Book Review for "Hybrid Cloud Management with Red Hat CloudForms"
A hybrid cloud is made up of public and private components. This book explains the various components you will need to work with, and how they are manipulated through the UI. Examples: 'Cloud Providers' would include Amazon EC2 and OpenStack. A 'Virtualization Provider' would be VMWare. These concepts are explained, and you are given instructions how to set up and maintain your cloud environment.
The book takes you from installation, through configuration, and into maintenance of the environment. You are shown how to provision machine instances from the framework you have configured. You are given instructions on how machine lifecycles can be managed through hooks, and how automation can be introduced.
Cloud Forms provides Policies, Events and Actions as a means of maintaining the working environment, these are explained. You are given tips on monitoring your cloud. There is a chapter on optimization of your hybrid cloud, and lastly you are informed about the APIs (REST and SOAP) provided by Cloud Forms.
Overall, this book is clear and informative. I wish it had a little more conceptual information about some of the described constructs, but this is a small nit. There are plenty of screen shots, the book makes it clear how you are to accomplish various tasks. The layout is well-organized, the chapters are presented in a logical order.
What's the verdict? If you have reasonable linux administration skills and you wish to begin configuring a hybrid cloud, this book will be a good place to start.
The book can be found here.
Happy Cloud Hopping!
