Short Review:

This book rocked my world. I mean really rocked my world. I found Ben’s style easy to read without being verbose or wordy — great use of bullets and numbered lists (I’m a big fan of numbered lists).  The book is free from any “Marketing or Microsoft” hype, and Ben tells it like is is. 

If Virtual Server is your thing (or about to become your thing), this book will be the reference you will refer to time and time again.  It covers the whole spectrum of Virtual Server nicely.  Everything from the install and getting it running, through optimization and advanced infrastructure,  right up to extending functionality with scripting via VBscript or powershell.  If you are a Developer or ISV the later chapters are very focused on extensibility of Virtual Server.

Recommended with 8.5 / 9 stars

Long review

The book rocked.  I would have to say it is the best Virtual Server book out there.  I don’t say that because I know Ben and he’s a great guy; I say that truthfully because out of all the Virtual Server books I’ve read so far, this is definitely the best I’ve read by a long way. 

I have to confess though, I’m not the regular audience who will read this book.  I’m the type of guy that spends my time bending Virtual Server to perform all sorts of unnatural acts. This means lots of workarounds, lots of third party tools and lots of scripting.  I learnt a lot from this book.

This book covered all the aspects, and covered all the angles.  I knew there was stuff about the COM API that I didn’t know - and I was too lazy to go read MSDN.  Ben’s book had it, and put everything in context of where it should be.  It has all the basics such as patch management (which isn’t so basic), tricky routes, backup strategies, P2V and so on.  The scripting was good, you can either use it for some basic automation — or once you get to the development chapters use it for some heavy duty provisioning and power on processes.   …and there is a Sysprep section!  I mean really, Sysprep is more than just essential, it’s the law.  It’s amazing how many people exclude this very important resource.

There a smattering of Linux virtual machine references throughout the book (including YUM for patching), along with all the tips and traps for new players.  There is also some hard stats on sequential and random disk performance with IDE and SATA and how this translates to performance inside the VM.  Actually the book touches (and explains) on everything that has popped up at some stage with my dealings with the product.

So the long review in short, Ben’s book is pretty much the definitive guide out there.  Ben is honest and writes the product for what it is, and what it can do — once you rip off the cover and get down to the nuts and bolts, Virtual Server can do a lot more than you give it credit for.  …but you have to expect that from a product that has a web interface as it’s primary admin tool   :b

I think that’s it?   

The book took me about 4 days to read cover to cover; on and off over Friday to Monday.  As a book it got dog ears very quickly.  Colour pages would have made the book almost perfect (I need code to be in colour), but granted the book would be more expensive.  There is just enough screen shots, tables and diagrams to balance the book nicely.

Yup, straight to the pool room — recommended with 8.5 / 9 stars.