Preface

This book will become your assistant in the day-to-day administration of the VMware virtual environment with vCenter Server.

My goal was to make this book as practical as possible. Each chapter is focused on detailed steps on how to perform administrative tasks and implement solutions. The intention was to provide the minimum amount of theory, just enough to understand what a feature does and why it can be useful.

While there is no lack of literature about vCenter, this topic is quite broad and can't be completely covered in one book. The selection of advice and solutions included here has been made based on daily tasks I was challenged with during my work. So with high probability, most of these tasks will be useful for other administrators who work with vSphere and vCenter.

Also, one of the goals of this book was to make each recipe self-sufficient so that there is no need to read a bunch of other articles and tips to implement a particular feature or setting. That's why you will not be required to read each chapter from top to bottom. A reader should be able to open a particular device and implement the solution if it suits their requirements.

Easier recipes will be useful for administrators who are just starting to work with vCenter. More advanced administrators may benefit from solutions related to scripting and new features introduced in vSphere 5.

With Web Client, this became available in vSphere 5 and many administrators are just starting to learn it. As this transition is happening, I have focused my attention on both Web Client and traditional vSphere Client, unless it's a new feature that can be configured only in Web Client.

Finally, beside recipes with step-by-step instructions, there is general advice about NUMA and virtual CPUs more related to planning. The principles described here are important to keep in mind each time you create a new virtual machine.

Enjoy reading!