VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS deepdive - Short Review

It’s been years since I’ve read a book on VMWare. Between the maturity and ease of use of their GUI tools and my own continual move towards Free virtualisation I’ve not had the professional need or the spare time to invest but when a book comes as highly recommended as the VMware vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical deepdive does you have to make some room on your (virtual) bookshelf.

Despite its small page count this book covers its subject material in a simple, direct and technically clear way. There is very little fluff and while you could find some of the details buried in VMWare KB articles or white papers its presence here in such a well combined and cohesive form more than justifies the books frankly tiny price tag (at least in the kindle store).

I came away from this book with enough of an understanding of the technologies covered to see where they’d fit, the issues we’d need to monitor for and some of the edge cases that would bite us in deployment. And that’s a good return for the small investment of time reading this book takes.

The only downside of the book is that it could really do with another editorial pass or two. While this doesn’t alter the quality of the technical content it does make the reading experience a little jarring.

If you want to get in to vSphere HA / DRS then this is a recommended read. Score - 7/10