Book Review: Rob’s Guide to Using VMware, by Rob Bastiaansen
Book Review: Rob’s Guide to Using VMware, by Rob Bastiaansen
By Vineet Chadha published: Wednesday, January 05 2005
July, 2004. 278 p. $29.00 Electronic download. $49.00 printed. ISBN 90-808934-1-2.
Review by Vineet Chadha
VMware software products have generated perhaps the same kind of excitement as was generated by the arrival of the Windows operating system, with its graphical user interface and user-friendly environment. The most obvious reason is that it addresses the compatibility and portability issues pertaining to computer systems. This book provides an application-oriented view of the VMware virtual machine in the context of performance tuning, general networking, migration of data and clustering. It primarily provides experimental applications of a VMware virtual machine.
The book aims to address VMware users ranging from beginners to experienced users, and to continue where the VMware manuals stop. I would classify potential users of the Guide as virtual machine computer novices, early VMware users or system administrators (but not computer novices). Indeed, the book addresses the needs of a computer novice in explaining the potential uses of the VMware virtual machine. But the needs of the other two groups could more easily be addressed by the VMware manuals. In addition, the VMware manuals implicitly or explicitly lay down the background for the potential applications of virtual machines. Is there any need of such a beginner’s level book? Yes, just for beginners though, not for system administrators or developers.
The primary goal of the author was to introduce the potential applications of VMware virtualization technologies like Workstation, ESX and GSX Servers. The book is a crystallized version of the multiple online manuals and resources. The author has informally mentioned other useful VMware users’ Web sites and resources.
The author has leveraged his experience as a certified Novell Certified Instructor and Microsoft Certified System Engineer to explain the potential of VMware in the context of NetWare and Windows clustering. Because the book shows real life examples, it expands on the VMware manuals. Bastiaansen explains well the sharing of disks through shared disk channels like SCSI, and also explains the way to share the disk in VMware Workstation through iSCSI. And the book does connect to Netware and Windows users. In fact, clustering of Windows and Netware, and Norton Ghost peer-to-peer imaging, distinguishes the book from the VMware manuals; this is the real world the book takes you into.
I would have liked the book to be structured a bit differently. The author started directly with the overview of VMware, but an historical introduction to virtualization and VMware technology is needed. Why is the reader using a virtual machine in the first place? A high level look at the architecture of VMware could be explained, to get a feel for VMware, with a couple of snapshots of multiple operating systems running on same physical machine. A final chapter could be an introduction to other alteratives for the sake of completeness, i.e. Xen, Microsoft VirtualPC and UML. Although the book is named “Using VMware”, a comparison of ease of use could have been done showing other alternatives.
Features I liked:
A good book to start with VMware rather than reading thick manuals and online resources.
A must-read for VMware beginners even though content is limited as to what can be done with virtual machines.
Author’s conversational tone about the subject encourages the reader to read further. For example, in section 8.4, I liked the explanation of the need for the disk mount utility.
Some topics, like physical to virtual conversions, are explained with great simplicity. I found it interesting because this was the first time I had come across it. The use of Norton Ghost for peer-to-peer imaging as a means of sending an image to destination virtual machines was a good topic to address as an application of VMware. The author has also provided the alternative ways of peer-to-peer networking.
Network address translation, port mappings and routing with images depicting IP addresses have been explained very well.
Topics like peer-to-peer imaging and iSCSI cluster in VMware Workstation indeed illustrate real world topics. There is a good and succinct explanation of iSCSI clusters for VMware workstation.
The author has used a user-friendly sequence of snapshots to illustrate the steps to be followed.
Potential improvements:
VMware tips for Linux should be included. VMware is distinguished from other virtual machines primarily because it supports multiple open source operating systems like Linux and FreeBSD efficiently. The author mentions that the second edition of the book will explain more about the Linux configuration.
Part I can easily be mentioned as a restating of what is explained in the VMware manual.
VMware virtual machines represent the state of a computer in terms of a set of files. Readers would recognize the networking and clustering of virtual machines as similar to the networking of physical machines. The author could have compared setting up similar environments with physical machines. For example, author mentioned about the freeware alternatives like ethereal in section of sniffing the virtual network (section 10.8).
I would like to see VMware software product developments like Virtual Infrastructure included, and a list of references at the end of the book, especially online manuals of the VMware products. Without references at the end of the book (or each chapter), it is more like a second manual.
Where the book can be used? The best possible use of the book is for VMware certified crash courses or as a practical manual for a networking or virtualization course in academia. The book is a good starting point to compile the list of potential applications of VMware virtual machines. The author is able to connect to the audience to convey his excitement about VMware virtual machines and their applications. I hope the next edition begins to create a platform for virtualization as whole.
Editor's Note: A second edition of the Guide is being written, which will include more on Linux and VMware ACE. To purchase the book, visit www.vmwarebook.com.
*****
Vineet Chadha is pursuing his PhD in computer information science and engineering at the University of Florida. His research interests include virtualization, operating systems and distributed computing. You can contact him at
vchadha@cise.ufl.edu.
