Presenting practical guidelines and examples, Advanced Server Virtualization emphasizes design, implementation, and management from both a technical and consultative point of view. It features step-by-step guidelines for planning, deployment, installing, configuring, and creating virtual servers. Covering Microsoft Virtual Server and VMware, it addresses platform-specific virtualization features such as virtual machines, hard drives, networking, and resource management. It offers best practices that allow users to avoid common pitfalls and achieve quicker success in server virtualization implementation. It also discusses software licensing issues and the cost-benefits of deploying virtual servers.

Virtualization technology is a way of making a physical computer function as if it were two or more computers, each nonphysical or “virtualized” computer is provided with the same basic architecture as that of a generic physical computer. There are several ways to do this, each has its pros and cons. The book will primarily discuss software-based server virtualization, but will touch on other forms including hardware partitioning, emulation, and simulation.