VMware Cookbook

Preface

VMware is one of those products that many of us, including this book’s authors, have been reading about for years. Ryan had the opportunity to become involved with and architect a virtualized environment a few years ago. After researching several options, he became particularly interested in and impressed by VMware’s enterprise virtualization platform. As time passed and he worked directly with VMware’s products in a production environment, he became even more enthused.

Matthew and Ryan have worked together on several projects in the past. In the summer of 2008, the two of us decided we would like to write a book together. We tossed around ideas and decided to write on VMware’s ESX platform, because it impressed us so. Since Matthew was already an established writer and also technologically proficient, although new to this specific software, we decided that Ryan would do the technical writing and Matthew would concentrate his efforts on making sure it all came across clearly and accurately. As we mention later in the Acknowledgments, Dell was kind enough to lend us some equipment for testing while writing, and the two of us got together and began experimenting.

We are genuinely delighted by VMware as a company, and have found its employees very kind and helpful. We have also become sold on its products. Using VMware’s platform in a production environment has been everything it is advertised to be: it has made system administration easier, made the use of resources more efficient ...