If you're involved in planning, deploying, or managing virtualisation, 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 virtualised 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 virtualisation projects. You'll learn what really works and what doesn't and discover powerful ways to systematically control the costs of virtualisation and streamline its management. The authors offer realistic guidance on choosing the best services to virtualise; selecting the right virtualisation software, hardware, and vendor partners; troubleshooting and securing virtualised environments; and much more. Along the way, they answer crucial questions IT professionals face in working with virtualisation. Coverage includes Quantifying the time, hardware, labor, and downtime needed to implement virtualisation Streamlining the transition from physical to virtual Comparing VMware ESXi, VMware Server, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, and other virtualisation technologies Identifying opportunities to reduce cost and improve flexibility with open source virtualisation technologies Explaining advanced techniques for simplifying virtual machine management Defining the right role for virtualisation in networking and storage Automating virtual infrastructure management tasks

Author Biography

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.