Ubuntu Server Book Needed?

[Luke L]

Mike, your suggestions are right on! I think providing a feature
comparison with KVM vs. VMWare would be useful. I editted Mike's
message below to those points I agree with most.

I too would spend the money on a book solely on virtualization with
KVM and Ubuntu.
--Physical -> virtual server transition
--Live migration (is that even a feature in KVM yet?)
--Saving/loading states, and regular backups
--How to get VMs connected to network storage (SAN/NAS, pros/cons)
--VM networking
--VM tools: oVirt, libvirt/virt-manager
(http://et.redhat.com/page/Main_Page), Enomalism (cloud computing,
http://enomalism.com)

Virtualization is not going away, it is only getting more commonplace.
It would be great if there is good documentation/text out there to
show how KVM, free, enterprise grade software can make it happen for a
business.

That said, there are many tasks on server, and I tink the apress book
did a good job. From the perspective of a student wishing to get into
datacenter and network administration, I would like to see topics on
load balancing apache servers, network storage, virtualization, and
groupware.


On 7/14/08, Mike Lane <mikelane5 at msn.com> wrote:
> I realized that I sent my reply to Sander only so I have copied it below:
>
> ------------------------
> * how to monitor virtual machine performance remotely if possible and also
> discussion of remote desktop or similar to both headless and GUI virtual
> machines. Remote management tools - what are they and how to install and use
> them.
> * Ubuntu JeOS - the benefits of using this operating system for virtual
> machines. Are VMWare Tools necessary to run JeOS in KVM? If so how to
> install VMWare Tools. Discussion of the benefits of VMWare tools on Ubuntu
> JeOS.
> * What features are proposed for future releases of KVM?
> * More detailed explanation of the qemu commands i.e. parameter by parameter
> so that the reader knows what the switches are for etc
> * Virtual machine management in general - scripts to start up a particular
> virtual machine on boot for example, or shut down all virtual machines one
> by one. Scripts to back up virtual machines to remote stoarge and then boot
> them once this is done.
> * How to "import" VMWare virtual machines to KVM - if this can be done?
> There are plenty of VMWare appliances that I would like to run - can this
> easily be done on KVM and what steps would need to be taken for example? Is
> there any performance penalty in importing a VMWare virtual machines as
> opposed to creating it in KVM?
> * Can I do snapshots in KVM? So discussion of the full feature set vs the
> competition (VMWare) for example.
> * does a kernel update affect my KVM installation?

> Basically I would like a full and detailed account of the limitations and
> features of KVM and how to administer the server through the command line
> and remotely with GUI tools if that applies also.
>
>
> I realize that this is much more than would ever be in a beginner book. Even
> so I would have liked to see more page space devoted to Virtualization so
> that more ground could be covered.
>
> I guess that this is why I said that I would happily buy a good book just on
> Virtualization.
>

-- 
Luke L.