Synopsis: Loaded with practical real world scenarios, best practices, and handy checklists, "VMware ESX Server in the Enterprise" is geared toward those who have some ESX 2 experience and need to prepare for and optimize an ESX 3 environment.



Pros:

- One of my favorite aspects of the book are several checklists for preparing for, deploying, and connecting ESX hosts to the rest of the infrastructure. These include not only the steps to installing ESX (which you can find most anywhere), but also some invaluable checklists for securing the hosts, managing storage, networking, etc. This alone may mean the difference between success and failure.

- Mr. Haletky shares not only what he's learned from his own research, but from real world scenarios from customers projects large and small.

- Tables, lists, illustrations and screenshots are clear and well placed.



Cons:

- Although well written, the editing was mediocre at best. Particularly in the opening chapters it is apparent the text was written, re-written, and then edited further. The finished product therefore is sometimes difficult to follow.

- The book reads as if Mr. Haletky began writing about ESX 2 and attempted to extend it to v.3. The result was a text that is over-reaching and lacks focus.

- Lacks a glossary, which is particularly confusing as several acronyms are used without introduction or explanation.

- There are several minor distractions, such as diagram captions referring to colored lines, where the rendering is black and white. However the message is always clear.

- Less than a year old and already a bit dated as ESX 3.5 and new hardware options have changed the rules a bit. This is always a reality with IT reference material, but is felt keenly in this publication as it tends to focus on older yet ESX 2.0.