I have the privilege of leading the technical services organization in VMware, Asia Pacific and Japan. In the past 7 years, my team of architects, engineers, and technical account managers have partnered with our key accounts in thousands of engagements across the region. I have met with many CIOs and Heads of Infrastructure, and what is clear to me is that they value the expertise we bring to the table and it is important that we extend this expertise to all customers and not just our large customers. This is why when Iwan approached my management team with the idea of writing a book on the management of the Software-Defined Data Center, he had our full support.

Data center management is a large and complex discipline in IT. This is further amplified with virtualization. The nature of virtualization means IT departments are nowadays running applications with a lot less hardware. As a result, performance and capacity management have risen to be critical components in the realm of management. They are a fundamental part of Infrastructure-as-a-Service, and if you get them wrong, there is a strong likelihood that you will struggle in your journey to become an internal service provider.

The challenge, in real life, is certainly cost. You need to deliver high performance while keeping excess capacity low. This is where architecture plays a major role. In this book, Iwan shares architecture best practices that help you balance these competing requirements. He explains, in depth, the concept of contention and how it should drive your performance SLA for the business. Keeping the contention value below the agreed SLA goes a long way in proving that the shared infrastructure delivers the required resources.

Chapter 3, Mastering the Key Counters in SDDC, to Chapter 7, Storage Counters, cover all the key metrics in both vCenter and vRealize Operations. This is the first time I've seen the counters in our flagship products documented from a customer's point of view. This is refreshing and practical, and knowing Iwan, this doesn't surprise me. In the 6 years that I have known Iwan, he will always look at situations from a customer's perspective. He founded the ASEAN user group, and today this group is probably one of the largest VMware community groups on Facebook.

Chapter 8, Dashboard Examples and Ideas, is my favorite chapter. This is where field expertise from the many implementations of my team in operationalizing vRealize Operations is harnessed, shared, and explained. Practical examples and applied best practices are clearly documented and explained. Within the VMware Technical Services organization, we look at vRealize Operations as a key technology to manage the Software-Defined Data Center.

I hope you enjoy the book as much as I do.

Peter Zeglis

VP, Technical Services

VMware, Asia Pacific and Japan