the book unfortunately mixes isolated and community vlan during its explanation of the terms.

For many system administrators the book should be useful to look up how to perform various tasks.
Overall I enjoyed the VMware ESXi Cookbook, but felt at times that the attention to detail I so enjoyed in some chapters seemed lacking in others.
2776458
Features are great software allowing the running of virtual machines is amazing on suggestion would be to buy the version with the most memory finding the correct ram afterwards was a nit of trial and error and you will need more that 2 gig
1141610
This is a great guide on desktop virtualization, it's uses and features, and how to manage it.  It gives clear instructions and tips on how to implement the system, in order to keep a companies computers secure.  What you get with this book, however, is something you don't get in books like this very often:  honesty.  It doesn't shy away or completely ignore the risks and downsides of implementing a VDI system, but it does prove it's case, and I think it shows that the many positives outweigh the negatives.

This was a very easy read, as well.  Everything was broken down simply, and it flowed from one topic to the next very smoothly.  I highly recommend it for anyone working in IT, that wants a clearer understanding of desktop virtualization.
1082740
Great deal.  I did have to reseat the memory to get it to boot.  Not unusual when it has been shipped.  Working like a champ for the past month.  Great for VMWare lab.
73786
The level of detail exceeds that available in any VMware-provided documentation.  It is concise, very readable and informative.  You can find implementation details that only an insider can know.  The cost of one second of downtime that could have been prevented will exceed the cost of this useful guide!
3171963
Now  I have Windows Applications seamlessly coexist with mac apps. Parallels is  developer friendly with  easy cloning of  instances and  easy backups.
635394
Long ago, the prerequisite UNIX performance book was Adrian Cockcroft's 1994 classic, Sun Performance and Tuning: Sparc & Solaris, later updated in 1998 as Java and the Internet. As Solaris evolved to include the invaluable DTrace observability features, new essential performance references have been published, such as Solaris Performance and Tools: DTrace and MDB Techniques for Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris (2006)  by McDougal, Mauro, and Gregg, and DTrace: Dynamic Tracing in Oracle Solaris, Mac OS X and FreeBSD (2011), also by Mauro and Gregg.

Much has occurred in Solaris Land since those books appeared, notably Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems in 2010 and the demise of the OpenSolaris community. But operating system technologies have continued to improve markedly in recent years, driven by stunning advances in multicore processor architecture, virtualization, and the massive scalability requirements of cloud computing.

A new performance reference was needed, and I eagerly waited for something that thoroughly covered modern, distributed computing performance issues from the ground up. Well, there's a new classic now, authored yet again by Brendan Gregg, former Solaris kernel engineer at Sun and now Lead Performance Engineer at Joyent.

Systems Performance: Enterprise and the Cloud is a modern, very comprehensive guide to general system performance principles and practices, as well as a highly detailed reference for specific UNIX and Linux observability tools used to examine and diagnose operating system behaviour.  It provides thorough definitions of terms, explains performance diagnostic Best Practices and "Worst Practices" (called "anti-methods"), and covers key observability tools including DTrace, SystemTap, and all the traditional UNIX utilities like vmstat, ps, iostat, and many others.

The book focuses on operating system performance principles and expands on these with respect to Linux (Ubuntu, Fedora, and CentOS are cited), and to Solaris and its derivatives [1]; it is not directed at any one OS so it is extremely useful as a broad performance reference.

The author goes beyond the intricacies of performance analysis and shows how to interpret and visualize statistical information gathered from the observability tools.  It's often difficult to extract understanding from voluminous rows of text output, and techniques are provided to assist with summarizing, visualizing, and interpreting the performance data.

Gregg includes myriad useful references from the system performance literature, including a "Who's Who" of contributors to this great body of diagnostic tools and methods.

This outstanding book should be required reading for UNIX and Linux system administrators as well as anyone charged with diagnosing OS performance issues.  Moreover, the book can easily serve as a textbook for a graduate level course in operating systems [2].

[1] Solaris 11, of course, and Joyent's SmartOS (developed from OpenSolaris)

[2] Gregg has taught system performance seminars for many years; I have also taught such courses...this book would be perfect for the OS component of an advanced CS curriculum.
2784857
What a great no-fuss way to get some cloud storage with local redundancy!  As a SysAdmin, I like being able to get into the guts via an SSH session, but the GUI is great too.  Neat little apps for desktop and mobile users - get your files anywhere and be in control of them!  Tool-less drive install/replacement and dual power supply/network options make this a serious contender for business class or power users!
3602277
Version 1.0 of the VMS operating system was launched by Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) in 1977. Forty years later it lives on as OpenVMS, a niche, vintage OS in a much-changed digital world. DEC the company and its successor Compaq are gone, but current owner HP continues and an offshoot, VMS Software Inc. (VSI),  has plans for OpenVMS Version 9.0 and a port to x86 64-bit architecture. So 11 years after its initial release, Roland Hughess OpenVMS book would appear to still have some relevance. The more important question for existing or future(!) OpenVMS application development and support staff would probably be: does this book have any value? This reviewer would say yes, but with some major caveats.

The premise is a useful one; OpenVMS programmers with previous experience in, say, VMS COBOL, may find themselves in a new role with a requirement for VMS FORTRAN and a need to get up to speed pretty quickly. Alternatively, a COBOL programmer with development experience on a different OS could use this book to assist with the transition to the equivalent development environment and tools on OpenVMS.

A small application based on tracking lottery results is developed in each of the OpenVMS programming languages covered by the book. The intention is to show the strengths and weaknesses of each language, and teach the various OpenVMS tools and utilities along the way. The programming languages covered are, BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL and C/C++, plus DCL for scripting OS commands.  For data storage and manipulation RMS, CDD, MySQL and RDB are covered. FMS is used as the screen/forms management tool, and CMS and MMS cover code management and build. Message, Mail and Phone utilities are also covered, though these would be more curiosities than tools in modern technology departments with access to email, SKYPE and the like. Similarly, source code is included in an attached CD ROM. I dug out an old laptop with moving parts and found the CD still readable.

On the less-positive side, its sometimes painfully obvious that this is a self-published book. In the Introduction:

Those developers whose only language is Visual something or other didn't learn a language and will flounder miserably with this book.

Ahem, yes, welcome to my book. Also, the final chapter, Ruminations and Observations, has a somewhat skewed and negative view of the world and really has no place in a technical book. If money was available for promotion, as suggested in another review, perhaps some could have been put towards seeking editorial suggestions of where cuts could be made, and more robust proofreading. The blurb on the back cover is particularly poorly-written. For these and the opinionated content Ive marked it down to three stars.

From a technical perspective, it would be unlikely that any one site would have compilers for all the languages covered, AND have access to RDB and MySQL (which in hindsight has not lived up to expectations). And even in 2006, it would have been a long time since most OpenVMS applications programmers and support staff had used FMS forms.

These things aside, this is still a useful book and Hughes has packed a lot of OpenVMS knowledge and experience into around 800 pages. If OpenVMS continues to have its loyal supporters and companies continue to struggle to replace their core OpenVMS applications due to a lack of viable alternatives, there may be some life left in this book too.
2829638
Great for a VMWare host boot device. Using with ESXi 5.5U2, minor host cache items.
1697366
A clearly articulated concise guide on common VMware misconfigurations to avoid, and guidance on how to properly configure a virtualized environment. A VMWare environment does not work like a typical rack of servers. So if you go into a project with that mind set you are in for a big surprise! The authors explain every facet of the environment including CPU, memory, networking and storage. A must read for all.
1414322
Not VMware compatible. Great product.  Just didn't suit my initial need.  Used for my NAS Build; great in this appllication. My fault for not checking compatibility prior to purchasing.
1148599
If you're interested in single-page web apps (SPAs) this book is a must read. Mike Mikowski presents his own battle-tested working method to create SPAs that are robust, maintainable and easy to understand. The book includes a coding standard, a test standard (integrated jsLint) and a template that illustrates his approach. You can adopt his approach completely, or partially, but either way the book will give you lots of ideas on how to organize and modularize your code base for a large-scale project.

In many ways the biggest problem with large-scale SPAs is organizational, and Mikowski suggests that you design your own modules as if they were 3rd. party modules isolated into their own dom container and using their own js and css files. He recommends a consistent naming scheme for static variables, state variables, jQuery cached objects and a consistent method of setting module configuration and performing module initialization. It's all common sense stuff, but it's an effective way to avoid 'the fog of spa' without getting too verbose.

In addition, Mike Mikowski is the developer of the uriAnchor jQuery plug-in and uses it throughout to handle application state. uriAnchor ties app state to the global onHashChange event and links undo, redo and save to the browser controls with little developmental overhead.

I found this book by accident while reading the new John Resig Ninja book (also worthy of 5 stars) and since I'd read the heart of Ninja carefully and the rest quickly, pushed Ninja onto the stack and started reading Mikowski & Powell. I tend to dislike parallel coding while reading tutorials, so usually I just stepped through the sample code in the debugger. But, I also spent some time re-writing a couple of my own single page designs which contained a lot of un-modularized, tightly coupled code. The results were excellent. There's something really cool about viewing source and seeing nothing between the body tags except maybe a no JavaScript warning div and one script block a la <script>$(function() { appName.init($('#appName'));});</script>.

Again, this is a very practical book. I'd recommend it just as strongly as the somewhat more high-level overview found in the O'Reilly book, JavaScript Web Applications. But, IMO, Single Page Web Applications might get you rolling even faster.
1209291
The author takes you through the various components of a production Citrix environment and provides the reader with numerous deployment methodologies from command line installations and PowerShell scripts. The books also contains an optimization and troubleshooting guide. I really enjoyed reading this book. I would definitely recommend it to anyone running any version of XenApp prior to version 7.5. Really great book!
1558684
When I finally graduated to a new Mac recently, I knew about the various ways to share the Windows operating system with OS X. But, VirtualPC for the PPC Macs died at version 7, so I figured I would have to go through the rigors of manually installing Windows XP and all my applications and data. Through deeper research, and to my great relief, I learned that Fusion 5 happily imports complete VPC 7 machine containers. Since VMware offers Fusion 5 for free trial, I had nothing to lose.

The import and conversion took minutes. When it had finished, everything was as it had been and worked normally. And Fusion's feature set is impressive. So far, I have absolutely nothing to complain about.
1684578
This well-edited collection of ten case studies details the state of J2EE practice circa early 2001.  Making its debut at Sun's JavaOne conference in June, the book candidly documents the experience of Sun's enterprise partners building server-side Java applications.  From the mostly success stories two facts emerge:  J2EE is component-based software development done right, but most projects are still using JSP/Servlet technology, with EJBs on the planning horizon.  Also important is the continuing emphasis on scalability and performance, ever the bugaboos of virtual machine platforms like Java.  Readers embarked on their own J2EE initiatives will appreciate the book's coverage of challenges creatively faced.
The introductory chapters by Dr. Rick Cattell and Jim Inscore of Sun Microsystems go beyond prefatory fluff, providing one of the better overviews of J2EE's goals and architecture. Developers and their managers will benefit from a close reading of Sun's strategy for distributed computing.
All in all, "J2EE Technology in Practice" is an exciting snapshot of a successful movement that promises the best is yet to come.