VMware vSphere 6.X Datacenter Design Cookbook - Second Edition: Click here to enter text.

I'm grading this book from the perspective of someone who is studying for the VCAP Design certification. I personally found this to be an introductory course in basic design principles. There is one major design scenario that runs throughout the book which is complex enough to get a sense of the type of thing you'll need to be able to understand for a design but I wish there was at least one more. If they had included one more chapter that ran through the calculations needed for hardware, storage, networking, etc, along with diagramming that would have made this much more helpful. As it is, I'd say that it is a good place to get started for studying VCAP Design but offers no where near all of the information covered in VMware's blueprint for the design certification. If you just want to read this book to get an idea of how to design a VMware environment I'd also think it earns a 4 out of 5. It offers a decent amount of guidance into the process but leaves the burden of digging into just about every subject much deeper on your own.

Good book, but outdated and very pricey considering the dated material. Please update this for 6.5!! And at 300 pages and small, for $60 please make it a hardcover.

Quality material as usual from Hersey. I find it very valuable to have the newer version (in addition to the 5.x) for my needs.

Hersey does an incredible job of laying out everything you need to understand from assessing, designing, validating, and implementing a VMware vSphere architecture. While this does cover vSphere 6.0, these topics are still very applicable and cover much of the design methodology found in VMware Education courses.

Whether you are a seasoned architect who still is getting familiar with vSphere 6 or a hands-on engineer who likes to get a firmer grip on design and architecture using vSphere 6, Hersey’s updated datacenter cookbook just might be just the book you need.This book graciously keeps a good balance between datacenter design principles, best practices and howto’s. In this book Hersey takes you by the hand and guides you through the steps needed to create a virtual datacenter design using vSphere 6.Besides the necessary theoretical explanations Hersey offers his readers 75 recipes which they can use to help with the creation or optimization of a virtual datacenter design: What are the prerequisites you need for a design? Who do you have to talk to? What are goals, requirements, risks and assumptions? How do you create a conceptual, logical and physical design? How do you need to calculate how many CPU, RAM or storage you need? What are the new features in vSphere 6 which might be important to my design? What basic design documentation do you need to create and how do you create it?Across both versions of Hersey’s book the design principles have remained the same but there is no denying that vSphere 6 has a lot of differences which set it apart from vSphere 5.x. As such Hersey’s design recipes which have been modified to reflect a vSphere 6 virtual datacenter design where needed, should be a welcome read for everyone. The structure of the book:This book contains one chapter more than its predecessor and caps now at 12 chapters. It goes without saying that datacenter security is becoming more and more important and as such security has been assigned its own chapter. Personally I think this is a very welcome addition.Here are some of the highlights for me:I really have tried to find my personal highlights in this book but the thing is, in a design all of items touched in the chapters of this book are equally important. To single out some chapters as I have done in some other reviews would not only do dishonor to this book but also to the design and architecture principles themselves.So let me tell you why I think this book is great:– A lot of aspiring architects have a tendency to look at architecture from a technical perspective first but a change in architecture should be driven by a business need. Hersey addresses this really well in the discovery process in chapter 2. In short: A discovery process is a mix of finding out what the business needs and discovering the design factors based on requirements, constraints, assumptions and risks.– This book reads like someone is giving you an excellent classroom experience using only a book as a medium. Just like its predecessor, the second edition of Hersey’s book “VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook” has a very good and clear structure. Each chapter builds upon the previous chapters, and where needed examples are given.– To me and many of my friends, acquaintances and peers who have joined me on the road to VCAP5-DCD, Hersey’s previous book was a must read while preparing for exam-day. We had a good reason to read the “VMware vSphere 5.x Datacenter Design Cookbook”: It explained in an easy to understand fashion many of the topics required to know to pass the VCAP5-DCD exam and the exercises in the book were easy to follow and understand as well. Personally I would advice anyone to add this book to the collection of books to read prior to taking the VCAP6-DCV Design exam.Why this book stands out from the crowd:As an instructor with the VMware IT Academy program at the Tidewater Community College Hersey Cartwright knows how important a good course structure is and how critical that structure is to make sure the message will come over loud and clear. This book is a very good example of good structure. The theory, the design principles and best practices in this book are explained in such a fashion that they are easy to follow.If you are new to design and architecture, finding the right literature to get started might be daunting. Basic principles about good design and architecture should be easily understandable for people new to these topics. Hersey’s book is a real success in this.

Hersey Cartwright and Mike Brown have done an excellent job at putting together a book which will help those looking to either upgrade to vSphere 6.7 or install vSphere 6.7. They share background information and then dig into how to do it. This design cookbook is just that, a design cookbook. If you are looking to move into an architectural role, look no further to help in making that step from being behind the scenes to built out the product to engaging the business side. Hersey and Mike bring their decades of experience together to help guide the reader from discovery to design to approval through implementation.I would recommend this as a book that if you are going to implement vSphere 6.7, it should be necessary to read it through.

I was looking for a book that would teach me the high-level technical fundamentals for architecture. No wishy-washy stuff, actual deep technical info that says a-b-c. I wanted to know how to works out IOPs requirements, RAM, CPU, etc...how do you work out how much you need on aggregate? What's the reason behind these numbers? How do you combine all these together for a solution? Book answered all my queries and then got me thinking of more things I should be able to do. I bought this on Kindle format initially but found I had needed the paper book to really drill home the tech info I was trying to learn. I'd recommend the paper book.

Best book for vmware

Didn't find it much helpful for the exam

Excellent Book.