Virtualization from ground up

Darian929

Hello,

I am now at the point where the president of the company has asked me to create a handbook on the deployment of VDI's. To give a little bit of a background on me. I am 20 and have around 3 years exp in I.T professionally. I have done the A+ and CCNA Recently. Never took a class in Microsoft and my duties at my job at to make sure all systems are operating right and from time to time go to customers and set up their VDI desktops, make sure printing, software and speed is good and showing them how to use them. The actual virtualization process is done at the data center by the engineer, which I just basically report to on how performance is or of any issues. My question is If I Wanted to really right handbook I would want to know the process from ground up and maybe even do it as a lab myself. I know how to do the deployment in reference to setting up clients but not to much the technical side. Do you guys recommend any books or any path to start up like little by little to learn virtualization in all... there are so many terms like Hyper-V, vmwaree ESX, Citrix Xen Desktop... Xen App... I really don't know how they integrate into each other and thats what I want to know. Also if it's possible to do a home lab on these things to get one working and like that I can learn on my own.

Thanks

MentholMoose

How do you prefer to learn these things? If you like reading, buy a book. These two are fantastic and don't assume the reader has extensive prior knowledge of virtualization:
Amazon.com: Mastering VMware vSphere 4
Amazon.com: Mastering Microsoft Virtualization

Mastering Microsoft Virtualization even includes chapters on Microsoft VDI, though I'd guess you are using VMware View or Citrix XenDesktop.

Another way to learn is by watching training videos from companies like CBT Nuggets and Train Signal. There are a wide variety of videos available, including videos for products like XenDesktop and View which haven't had books published about them.

A similar option is official training courses. Most vendors design courses that are provided by companies like Global Knowledge. Usually these are expensive, so you'd probably need to ask your employer to pay for it. Vendors also provide online self-paced training, which is usually cheaper (though still not cheap). They often provide a few for free, though, for example:
http://www.techexams.net/forums/citrix-certifications/63148-free-citrix-training.html

Yet another way to learn is from vendor documentation. This will be difficult if you don't know the fundamentals, so I'd recommend reading a book to get started. Once you have an understanding of virtualization, you can look into documentation for products (like VDI) that use it.

As far as setting up a lab at home, it is certainly possible. I'd recommend starting to learn first so you will have a better understanding of what you need to build a suitable lab. The books I linked have labs you can do on your own, and you can look to vendor documentation for further help. Vendors usually have evaluation or quick start guides for their products, for example:
Evaluating XenDesktop 5