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Data is the backbone of modern development, and not just in the tech industry. Shaping everything from healthcare to gaming to marketing, developers need to have the skills to excel in a data-driven future.  To help developers like you stay ahead of the curve, for all of September we’ll be focusing on everything data. From managing your client's data to bring both privacy and profit, to how data science is revolutionising the job market, to how this new vital resource is shaping the future of tech with the advent of machine learning and AI, stay tuned to our social channels all this month for the latest data insight. You can also create a free Packt account and sign up for the latest insight straight to your inbox through the Packt Hub. Find out more here: https://www.packtpub.com/?utm_source=communities.vmware.com&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=Outreach

VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design Cookbook - Third Edition Design a virtualized data center with VMware vSphere 6.7 Learn Identify key factors related to a vSphere design Mitigate security risks and meet compliance requirements in a vSphere design Create a vSphere conceptual design by identifying technical and business requirements Design for performance, availability, recoverability, manageability, and security Map the logical resource design into the physical vSphere design Create professional vSphere design documentation About VMware is the industry leader in data center virtualization. The vSphere 6.x suite of products provides a robust and resilient platform to virtualize server and application workloads. This book uses proven infrastructure design principles and applies them to VMware vSphere 6.7 virtual data center design through short and focused recipes on each design aspect. The second edition of this book focused on vSphere 6.0. vSphere features released since then necessitate an updated design guide, which includes recipes for upgrading to 6.7, vCenter HA; operational improvements; cutting-edge, high-performance storage access such as RDMA and Pmem; security features such as encrypted vMotion and VM-level encryption; Proactive HA; HA Orchestrated Restart; Predictive DRS; and more. To be able to achieve enhanced compute, storage, network, and management capabilities for your virtual data center hit the link.

Packt has recently published Designing and Deploying VMware Horizon View 7 by Peter von Oven (June 2018) This video course introduces you to the security aspects of Horizon View with SSL Certificates and True SSO and shows how these solutions can be implemented. You will then build a virtual desktop OS and several different desktops, ready for delivery to end users. You'll utilize the advantages afforded by the modern desktop and application delivery architecture of Horizon View and deliver only applications by publishing these to end users; you'll also deliver desktop sessions, rather than full desktops. With the help of these features, you'll reduce the storage space required, and cut down on operational costs, by deploying truly stateless desktops. Towards the end of the video, you will investigate these features and configure Horizon View to deliver applications and desktop sessions to end users, thus ensuring painless application packaging and installation and making your life easy. What You Will Learn: Master effective deployment for your VMware Horizon View 7 infrastructure Secure Horizon View with SSL Certificates and True SSO Build several different desktops according to end user requirements Optimize desktops for delivery to end users Deliver remote applications with View-hosted apps Deliver session-based desktops with Horizon View Author Bio: Peter von Oven is an experienced technical consultant and has spent the past 20 years of his IT career working with customers and partners in designing technology solutions aimed at delivering true business value. During his career, Peter has been involved in numerous large-scale enterprise projects and deployments and has presented at key IT events, such as VMworld, IP EXPO, and various VMUGs and CCUG events across the UK. He has also worked in senior presales roles and presales management roles for some IT giants—such as Fujitsu, HP, Citrix, and VMware—and was awarded VMware vExpert for 2015 and 2016. Over the past 12 years and more, Peter has focused his skills and experience by specializing in the desktop and application virtualization market and today works as the UK&I, Benelux, and Nordics Pre-Sales Director for the market-leading desktop transformation specialists, Liquidware Labs.

"VMware vSphere 6.5 Cookbook - Third Edition" authored by Abhilash G B, Cedric Rajendran (Jan 2018) helps deploy and manage VMware vSphere 6.5 components with ease. The book starts with the procedures involved in upgrading your existing vSphere infrastructure to vSphere 6.5, followed by deploying a new vSphere 6.5 environment. Then the book delves further into the procedures involved in managing storage and network access to the ESXi hosts and the virtual machines running on them. Moving on, the book covers high availability and fair distribution/utilization of clustered compute and storage resources. Finally, the book covers patching and upgrading the vSphere infrastructure using VUM, certificate management using VMCA, and finishes with a chapter covering the tools that can be used to monitor the performance of a vSphere infrastructure. What You Will Learn: Upgrade your existing vSphere environment or perform a fresh deployment Automate the deployment and management of large sets of ESXi hosts in your vSphere Environment Configure and manage FC, iSCSI, and NAS storage, and get more control over how storage resources are allocated and managed Configure vSphere networking by deploying host-wide and data center-wide switches in your vSphere environment Configure high availability on a host cluster and learn how to enable the fair distribution and utilization of compute resources Patch and upgrade the vSphere environment Handle certificate request generation and renew component certificates Monitor performance of a vSphere environment Author Bio: Abhilash G B Abhilash G B is a virtualization specialist, author, designer, and a VMware vExpert 2014-2017 who specializes in the areas of data center virtualization and cloud computing. He has been in the IT industry for more than a decade and has been working on VMware products and technologies since the start of 2007. Cedric Rajendran Cedric Rajendran is a senior staff engineer in technical support with VMware. He has around 13 years of experience covering a wide spectrum of technologies. He has served in the fields of Network Ops, Technical Support, and Consulting. His core strengths are on the server and storage virtualization. Packt

Learning VMware App Volumes [Video] authored by Peter von Oven helps you take your skills in delivering applications to virtual desktops to the next level. This video starts with an overview of the architecture and components used to design an optimized solution. You will then learn how to install and configure App Volumes for different use cases such as VMware View Integration, using VMware Thin App, Citrix Xen App, and more. Throughout the course, we provide hints, tips, and tricks as well as best practices. By the end of the video, you will have built a working App Volumes environment and acquired the skills to build and run a production environment. What You Will Learn: Architectural and Feature Overview of App Volumes Build Application Layering Designing a successful VDI deployment Work with App Stacks and Writeable Volumes Add App Stack delivery mechanism into Horizon View Delivering App Stacks in Citrix Xen Desktop and Citrix Xen App Configuring your App Volumes deployment Author Bio: Peter von Oven Peter von Oven is an experienced technical consultant and has spent the past 20 years of his IT career working with customers and partners in designing technology solutions aimed at delivering true business value. During his career, Peter has been involved in numerous large-scale enterprise projects and deployments and has presented at key IT events, such as VMworld, IP EXPO, and various VMUGs and CCUG events across the UK. He has also worked in senior presales roles and presales management roles for some IT giants—such as Fujitsu, HP, Citrix, and VMware—and was awarded VMware vExpert for 2015 and 2016.

Learning VMware NSX - Second Edition authored by  Ranjit Singh Thakurratan explores the foundational components of VMware NSX. The book allows you a thorough understanding of implementing Software defined networks using VMware’s NSX. You will come across the best practices for installing and configuring NSX to setup your environment. Then you will get a brief overview of the NSX Core Components NSX’s basic architecture. Once you are familiar with everything, you will get to know how to deploy various NSX features. Furthermore, you will understand how to manage and monitor NSX and its associated services and features. In addition to this, you will also explore the best practices for NSX deployments. By the end of the book, you will be able to deploy Vmware NSX in your own environment with ease. This book can come handy if you are preparing for VMware NSX certification. What You Will Learn: Understand software-defined networks Deploy and configure VXLAN-enabled logical switches Secure your environment using Distributed Firewall and Data Security Configure third-party services in NSX Manage, configure, and deploy edge gateway services Perform various Edge operations including configuring CA certificates Explore the different monitoring options to check their traffic flow Author Bio: Ranjit Singh Thakurratan Ranjit Singh Thakurratan is a four year VMware vExpert (2013-2017) and works as a principal chief architect at DellEMC. Ranjit holds a master's degree in information technology—infrastructure assurance and an engineering degree in computer science, and has over ten years of hands-on IT experience. He has presented at numerous VMUG UserCon conferences held at Boston, Washington DC, New York, Denver, and Dallas. He be reached via his Twitter handle @RJAPPROVES. Apart from technology, Ranjit is also interested in astrophysics, animal welfare, and open source projects.

vSphere High Performance Cookbook - Second Edition authored by Kevin Elder and Christopher Kusek has over 80 recipes to help you improve vSphere 6.5's performance and solve problems before they arise. This book starts with interesting recipes, such as the interaction of vSphere 6.5 components with physical layers such as CPU, memory, and networking. Then we focus on DRS, resource control design, and vSphere cluster design. Next, you'll learn about storage performance design and how it works with VMware vSphere 6.5. Moving on, you will learn about the two types of vCenter installation and the benefits of each. Lastly, the book covers performance tools that help you get the most out of your vSphere installation. What You Will Learn: Understand the VMM Scheduler, cache aware CPU Scheduler, NUMA Aware CPU Scheduler, and more during the CPU Performance Design phase Get to know the virtual memory reclamation technique, host ballooning monitoring, and swapping activity Choose the right platform while designing your vCenter Server, redundant vCenter design, and vCenter SSO and its deployment Know how to use various performance simulation tools Design VCSA Server Certificates to minimize security threats Use health check tools for storage and boost vSphere 6.5's performance with VAAI and VASA Author Bio: Kevin Elder Kevin Elder lives in Portland, Oregon, and is a Principal Architect and Engineer at Xiologix LLC. With over 15 years of experience in IT, focused on selling, installing, and supporting virtualization and storage technologies, Kevin is responsible for customer success from initial design through implementation. He has been installing, managing, and selling VMware products for over 10 years. Kevin holds a VCP 6 and is a Dell EMC Elect for 2017. Christopher Kusek Christopher Kusek lives in Portland, Oregon where he is Chief Technology Officer and Executive VP of Engineering at Xiologix. With over 20 years of experience in IT as a technology evangelist and industry leader, Christopher plays a key role in Xiologix's growth, leading its storage and engineering practice to evaluate and architect solutions that meet the client's tactical and strategic goals.

Learning VMware Horizon 7, video course authored by Peter von Oven provides in-depth content balanced with tutorials that put theory into practice. The focus is on giving you both the understanding and practical examples that will allow you to master the art of creating desktop resources using VMware Horizon 7. This course is designed for beginners who want to learn to centrally manage and virtualize their desktops using VMware Horizon 7. VMware Horizon 7 delivers, protects, and manages your applications and virtual desktops and ensures the end-user can access it from anywhere and at any point of time. The course will guide you from being a beginner to being able to centrally manage your desktops using VMware Horizon 7. The video starts with an overview of the architecture and latest features of VMware Horizon 7. You will also learn how to design and deploy your Horizon 7 environment. Finally, we will build out two operating systems, optimize them for your VDI, and then walk you through the different methods of delivery for the instant clone, linked clone, and full clone options. By the end of the course, you will be equipped to create desktop resources by using Horizon Desktop Pools and fine-tune the end user experience to ensure the best optimization from your virtual desktops. What You Will Learn: Learn about the Horizon 7 architecture The best type of design for your Horizon 7 deployment Building and optimizing the desktop OS for VDI Different types of desktop resources and which one to choose Entitling users to VDI desktop resources Optimizing your Horizon 7 deployment Author Bio: Peter Von Oven Peter Von Oven is an experienced technical consultant and has spent the past 20 years of his IT career working with customers and partners in designing technology solutions aimed at delivering true business value. During his career, Peter has been involved in numerous large-scale enterprise projects and deployments and has presented at key IT events such as VMworld, IP EXPO, and various VMUGs across the UK. He has also worked in senior presales roles and senior presales management roles for IT giants such as Fujitsu, HP, Citrix, and VMware and was awarded VMware vExpert for 2015 and 2016. Over the past 10 years and more, Peter has focused his skills and experience by specializing in the desktop and application virtualization market and today works for market-leading desktop transformation specialists, Liquidware Labs. Peter got his first taste for writing when assisting with some of the chapters in the book Building End-User Computing Solutions with VMware View, which then led to four other Packt titles: VMware Horizon Mirage Essentials; VMware Horizon Workspace Essentials, co-written with Peter Bjork and Joel Lindberg; and VMware Horizon View Essentials and Mastering Horizon View, co-written with Barry Coombs.

Learning vRealize Automation 7.2, video course authored by Matthias Eisner & Yves Sandfort takes a step-by-step approach and is explained in an easy-to-follow style. Each topic is explained sequentially through planning, preparing, installing, configuring, and validating of all vRealize Automation’s components. This video is for anyone who wants to start their journey with vRealize Automation. Regardless of whether or not you have used vRealize Automation before, the steps provided in each chapter will get you started with the product. This video starts off with a basic overview of the vRealize Automation architecture including the connection with endpoints such as vSphere or other hypervisors. You will also get a walk through the basic installation of the appliance and the windows components to ensure you have a simple environment. Moving on,the basic setup of tenants within vRealize Automation including the basic creation of endpoints, resource discovery, fabric/business groups and reservations. You will then discover how to create basic blueprints within vRealize Automation and get to know some very basic customization approaches to add blueprints to a catalog. You'll also create a basic self-service portal. Finally, you will get a quick overview of basic vRealize Automation extensibility with Custom Properties and vRealize Orchestrator, which will enable you to deal with some basic extensibility operations. What You Will Learn: Understand the basic building blocks of vRealize Automation before embarking on the journey of installation Get a quick overview of the identity management components of vRealize Automation with the configuration with Microsoft Active Directory Carry out a functional validation of the first phase of installation before completing the installation Create, configure, and deploy tenants, endpoints, blueprints, and the service catalogLearn to configure the NSX loadbalancer for vRealize Orchestrator for high availability Author Bio: Matthias Eisner Matthias Eisner has dealt with company networks for 10+ years, andNSX is a perfect fit for the toolbox, helping customers on their journey to building a fully-automated on-premisecloud solution. More than two years ago, hewas elected into the initial VCI team teaching NSXat the outset, together with hiscounterpart Yves Sandfort. Furthermore, he was one of three initial Instructors who taughtNSX Design. This allowed himto support big customers in creating designs for NSX and supporting them during their migration into the Software-defined Networking world to build a solid basic infrastructure supporting the journey into the SDDC. Yves Sandfort As a VMware Certified Instructor with a network background of 20+ years, Yves Sandfort was on the initial team that taughtNSX in EMEA with his counterpart Matthias Eisner. Theyran some of the very early customer classes and alsohelped to implement some of the first proof of concepts and later on production environments in EMEA. In his second role as a VCDX for cloud and management,it’s one of his toolkits when he designs cloud architectures for private, hybrid, or public cloud environments to build a modern SDDC implementation.

Advanced VMware vRealize Operations Manager, video course authored by Chris Slater & Scott Norris is aimed at viewers having basic skills with the vRealize Operations Manager. It follows a very practical step-by-step approach to teach viewers how they can extend their administrative skills with this pragmatic guide. This course starts by teaching you to configure and create alerts based on environment-specific symptoms. Then, we’ll walk you through manipulating metric data using super metrics. You will learn how and when to use groups, after which we move on to basic dashboard design to deliver easy-to-consume data in our environment. You'll learn how to import custom data and work with relationships. Next, we’ll revamp our basic dashboard and introduce interactivity to it, so it can show data on selected objects. Finally, you will learn how to set up notifications and will be equipped to manage, run, and use vROps within you own environment. What You Will Learn: Get to know how to trigger events with alerts and symptoms Manipulate metric data using super metrics Create a basic dashboard using widgets Import custom data and add it to existing objects Create relationships via the UI and REST Configure and set up notifications Author Bio: Chris Slater Chris Slater is a Senior Solutions Architect working for VMware as part of the Professional Services Organisation (PSO). He specializes in SDDC technologies and methodologies such as vSphere, vRealize Operations Manager, and Infrastructure and Platform as a Service (IaaS/PaaS) through vRealize Automation. Chris is a VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX-DV #102) and received a Bachelor of IT from the Australian National University. His primary customer base is the Australian Federal Government that has allowed him to work in some of the largest vSphere environments in Australia. Scott Norris Scott Norris is currently a Senior Consultant in VMware's Professional Services Organization (PSO). He specializes in multiple VMware technologies, such as ESXi, vCenter, vRA 6 and 7, vCD, vCOps (vROps ), vRO, SRM, and Application Services. He is a VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX -DCA and VCDX-CMA #201). For the last 8 years, Scott has worked exclusively on VMware products and technologies, supporting small environments from a single server, to large federal government environments with hundreds of hosts.

Software Defined Networking with VMware NSX, video course authored by Matthias Eisner & Yves Sandfort targets VMware administrators, network and IT professionals who are taking their first steps when building or deploying an SDN-based VMware infrastructure. A practical tutorial that shows real world solutions to designing and building network services and perform network virtualization within VMware-based infrastructures. NSX is VMware's networking platform that allows networks and services to be deployed programmatically and is a crucial component in software-defined data centers. This video course provides step-by-step instructions to help you quickly deploy SDN in production and perform network virtualization with VMware. It will help you install and configure NSX and show you how to deploy NSX on top of your existing physical network and gain control of every aspect of network components (switches and routers) and your connected IT workloads. The next section covers how to deploy and configure VxLAN-based switches and manage and configure network and gateway services. Finally, you will learn how to use NSX to secure your environment. After finishing this course, you will be able to deploy and maintain network virtualizations and automate your VMware-based infrastructure in less time and in a cost-effective manner. All this will be covered through a practical real-world example right from the start of the course. What You Will Learn: Get an overview of the core building blocks for NSX Get to know how to deploy NSX (Manager, Controller, Host preparation, and more) Understand routing with DLR and Edges Build a firewall with DLR and Edges See an overview of other stateful Edge Services (LB and VPN) Author Bio: Matthias Eisner Matthias Eisner has dealt with company networks for 10+ years, andNSX is a perfect fit for the toolbox, helping customers on their journey to building a fully-automated on-premise cloud solution. More than two years ago, he was elected into the initial VCI team teaching NSXat the outset, together with his counterpart Yves Sandfort. Furthermore, he was one of three initial Instructors who taughtNSX Design. This allowed him to support big customers in creating designs for NSX and supporting them during their migration into the Software-defined Networking world to build a solid basic infrastructure supporting the journey into the SDDC. Yves Sandfort As a VMware Certified Instructor with a network background of 20+ years, Yves Sandfort was on the initial team that taughtNSX in EMEA with his counterpart Matthias Eisner. They ran some of the very early customer classes and also helped to implement some of the first proof of concepts and later on production environments in EMEA. In his second role as a VCDX for cloud and management,  it’s one of his toolkits when he designs cloud architectures for private, hybrid, or public cloud environments to build a modern SDDC implementation.

If you are a system administrator who is eager to provide better administration with VCM and are familiar with managing network users and resources along with performing system maintenance, then VMware vRealize Configuration Manager Cookbook written by Abhijeet Shriram Janwalkar is the book for you. This book takes a recipe-based approach that will provide you with an effective and a practical configuration management solution for your enterprise. VMware vRealize Configuration Manager (VCM) helps you to automate IT operations, manage performance, and gain visibility across physical and virtual infrastructure. It is continuously being used by enterprises to audit the configurations of the VMware infrastructure as well as the Windows, Linux, and UNIX operating systems. This book is filled with practical recipes through which you will learn about the latest features of vRealize Configuration Manager 5.8.X, starting with installation of various tiers of VCM followed by configuration management across physical and virtual servers. Throughout this book, you will explore how VCM can perform tasks such as patch management, compliance assessment, and software package distribution along with Machine filters for new platforms such as RHEL 7 and Windows 10. This book will ease your troubles while upgrading from the existing VCM to the latest version by providing you with step-by-step instructions about the process of migration along with upgrade and maintenance support. This book will help you understand how to integrate vRealize Configuration with other applications along with schedule management and also guide you on how to handle security issues. After reading this book, you will have a clear understanding of how VCM fits in the overall picture of the data center design from a patching and compliance perspective. What You Will Learn: Find out how to configure automated patching of your infrastructure for Windows as well Unix machines Maintain and upgrade your vRealize Configuration Manager Integrate with other VMware tools such as vCloud Director, vRealise Operations, vCenter, and vCloud Network and Security Understand what vRealize Configuration Manager is and what its capacities are Explore how vRealize Configuration Manager can be used for patching, compliance management, and software distribution Troubleshoot vRealize Configuration Manager with ease Author Bio: Abhijeet Shriram Janwalkar completed BTech in electrical engineering. He has 10 years’ experience in IT, starting from desktop support, to server management, to technology lead in the cloud support team, and is now the lead consultant responsible for designing and deploying various VMware and Microsoft technologies. Meanwhile, he has performed technical trainings and was a Microsoft Certified Trainer. He is currently working for AtoS India Pvt Ltd as the Lead Consultant, mostly responsible for monitoring and checking compliance in the cloud deployment team. On the certification front, he has completed VCP-DCP, VCP-Cloud, VCP6-CMA, VCAP-DCA, and VCAP-DCD, and is waiting for the general availability of the VCAP6-DCD exam. He has been working on VCM for almost 3 years now and is responsible for the design, deployment, and maintenance of it in multiple deployments for customers. He is an MCT alumni and has a few other certifications in Microsoft technologies such as MCSE: Private Cloud and MCSA Server 2012, to name a couple. He used to train people on SCCM, SCOM, and Windows OS. He was invited by Microsoft to perform performance-based testing on Windows Server 2008 and then beta test SCCM 2012, which he passed successfully. You can find him at http://abhijeet-janwalkar.blogspot.com or https://in.linkedin.com/in/abhijeet-janwalkar-3640952.

If you are a newcomer to system administration, and you wish to implement the Horizon environment, then Implementing VMware Horizon 7 - Second Edition written by Jason Ventresco is the book for you. Prior knowledge of Horizon is beneficial. This comprehensive guide focuses on the practicality of VMware Horizon and how you can implement it in your organization. VMware Horizon 7 has been a buzz since it was announced. One of the major reasons is the introduction of the new Instant Clones feature. This book will complement the product documentation by providing real-life examples of how it is implemented along with the latest features and components of the platform. We'll explore the latest features of the platform, including those added through product acquisitions such as User Environment Manager and App Volumes. Further on, you will also be introduced to the new capabilities added to the core product such Linked-Clone RDS pools. Upon completion of this book, you will have an understanding of the capabilities and benefits VMware Horizon can provide to your organization, and how each of its components are implemented. What You Will Learn: Walk through the configuration of VMware Horizon, including the new Horizon Access Point appliance Implement a multi-site VMware Horizon pod using the Cloud Pod Architecture feature Understand the integration between VMware Horizon and VSAN, and see how they are deployed together Explore how to implement and maintain Microsoft RDS and Linux and Windows Desktop Pools Create and optimize desktop master images. Understand how to manage the SSL certificates for each of the VMware Horizon components. Author Bio: Jason Ventresco is a 17 year veteran of the IT field and currently, works for EMC2 as a Consultant Solutions Engineer. In that role, he architects, builds and tests the latest end-user computing solutions to validate their performance and provide guidance to EMC2 customers and partners. Jason previously worked as a member of the Global Infrastructure team for FHI 360, and as an IT consultant for WorkSmart and Xerox Global Services. Jason previously published the books Implementing VMware Horizon View 5.2, VMware Horizon View 5.3 Design Patterns and Best Practices, and VMware Horizon View 6 Desktop Virtualization Cookbook. Jason lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife, Christine, and daughter, Amanda. He holds two degrees, a Master of Science in Information Assurance from Norwich University, and a Bachelor of Science in Information Technology from the University of Phoenix. In his free time, he likes to travel, go boating, and attend Carolina Hurricanes games.

If you are an administrator or consultant interested in designing virtualized datacenter environments using VMware vSphere 6.x or previous versions of vSphere and the supporting components, then VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook - Second Edition written by Hersey Cartwright is the book for you. It will help both new and experienced architects deliver professional VMware vSphere virtual datacenter designs. The book follows a recipe-based approach that consists of practical recipes to effectively design a virtual data center. VMware is the industry leader in data center virtualization. The vSphere 6.x suite of products provides a robust and resilient platform to virtualize server and application workloads. With the release of 6.x a whole range of new features has come along such as ESXi Security enhancements, fault tolerance, high availability enhancements, and virtual volumes, thus simplifying the secure management of resources, the availability of applications, and performance enhancements of workloads deployed in the virtualized datacenter. This book provides recipes to create a virtual datacenter design using the features of vSphere 6.x by guiding you through the process of identifying the design factors and applying them to the logical and physical design process. You’ll follow steps that walk you through the design process from beginning to end, right from the discovery process to creating the conceptual design; calculating the resource requirements of the logical storage, compute, and network design; mapping the logical requirements to a physical design; security design; and finally creating the design documentation. The recipes in this book provide guidance on making design decisions to ensure the successful creation, and ultimately the successful implementation, of a VMware vSphere 6.x virtual data center design. What You Will Learn: Identify key factors related to a vSphere design and apply them to every step of the design process Mitigate security risks and meet compliance requirements in a vSphere design. Create a vSphere conceptual design by identifying technical and business requirements Determine the type of database to use based on the deployment size. Design for performance, availability, recoverability, manageability, and security Map the logical resource design into the physical vSphere design Create professional vSphere design documentation to ensure a successful implementation of the vSphere design Leverage the latest vSphere 6.x features to ensure manageability, performance, availability, and security in a virtual datacenter design Author Bio: Hersey Cartwright has worked in the technology industry since 1996 in many roles, from help desk support to IT management. He first started working with VMware technologies in 2006. He is currently a solutions architect for SimpliVity, where he designs, sells, and supports VMware vSphere enterprise environments running on the SimpliVity Hyperconverged Infrastructure (HCI) platform. In 2012, he began preparing to submit a design to defend for his VMware Certified Design Expert. In February 2013, he successfully completed his defense and obtained VCDX. His VCDX number is #128. Since January 2011, he has been an instructor with the VMware IT Academy at Tidewater Community college where he teaches vSphere 5 and vSphere 6 classes. He designed and implemented the lab environment that is used by students in the virtualization and security programs offered at the Chesapeake Campus of Tidewater Community College. He actively participates in the VMware community, and he has been awarded the vExpert title every year since 2012. He has presented multiple ProfessionalVMware.com vBrownBags on vSphere administration, vSphere design, and vSphere disaster recovery. He regularly blogs about virtualization and other technologies at http://www.vhersey.com/.

If you're a system administrator or cloud infrastructure specialist who is interested in performance management and capacity management using VMware technologies then VMware Performance and Capacity Management - Second Edition written by Iwan 'e1' Rahabok is the book is for you. This book will also help IT professionals whose area of responsibility is not VMware, but who work with the VMware team. You can be Windows, Linux, Storage, or Network team; or application architects. Note that prior exposure to the VMware platform of data-center and cloud-based solutions is expected. This book covers the complex topic of managing performance and capacity in an easy-to-follow style. It relates real-world scenarios to topics in order to help you implement the book’s teachings on the go. Performance management and capacity management are the two top-most issues faced by enterprise IT when doing virtualization. The second edition comes with added information and reorganizing the book into three logical parts. The first part provides the technical foundation of SDDC Management. It explains the difference between a software-defined data center and a classic physical data center, and how it impacts both architecture and operations. From this strategic view, it zooms into the most common challenges—performance management and capacity management. It introduces a new concept called Performance SLA and also a new way of doing capacity management. The next part provides the actual solution that you can implement in your environment. It puts the theories together and provides real-life examples created together with customers. It provides the reasons behind each dashboard, so that you get the understanding on why it is required and what problem it solves. The last part acts as a reference section. It provides a complete reference to vSphere and vRealize Operations counters, explaining their dependencies and providing practical guidance on the values you should expect in a healthy environment. What You Will Learn: Simplify the task of performance and capacity management Master the counters in vCenter and vRealize Operations and understand their dependency on one another Educate your peers and management on SDDC Operations Complete your SDDC monitoring to include non-VMware components Perform SDDC performance troubleshooting Explore real-life examples of how super metric and advanced dashboards Introduce and implement a Performance SLA Accomplish your Capacity Management by taking into service tiering and performance SLA Author Bio: Iwan 'e1' Rahabok was the first VMware SE for strategic accounts in ASEAN. Joining VMware in 2008 from Sun Microsystems, he has seen how enterprises adopt virtualization and cloud computing and reap the benefits while overcoming the challenges. It is a journey that is very much ongoing and the book reflects a subset of that undertaking. Iwan was one of the first to achieve the VCAP-DCD certification globally and has since helped others to achieve the same, via his participation in the community. He started the user community in ASEAN, and today, the group is one of the largest VMware communities on Facebook. Iwan is a member of VMware CTO Ambassadors program since 2014, representing the Asia Pacific region at the global level and representing the product team and CTO office to the Asia Pacific customers. He is a vExpert since 2013, and has been helping others to achieve this global recognition for their contribution to the VMware community.

If you are an administrator who would like to take full advantage of App Volumes to deal with application workloads, then "Learning VMware App Volumes" written by Peter von Oven is the book for you. It will also be useful for virtualization professionals and teams who are working on VDI deployments and VMware end user computing solutions. This book comprises of the theoretical explanations that will help you perform a complete App Volumes deployment through step-by-step instructions The book starts with an in-depth overview of the architecture and components used to design an optimized solution. We then show you how to install and configure App Volumes for different use cases such as VMware View integration, using VMware ThinApp, Citrix XenApp, and more. What You Will Learn: Find out how the VMware App Volumes solution can enhance the management and delivery of applications in your desktop environment Design a real-life App Volumes solution using best practices and following the recommended sizing guides Install, configure, and deploy App Volumes so it is ready to start delivering applications Create and prepare applications ready to be delivered to end users Discover how App Volumes can enhance other desktop solutions by looking at how it integrates with VMware Horizon View, VMware ThinApp, RDSH, and Citrix XenDesktop/XenApp Understand how to configure the advanced options within App Volumes Author Bio: Peter von Oven is an experienced technical consultant and has been involved in numerous large-scale enterprise projects and deployments and has presented at key IT events, such as VMworld, IP EXPO, and various VMUGs and CCUG events across the UK. He has also worked in senior presales roles and presales management roles for some of the giants of IT, such as Fujitsu, HP, Citrix, and VMware, and has been awarded VMware vExpert for 2015 and 2016. Peter got his first taste for writing when assisting with some of the chapters in the book Building End-User Computing Solutions with VMware View, which then lead to five other Packt titles, VMware Horizon Mirage Essentials, VMware Horizon Workspace Essentials, co-written with Peter Bjork and Joel Lindberg, VMware Horizon View Essentials, Mastering VMware Horizon 6, co-written with Barry Coombs, and Learning VMware App Volumes.

If you want to start your journey with vRealize Automation then you definitely have to check out "Learning VMware vRealize Automation" written by Sriram Rajendran. It is your one-stop instruction guide to installing and configuring a distributed setup using NSX load balancer. Regardless of whether or not you have used vRealize Automation before, following the steps provided in each chapter will get you started with the product. This book takes a step-by-step approach, is explained in a conversational and easy-to-follow style, and includes ample screenshots. Each topic is explained sequentially through planning, preparing, installing, configuring, and validating of all vRealize Automation’s components. The book starts off with an introduction to the distributed architecture that has been tested and installed in large scale deployments. Implementing and configuring distributed architecture with custom certificates is unarguably a demanding task, and it will be covered next. After this, we will progress with the installation. A vRealize Automation blueprint can be prepared in multiple ways; we will focus solely on vSphere endpoint blueprint. After this, we will discuss the high availability configuration via NSX loadbalancer for vRealize Orchestrator. Finally, we end with Advanced Service Designer, which provides service architects with the ability to create advanced services and publish them as catalog items. What You Will Learn: Understand the basic building blocks of vRealize Automation before embarking on the journey of installation Familiarize yourself with the requirements and steps that need to be performed during the first phase of the distributed installation Carry out a functional validation of the first phase of installation before completing the installation Build a blueprint for vSphere endpoint, an essential step for a successful deployment of a service catalog Create, configure, and deploy tenants, endpoints, blueprints, and the service catalog Get to grips with the failover process for all components in vRealize Automation Learn to configure the NSX loadbalancer for vRealize Orchestrator for high availability Leverage ASD to develop XaaS (Anything as a Service) in vRealize Automation to deliver valuable competence Author Bio: Sriram Rajendran is a member of the CTO Ambassador program at VMware. He has been a veteran of the IT industry, for more than 12 years, and a focused technologist with expertise in cloud computing, networking, storage, and server virtualization technologies. Sriram wears multiple hats at VMware. As a solution architect, he provides technical leadership and expertise to design, deploy, and scale the VMware SDDC stack for its Fortune 500 customers. His primary focus for VMware SSDC are automation, operations, and third-party integration. As a senior escalations manager, he is the go-to person for handling critical executive escalations that have out blown traditional GSS escalation processes. As a CTO Ambassador, he is responsible for connecting the research and development team with customers, partners, and field as the global VMware evangelist.