What exactly is virtualization? As this concise book explains, virtualization is a smorgasbord of technologies that offer organizations many advantages, whether you're managing extremely large stores of rapidly changing data, scaling out an application, or harnessing huge amounts of computational power. With this guide, you get an overview of the five main types of virtualization technology, along with information on security, management, and modern use cases.
Topics include:
Access virtualization—Allows access to any application from any device
Application virtualization—Enables applications to run on many different operating systems and hardware platforms
Processing virtualization—Makes one system seem like many, or many seem like one
Network virtualization—Presents an artificial view of the network that differs from the physical reality
Storage virtualization—Allows many systems to share the same storage devices, enables concealing the location of storage systems, and more
Daniel Kusnetzky, Distinguished Analyst and Founder of the Kusnetzky Group LLC, has been involved with information technology since the late 1970s. He's interested in system software, virtualization technology, cloud computing, and mobility.
Comments about O'Reilly Media Virtualization: A Manager's Guide:
I picked up a copy of Virtualization: A Manager's Guide as a part of the O'Reilly blogger review program. It was little questionable as while I'm technically a manager, I am also still very technical, so am on the border of the books audience.
At Ephox we make heavy use of virtualization in our development environments. We are running VMWare images for testing servers and clients, using these images to replicate client issues that are often can only be reproduced on specific platforms. I've also experimented with amazon ec2 and s3, running an internally built wiki on that architecture. With this in mind I had a decent understanding of virtualization before starting to read the book, but wanted to fill out my understanding and ensure that I had thought through the management level issues.
I picked up the book hoping for a well written book, instead finding a very light read that was a bit too formulaic. Each chapter followed a very set pattern and style, which basically conveyed some information, without gripping the reader. I'm not sure that it would hit the mark for someone that has no experience with virtualization, and it's one of the few O'Reilly books I'd be reluctant to recommend? That said I'd still just rate it at 3 out of 5, as it's contents are factual, and there might be some managers entering into virtualization that it might be useful for.
[This book was reviewed as a part of the O'Reilly Blogger Review Program]
7/14/2011
(1 of 1 customers found this review helpful)
4.0
Precise and concise guide
By sandyboy55
from St. Louis, MO
About Me Developer
Pros
Accurate
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Too basic
Best Uses
Intermediate
Novice
Comments about O'Reilly Media Virtualization: A Manager's Guide:
Unless you have taken a sabbatical for the last couple of years, virtualization buzz words have become commonly talked about topics in IT organizations including infrastructure and application development. In fact, even business contacts have started taking notice of virtualization and are frequently questioning the IT department on what initiatives are being taken on that aspect. This concise book puts all flavors of virtualization together neatly organized in to different chapters.
The first chapter gives an overview of the entire stack of virtualization - Access, Application, Processing, Network, and Storage along with the broader aspect of Security and Management across each layer. Chapter two explains Access virtualization with a nice flow of what it is, when is it the right choice, providers, and a few examples. This flow is maintained in the remaining chapters covering the other types of virtualization mentioned above.
Overall, I found this book to be very concise as a pocket guide covering virtualization broadly. Indeed, it is targetted at managers since it is at a high-level. If you are a techie looking for depth, you are better off looking elsewhere.
