VMware Cookbook, 2nd Edition [PDF]

Audience

This book is intended for system administrators who have some experience with VMware ESX, ESXi, vCloud Director, or vSphere. Throughout the book, we have not only tried to appeal to beginners, but we also include a generous amount of complex recipes for advanced users. We believe this book will be a solid reference guide for any system administrator, regardless of his or her level of knowledge. We hope you enjoy it!

Organization of This Book

This book is made up of nine chapters:

• Chapter 1, VMware Infrastructure Installation, covers installation details for ESXi5 and vCloud Director.
• Chapter 2, Storage, covers partitions, iSCSI and NFS configuration, and other choices reflecting local or external data storage.
• Chapter 3, Networking, covers communications at multiple levels, including configuration of virtual switches, software and hardware adapters, Ethernet frame sizes, and more
• Chapter 4, Resource and vCenter Management, shows you how best to apportion memory and CPU resources through clustering, shares, hot add/hotplug support and other options.
• Chapter 5, Useful Tools and References, presents miscellaneous commands that can rescue you in a pinch and help you keep apprised of your servers’ functioning.
• Chapter 6, General Security, covers a range of access issues, such as how to control which users have access to each level of the system and how to set up firewalls, networking, and remote access to your desired level of security
• Chapter 7, Automating ESXi Installations, introduces the configuration files used to control basic networking options, startup activities, and other aspects of the system you’ll want to automate in order to make it easier to replicate virtual
  machines.
• Chapter 8, vCloud Director Overview, introduces features for moving into the cloud and allowing configuration by end users.
• Chapter 9, vSphere Storage Appliance, shows how to create virtual storage and reclaim unused disk space through vSphere Storage Appliance.

Along the way, you’ll also find plenty of pointers and advice on good programming practices and tips that may help you find and solve hard-to-detect programming errors. There are also plenty of links to websites containing further details on the topics covered.