There is no better time to learn about VMware vSphere than this moment, right now. The data center is the most important IT asset for any business. It's the place where the applications that run automate business processes and where mission-critical data is stored. A properly designed and well-operated data center will help a business to quickly adapt in a fluid market and serve their customers better and faster. On the other hand, a poorly designed and inefficient data center will burden the business with significant expenses and damage customer relationships (security breaches and outages). Well-rounded individuals who have the skills to bring efficiency to all the aspects of the data center (servers, storage, and network) will be the most valuable IT professionals today, and for years to come.

VMware vSphere began as a leading industry server virtualization platform (with connections to legacy networks and storage environments) and introduced transformative efficiency in deploying servers in the data center. Today, with NSX and VSAN, VMware vSphere has extended its powerful virtualization technology beyond servers, bringing the same transformative efficiency to all the aspects of the data center, including networking and storage. As such, VMware vSphere has become an essential platform for the modern, well-rounded data center professional.

I'm especially excited about the VMware NSX content presented in this book, a technology that is near and dear to my heart. VMware NSX, available in vSphere, will help you conquer the last frontier of the complex and inefficient data center: networking and security. NSX is like a network hypervisor that allows you to quickly create complete virtual networks with security and L2-L7 services—on top of any physical network—all with the same ease, speed, and efficiency as deploying a virtual machine.

I hope you enjoy reading this book, and sharpen your skills on the most comprehensive and industry-leading data center virtualization platform, VMware vSphere.

Brad Hedlund

Engineering Architect, Network Virtualization

VMware, Inc.