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The 11 Most Essential Books for Data Center Directors

Solutions Review compiles the 11 essential books that data center directors or managers need to add to their reading lists.

SR Finds 100x100Data center directors are sidled with a large responsibility. Knowing how to keep your data center secure and operating smoothly is critical. Books, whether hardcover or digital, are an excellent source for professionals looking to learn about a specific field of technology, and data center directors are no exception. We’ve listed the top 11 books that data center directors should add to their reading lists. These books are intended for beginners and experts alike and are written by authors with proficiency and/or recognition in the field of data centers.

Be sure to also consult our Backup and Disaster Recovery Buyer’s Guide for information on the top data center backup and disaster recovery solution providers. It’s the perfect resource if you don’t want your organization to fall victim to any data protection mistakes.

Note: Titles are listed in no particular order.

The Complete VMware vSphere Guide: Design a Virtualized Data Center with VMware vSphere 6.7

OUR TAKE: This book by Mike Brown, Hersey Cartwright, Martin Gavanda, Andrea Mauro, Karel Novak, and Paolo Valsecchi is aimed at administrators, infrastructure engineers, consultants, and architects looking to design virtualized data center environments with VMware vSphere.

The Complete VMware vSphere Guide: Design a Virtualized Data Center with VMware vSphere 6.7“vSphere 6.7 is the latest release of VMware’s industry-leading virtual cloud platform. By understanding how to manage, secure, and scale apps with vSphere 6.7, you can easily run even the most demanding of workloads. This Learning Path begins with an overview of the features of the vSphere 6.7 suite. You’ll learn how to plan and design a virtual infrastructure. You’ll also gain insights into best practices to efficiently configure, manage, and secure apps.”

 

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Cloud Native Data Center Networking: Architecture, Protocols, and Tools

OUR TAKE: Author Dinesh G. Dutt has been a networking and data center industry professional for the past 20 years, primarily at Cisco Systems. His book explores network disaggregation, container networking, and network automation, among many other topics. 

Cloud Native Data Center Networking: Architecture, Protocols, and Tools“Ideal for network architects, data center operators, and network and containerized application developers, this book mixes theory with practice to guide you through the architecture and protocols you need to create and operate a robust, scalable network infrastructure. The book offers a vendor-neutral way to look at network design. For those interested in open networking, this book is chock-full of examples using open source software, from FRR to Ansible.”

 

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Data Center for Beginners: A Beginner’s Guide Towards Understanding Data Center Design

OUR TAKE: This title from B.A. Ayomaya is directed at people just starting to learn about data center design. Ayomaya offers an introduction to data center components and processes in order to get readers on the path to becoming experts.

Data Center for Beginners: A beginner's guide towards understanding Data Center Design“Data Centers are the drivers of the digital economy. Understanding how data centers are designed, how they work and how they interact with the services we use is key towards building a great career in a digital world. This book will provide the reader with a firm foundation for understanding Data Center design.”

 

 

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Data Center Handbook

OUR TAKE: Along with contributions from industry experts, Hwaiyu Geng teaches readers to design and build energy-efficient data centers, while applying best practices to reduce energy consumption. He also outlines how to prepare disaster recovery and business continuity plans.

Data Center Handbook“Organizations in need of high-speed connectivity and nonstop systems operations depend upon data centers for a range of deployment solutions. A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems. It generally includes multiple power sources, redundant data communications connections, environmental controls (e.g., air conditioning, fire suppression) and security devices…The book imparts essential knowledge needed to implement data center design and construction, apply IT technologies, and continually improve data center operations.”

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The Data Center Builder’s Bible — Book 1: Defining Your Data Center Requirements: Specifying, Designing, Building, and Migrating to New Data Centers

OUR TAKE: Art Carapola, the President and CTO of NewVista Advisors LLC., has been designing, building, and relocating data centers of all sizes for nearly 30 years. His first book in this five-part series focuses on data center basics and defining the requirements for a data center site.

The Data Center Builder's Bible - Book 1: Defining Your Data Center Requirements: Specifying, Designing, Building and Migrating to New Data Centers by [Art Carapola]“This book is part of a five-book series called The Data Center Builder’s Bible. The series will take you from the first moment you learn (or decide) that a new Data Center project is necessary, all the way through the completion of relocating all the essential technology and applications to the new site and returning your old site to the landlord. This Book 1 of the Series, “Defining the Requirements of your Data Center,” is a 200+ page (print version) deep dive into two aspects of the overall project.”

 

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Cloud Data Centers and Cost Modeling: A Complete Guide to Planning, Designing, and Building a Cloud Data Center

OUR TAKE: This title from Caesar Wu and Rajkumar Buyya was written to address practical planning and the design of cloud computing initiatives. The book is aimed at a range of IT professionals involved in cloud computing, analysts, and students.

Cloud Data Centers and Cost Modeling: A Complete Guide To Planning, Designing and Building a Cloud Data Center Cloud Data Centers and Cost Modeling establishes a framework for strategic decision-makers to facilitate the development of cloud data centers. Just as building a house requires a clear understanding of the blueprints, architecture, and costs of the project; building a cloud-based data center requires similar knowledge. The authors take a theoretical and practical approach, starting with the key questions to help uncover needs and clarify project scope. They then demonstrate probability tools to test and support decisions, and provide processes that resolve key issues.”

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Enterprise Data Center Design and Methodology

OUR TAKE: Rob Snevely is an enterprise architect at Sun Microsystems with more than 14 years of experience working with large-scale UNIX systems in data center environments. Additionally, he is responsible for the data center architecture of all of the enterprise technology centers at Sun.

Enterprise Data Center Design and MethodologyEnterprise Data Center Design and Methodology is a practical guide to designing a data center from inception through construction. The fundamental design principles take a simple, flexible, and modular approach based on accurate, real-world requirements and capacities. This approach contradicts the conventional (but totally inadequate) method of using square footage to determine basic capacities like power and cooling requirements…If you are building a new data center, are retrofitting an existing one, or are working in a data center and simply want a better understanding of these complex environments, you will find this book to be a valuable resource.”

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The Datacenter as a Computer: Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines, Third Edition

OUR TAKE: Luiz Andre Barroso, Urs Holze, and Parthasarathy Ranganathan collaborated on this book, which provides real-world examples and detailed case studies. This is also the third edition, which has been updated to include topics such as video streaming, machine learning, and public cloud.

The Datacenter as a Computer: Designing Warehouse-Scale Machines, Third Edition“This book describes warehouse-scale computers (WSCs), the computing platforms that power cloud computing and all the great web services we use every day. It discusses how these new systems treat the data center itself as one massive computer designed at warehouse scale, with hardware and software working in concert to deliver good levels of internet service performance. The book details the architecture of WSCs and covers the main factors influencing their design, operation, and cost structure, and the characteristics of their software base.”

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Hyperconverged Infrastructure Data Centers: Demystifying HCI (Networking Technology)

OUR TAKE: With this book, Sam Halabi explains how to evaluate key HCI applications, including DevOps, virtual desktops, edge computing, backup, and disaster recovery. Additionally, Halabi offers readers an understanding of the limits of traditional data center designs and how to overcome them.

Hyperconverged Infrastructure Data Centers: Demystifying HCI (Networking Technology)“In Hyperconverged Infrastructure Data Centers, best-selling author Sam Halabi demystifies HCI technology, outlines its use cases, and compares solutions from a vendor-neutral perspective. He guides you through evaluation, planning, implementation, and management, helping you decide where HCI makes sense, and how to migrate legacy data centers without disrupting production systems. The author brings together all the HCI knowledge technical professionals and IT managers need, whether their background is in storage, compute, virtualization, switching/routing, automation, or public cloud platforms.”

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Building a Modern Data Center: Principles and Strategies of Design

OUR TAKE: This title by Scott D. Lowe, David M. Davis, and James Green discusses critical data protection needs, the current data center landscape, and hyperconverged infrastructure. The authors also project how data centers will change in the future.

Building a Modern Data Center: Principles and Strategies of Design“The data center has become a complex morass of wires, maintenance contracts and complexity. As organizations seek to bring agility to their IT function, and hence to their business, new ways of handling data center services are required. The crux point of this transformation has proven to be the storage element of the data center. Businesses seeking to implement Agile IT principles are now turning to emerging services including software-defined storage and hyperconverged infrastructure. In this book, readers will learn about these critical emerging data center architectural opportunities, while also being provided clear context for why these services will play an increasingly important role in the data center of tomorrow.”

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Data Center Infrastructure & Organization

OUR TAKE: With this book, George Haynes explores the cost and complexity of running multiple data center facilities at once. Haynes also offers readers a strategy for managing and optimizing their data center operations.

Data Center Infrastructure & Organization“This précis covers data center planning, design, building, operations, and management to their evaluations of existing and proposed facilities. The business model implied is oriented toward sustainable development, and translate that commitment into concrete results as it attempts to help clients achieve cost savings while supporting their corporate social responsibility plan. It applies the necessary expertise in building and managing green data centers to help clients achieve savings by introducing environment-friendly technology.”

 

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