Reviews & Media
Slashdot Review
David Martinjak, “Running Xen”:
“The book […] was a great resource on Xen and virtualization from the administration side. A wide range of topics was covered from installing Xen all the way up to managing virtual resources, including migrating guest environments. Overall, the explanations were concise and understandable; while the information was presented in a straightforward manner. Running Xen was definitely a useful resource for administering systems with Xen.”
“Running Xen started with a thorough-enough explanation of virtualization. Several different approaches to virtualization were compared and contrasted, which should help the reader to understand where Xen resides in the whole domain. This first chapter was a great introduction as it provided just the right amount of information. At no point did I consider the explanations to be short or lacking; nor did I feel overloaded with details. The authors seemed adequately aware that the title of the book was Running Xen, and they stuck to that scope.”
Blog Posts
N. Anderson, “Review: Running Xen”:
“A few days ago I finally got my copy of Running Xen. I was anxious to see how the information would be presented. I can tell you I was not disappointed. I am by no means a Xen master. I have tinkered with it a few times over the past several years but as I am getting ready to use it full time in production I need as much information as I can get. The books authors include Eli Dow, and Todd Deshane who worked on Xen and the Art of Repeated Research, as well as Quantifying the Performance Isolation Properties of Virtualization Systems.”
“Running Xen is an easy read. Easy in that it can actually be read cover to cover without becoming tired of mundane drivel. However it is not a glossy overview of Xen. Its 500 plus pages cover everything from using prebuilt images that can be downloaded from jailtime.org, rpath, virtualappliances.net as well as other resources…”
“65 pages are dedicated to networking, covering bridging, routing, and Nat modes of operation… Storage backends including LVM, file, partition, nfs, and iscsi are also covered in detail. I was particularly impressed with the coverage of LVM being that many authors would consider it beyond the scope of the book. It is a great resource for any new Xen administrator, and I can wager that it will be valuable for mid-level Xen administrators as well… For those of you wanting to virtualize Windows, you have not been forgotten…”
“What is the verdict? If you are a new Xen administrator, or thinking about heading down the Xen path this book will be well worth your dime.”
Edmon Begoli, “Finally A Really Good Book on Xen”:
“If you ever worked with Xen - Open Source Virtualization Software for Linux you probably realized that despite being powerful and performing well Xen is a complex solution that requires ‘reading the manual’. I think that ‘Running Xen’ book (’A Hands-On Guide to the Art of Virtualization’) will be a great help. It is written by the team of people who not only know [Xen] inside out, but who are also major contributors to the source…”
“Significant attention is given to managing of the custom installed or pre-built Guest images, management of unprivileged (guest) domains, storage, device virtualization, security, network configuration, management of guest resources, saving/restoration and live migrations…”
“What gives confidence […] is the authors’ familiarity with the subject. They are people who know Xen inside out and many tips and notes you encounter will save you hours of browsing of mailing lists or trials and errors.”
Dimitry Vostokov, “Yet Another Great Xen Book”:
“This is a new Xen book that I got in the post a few days ago and it seems to be so good that I took it home from work to start reading it during this weekend…”
And more:
Anthony Lawrence, “Complete Guide to Xen”
Stephen Spector, Xen.org Community Blog, “Xen Books: Running Xen”
Boris Quiroz, Xen.org Community Blog, “Running Xen Book Hits the Streets!”
Barry Flanagan, Citrix Community Blogs, “‘Running Xen’ - New Xen Book”
Stephen Spector, Xen.org Community Blog, “Running Xen Book Slashdotted!”
Clarkson University Press Release, “Clarkson University Team Writes Guidebook to Xen Software”
Stephen Spector, Xen.org Community Blog, “Running Xen Book Press Release”
Amazon.com Reviews
“Running Xen takes a unique approach to introducing Xen to both the novice and expert virtualization user. The authors start off introducing just enough of the core concepts to give the reader an adequate basis on which the book later builds on to provide the required skills to effectively run a virtual environment. A brief explanation of Xen architecture follows with an overview of the management tools with real world examples showing actual output. I found this attention to often overlooked detail refreshing…”
“The walk through with guest disk images and creating them correctly was well appreciated instead of leaving that to the reader to hopefully figure out. All popular methods for populating guests were covered which allowed distro specific tools to be utilized instead of requiring non native methods or leaving the reader unprepared… Networking was covered in detail which is an often misunderstood part of Xen and a working example of a purely virtual segment using a dummy interface was shown which I found fairly useful…”
“This was my second book on Xen and completely replaces the first as a much more competent reference. I highly recommend this book for anyone using Xen for its concrete basis and good reference it provides.”
“I’m new to virtualization, but very technical. ‘Running Xen’ was just right for me. Great background information and rationalization mixed with solid detail…”
“If you are new to Xen, lost in the maze of Open Source email distribution ‘lists’, ‘Wikis’ and ‘blogs’ that just haven’t quiet tied it all together for you then buy this book. It was a relief to find a book written by people who not only know what they were talking about but also who know how to communicate it, by building knowledge one chapter at a time. It’s the kind of book you have to read cover to cover but you won’t mind, or be able to put it down, because you will learn so much along the way… You will gain enough knowledge from this book to get caught up and be able to join the community with a solid fundamental understanding. I started my investigation into Xen by reading this book and within a couple of weeks I started contributing to the Xen project as a beta tester. I even used a paragraph from the book to help one of the developers identify a bug in some new code. I highly recommend this book to any IT professional who is interested in evaluating Xen for use in their environment…”
And more:
