Tag: review

Microsoft Private Cloud Computing – Book Review

During and after the holiday I had the chance to read the book Microsoft Private Cloud Computing. The book is authored by Aidan Finn, Hans Vredevoort, Patrick Lownds and Damian Flynn. All of the authors are well known experts in Hyper-V and VMM space. The book is 408 pages long and it is divided in 3 parts with a total of 13 chapters. The main focus of this book is System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2012 so it is VMM book. The reason why VMM is not mentioned in the title is because VMM is presented in the concept of the Private Cloud. This means that all the examples in the book are shown in a way that you can us them to build and managed your Private Cloud with Virtual Machine Manager.

The first two chapters explain the concept of the Private Cloud and the Microsoft Private Cloud in particular. If you are familiar with them you can skip these two chapters but I would suggest you to read them because you can always find something new that will be useful. These two chapters are the first part of the book.

Next 6 chapters are the second part of the book. These chapters describe every feature and configuration of System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager. Along with the descriptions there are detailed steps of how to configure and use these features. Screenshots are also not missing in the book which I think is always necessary to get a clear picture of the tool while reading. In fact the best way of reading this book is in front of the computer with test System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Environment. That way you will be able to execute every instruction in the book and get more familiar with VMM.

The third part of the book consists of four chapters. These chapters are about explaining how you can leverage VMM and other System Center components as a Private Cloud Solution. Included are examples with VMM Self-service portal, App Controller and System Center 2012 Service Manager with Cloud Services Process Pack. The chapters does not show how you can do some complex tasks as there are different scenarios in the Private Cloud. Instead they give you the elements which you can use and how to connect them to fit in your Private Cloud.

The biggest value of the book is that you can always turn to it if you face some challenges with building your Microsoft Private Cloud. In all in the book you will find also PowerShell scripts so you can leverage automation. I recommend this book for those who are not familiar with the Microsoft Private Cloud concept or System Center Virtual Machine Manger 2012. The book is also suitable for those advanced engineers who want to have a reading to which they can refer in time of need.

The book can be bought from Amazon:

2012 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2012 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

4,329 films were submitted to the 2012 Cannes Film Festival. This blog had 34,000 views in 2012. If each view were a film, this blog would power 8 Film Festivals

Click here to see the complete report.

Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Cookbook – Book Review

After reviewing the Packt Publishing books for two of the components for Microsoft Private Cloud – Configuration Manager and Service Manager now it is a time for a third component – Hyper-V.The book from Packt Publishing about Hyper-V is titled Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V Cookbook. The book is authored by a well known MVP Leandro Carvalho.

The book consists of 9 chapters and about 300 pages. The chapters will walk you trough all the basic features of Hyper-V 2012 and to some of the advanced ones by also noticing what have been changed since the last version.. As every Cookbook from Pack Publishing Hyper-V features are presented as min-guides that you can follow in order to test the product my yourself. Of course before actually buying the book I suggest to prepare some test environment where you can follow the guides from it. That way the book will be more effective to you. I have tried most of the features in the new Hyper-V server but by reading the book I’ve managed to try a feature called Resource pools that I just haven’t paid so much attention before. As Windows Server 2012 heavily relies on PowerShell every example in the book that is executed trough GUI there is an separate example how to achieve the same trough PowerShell. So if you are not so PowerShell knowledgeable you can learn some tricks how to perform certain tasks for Hyper-V.

As a summary I can recommend this book to every beginner who has less or no experience with Hyper-V. Also if you are on some beginner or medium level with Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 R2 and you want to learn and test the new features in Hyper-V 2012. You Can find the book in several online stores:

More about the book you can find by clicking on the image below:

SCCM 2012 Management Pack Review

Review of the SCCM 2012 MP for SCOM by Kevin Holman.

Dell MP Suite, version 5.0.1. Part IV: The Verdict by Marnix Wolf

The final chapter of the review for Dell MP Suite. You can read it here.