Chris McCain - Mastering VMware® Infrastructure3

Although I am content knowing that books like this don't hit the top of the best sellers list, I know that this one has been written as a labor of love. There are many people to credit for keeping the dream alive.

First, a quick thanks to VMware directly. They have constructed a product that has altered the layout of information systems and that is unrivaled in today's market. While the VMware engineers have been great at producing the software, the employees of VMware education have been instrumental in bringing the product to the world. Thanks to VMware Education Services for their support.

To all of the folks at Sybex, including Tom Cirtin, Pete Gaughan, Lisa Bishop, Christine O'Connor, and Neil Edde thank you. I have written for several publishers and without a doubt this group of folks works as hard as any I have seen. Tom and Pete, thanks for believing in this book even when the technologies changed so quickly that the scope seemed to go out of focus. Lisa and Christine, I don't know what to say except for a humongous thanks for putting up with my ever-so-frequent revisions and my repetitious queries regarding file locations. Thanks also to copy editor Liz Welch, proofreaders Ian Golder and David Fine of Word One, and indexer Robert Swanson. The organization and professionalism of the Sybex team was a cornerstone in making this book happen.

A special thanks to Andrew Ellwood, my longtime friend and colleague, who contributed some incredible intellectual property to this book. I can trace my success in training and IT back to a few people and without a doubt Andrew is one of those few. You are a great mentor and friend, and I know we will continue to work together in as many ways as the IT world will let us.

To Brian Perry, who, like Andrew, lent his great virtualization mind to the creation of this book. Undoubtedly you have one of the brightest minds in the business, and I am lucky to have had your expertise reflected in the final product. Certainly our paths will lead us to more endeavors where we can pool our brainpower for the greater good of the virtualization community.

And what would a good book be without an amazing technical editor? Thank you to Chris Huss, who like me, saw this project as a labor of love and a way to spread that virtual love to the rest of the virtualization community. It was clear from the beginning that we shared a vision of what we wanted to offer through this book. I believe your work and efforts cemented our ability to deliver exactly what we set out to do. Thanks Chris.

To Rawlinson, my partner in crime, who may have gotten lost in the mix, you can rest assured that you keep me motivated to stay on top of my game. You are constantly pushing me to be a better nerd. But more so thanks for being a great friend who makes what I do for a living the best job on the planet. You may have been dancing on stage with Madonna at the MTV Movie Awards but that just makes your transition to IT professional (aka Nerd#1) even more impressive than anyone can imagine. Who would have thought you would go from X Games rollerblading competitor to one of the best and brightest minds in the world of information technology?

Last, but certainly not least, to Shawn Long, thank you for an unquantifiable amount of support in completing this book. The hardware, software, and time you supplied are nothing in comparison to the uncompromising faith you had in my finishing the book. If the world could see the way we work, there would be no better picture of teamwork. What I don't know, you certainly do know. What you don't know, I try to learn. While our work is built around something virtual, our friendship is anything but. A lifetime of thanks for the energy you supply in helping me succeed.

I almost forgot: Thank you to Red Bull and Smarties for giving me the sugar high needed to push through the nights.

Chris McCain is an author, consultant, and trainer who focuses on VMware and Microsoft products. As an owner in the National IT Training & Certification Institute (NITTCI) and a partner at viLogics, he has been instrumental in providing training to thousands of IT professionals and consulting to some of the largest companies in the world. Chris has provided support in the form of training and consulting to companies such as Microsoft, VMware, IBM, Dell, Credit Suisse, Intel, and others.

In addition to virtualization, Chris offers expertise across a variety of technologies, including Active Directory, public key infrastructure, SQL Server 2005, IPSec, SharePoint, and more.

Chris holds a long list of industry certifications, including VCP, VCI, MCT, MCITP, MCSE: Security, and CISSP, to name a few. His other book credits include contributing to the Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Administrator's Companion by Microsoft Press, the MCITP Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-647) by Microsoft Press, and the Mike Meyers Passport Certification Series: Exam 70-293 by McGraw-Hill.

As an IT professional, Chris is dedicated to providing value to the community as a whole through his personal blogs at http://www.GetYourNerdOn.com. Visit the site to find a growing library of videos and commentary on IT technologies across Microsoft, VMware, and more.

For the past several years, the buzzword exciting the information technology community has been security: network security, host security, application security, just about any type of security imaginable. There is a new buzzword around the information technology world and it's rapidly becoming the most talked about technology since the advent of the client/server network. That buzzword is virtualization.

Virtualization is the process of implementing multiple operating systems on the same set of physical hardware to better utilize the hardware. Companies with strong plans to implement virtualized computing environments look to gain many benefits, including easier systems management, increased server utilization, and reduced datacenter overhead. Traditional IT management has incorporated a one-to-one relationship between the physical servers implemented and the roles they play on the network. When a new database is to be implemented, we call our hardware vendor of choice and order a new server with specifications to meet the needs of the database. Days later we may order yet another server to play the role of a file server. This process of ordering servers to fill the needs of new network services is oftentimes consuming and unnecessary given the existing hardware in the datacenter. To ensure stronger security, we separate services across hosts to facilitate the process of hardening the operating system. We have learned over time that the fewer the functions performed by a server, the fewer the services that are required to be installed, and, in turn, the easier it is to lock down the host to mitigate vulnerabilities. The byproduct of this separation of services has been the exponential growth of our datacenters into large numbers of racks filled with servers, which in most cases are barely using the hardware within them.