Every year, datacenter managers must deliver more services faster, with greater flexibility. They must efficiently handle soaring amounts of data, and unprecedented levels of complexity. And they must do all this with lower budgets and fewer resources. Datacenter virtualization with VMware's vSphere(r) 5 is the best way to achieve these goals and to accelerate your transition to cloud services. VMware vSphere(r) 5: Building a Virtual Datacenter brings together all the practical knowledge you need to evaluate, plan, implement, and manage vSphere 5 in your datacenter environment. Top datacenter virtualization consultants Eric Maille and Rene-Francois Mennecier begin by introducing vSphere 5 from the viewpoint of the datacenter manager and professional. They present essential definitions, advantages, and functions; review vSphere 5's architecture; and introduce core components such as vCenter Server and ESXi 5.0. Next, Maille and Mennecier turn to implementation, presenting detailed examples, schemas, and best practices drawn from their extensive experience. They share practical insights into budgeting, scheduling, and planning; choosing the right architecture; and integrating vSphere with existing datacenter elements, including servers, storage, clusters, network infrastructure, and business continuity plans. They conclude with a start-to-finish case study: a datacenter virtualization project designed to support specific business objectives. Coverage includes * Assessing the potential benefits of datacenter virtualization in your environment * Organizing and managing a smooth migration to the virtualized datacenter * Anticipating specific challenges and risks associated with datacenter virtualization * Making tradeoffs to optimize stability, elasticity, scalability, and cost * Choosing the best installation/configuration options for your environment * Effectively linking vSphere 5 virtualization to existing datacenter elements * Driving more value from vSphere 5's powerful new datacenter features * Providing storage to efficiently support your hosted VMs, now and in the future * Managing limited memory and other server constraints * Leveraging new options for service continuity and high availability * Using backup architecture as a lever to reduce costs

Eric Maillé,世界级虚拟化技术专家,VMWare认证的VCP和EMC云架构师,2011和2012年的VMware vExpert 大奖得主。曾经在IBM、NEC和HP等公司任职,现担任EMC售前顾问,从事虚拟化基础架构和云计算技术相关工作,目标是帮助企业根据业务需求最初最佳的技术决策。著有《VMware vSphere 4: Mise en place d’une infrastructure virtuelle》（翻译成法语和西班牙语）等著作,同时还是虚拟化技术网站（www.virt-now.com）的合作创始人。

René-François Mennecier,世界级虚拟化技术专家,VMware认证的VCP和EMC云架构师,2012年的vExpert大奖得主。曾就职于Dell等公司,从事虚拟化和数据中心迁移相关的工作,现在EMC担任云架构高级顾问,主导策略转换,并为企业客户提供云服务,在灾难恢复、服务持续性和企业及数据中心环境的虚拟化方面有丰富的经验。