The 100% Practical Guide to Making Virtualization Work in Real Enterprise Environments If you're involved in planning, deploying, or managing virtualization, this book brings together all the field-proven, in-the-trenches answers and solutions you'll need. Packed with examples and case studies, Practical Virtualization Solutions is a complete, self-paced, hands-on guide to creating a virtualized environment and driving maximum value from it throughout its entire lifecycle. Kenneth Hess and Amy Newman present detailed costs, schedules, and deployment plans drawn from actual enterprise virtualization projects. You'll learn what really works and what doesn't and discover powerful ways to systematically control the costs of virtualization and streamline its management. The authors offer realistic guidance on choosing the best services to virtualize; selecting the right virtualization software, hardware, and vendor partners; troubleshooting and securing virtualized environments; and much more. Along the way, they answer crucial questions IT professionals face in working with virtualization. Coverage includes *Quantifying the time, hardware, labor, and downtime needed to implement virtualization*Streamlining the transition from physical to virtual*Comparing VMware ESXi, VMware Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and other virtualization technologies*Identifying opportunities to reduce cost and improve flexibility with open source virtualization technologies*Explaining advanced techniques for simplifying virtual machine management*Defining the right role for virtualization in networking and storage*Automating virtual infrastructure management tasks

Table of Contents

Foreword xv Acknowledgments xvii About the Authors xix Preface xxi Part I: Virtualization Basics and Technology Choices 1 Chapter 1: To Virtualize or Not to Virtualize? 3 Chapter 2: Comparing Virtualization Technologies 17 Chapter 3: VMware Server 25 Chapter 4: VMware ESXi 47 Chapter 5: Citrix XenServer 67 Chapter 6: Microsoft Virtual PC 87 Chapter 7: Microsoft Hyper-V 103 Chapter 8: VirtualBox 113 Part II: Applying Virtualization 135 Chapter 9: Server Virtualization in Action 137 Chapter 10: Desktop Virtualization in Action 161 Chapter 11: Network and Storage Virtualization in Action 175 Part III: Building the Virtual Infrastructure: Hardware's Role in Virtualization 191 Chapter 12: Form-Factor Choices and Their Implications 193 Chapter 13: Choosing a Vendor 205 Chapter 14: Beyond the Box 223 Part IV: From Development to Production: Managing the Virtual Infrastructure 237 Chapter 15: Laying the Foundation: The Planning Stage 239 Chapter 16: Deployment 253 Chapter 17: Postproduction: Wrapping It Up 265 Appendix: Virtual Machine Installation 273

About the Author

Kenneth Hess is the virtualization columnist at Linux Magazine. His column covers all aspects and types of virtualization from desktop to server to cloud. Kenneth has used just about every type of virtualization product available since 1999 and was a beta tester of the original VMware product line. He also writes the Linux blog on DaniWeb and the Cover Your Assets column on Internet.com's ServerWatch. You'll also find Kenneth on the air weekly at The Frugal Tech Show's Frugal Friday. His day job with HP involves virtualization and web hosting at an enterprise level. Amy Newman has been following the virtualization space since 2001. She has been blogging about it since 2006 in her weekly column, Virtually Speaking. Virtually Speaking provides analysis of news and trends on everything virtual from hypervisors to hardware. The column appears weekly on Internet.com's Server-Watch. Amy has been managing editor of ServerWatch since 1999 and Enterprise IT Planet since 2009. Prior to that, she was a research editor at Gartner, where she edited and managed the workflow of four monthly research deliverables related to software infrastructure.