Martin Hosken
VMware® Software-Defined Storage
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About the Author
Martin Hosken is employed as a global cloud architect within the VMware Global Cloud Practice, which is part of its Cloud Provider Software Business Unit.
He has extensive experience architecting and consulting with international customers and designing the transition of organizations' legacy infrastructure onto VMware cloud-based platforms. His broad and deep knowledge of physical and virtualized services, platforms, and cloud infrastructure solutions is based on involvement and leadership in the global architecture, design, development, and implementation of large-scale, complex, multitechnology projects for enterprises and cloud service providers. He is a specialist in designing, implementing, and integrating best-of-breed, fully redundant Cisco, EMC, IBM, HP, Dell, and VMware systems into enterprise environments and cloud service providers' infrastructure.
In addition, Martin is a double VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX #117) in Data Center Virtualization and Cloud Management and Automation. (See the Official VCDX directory available at http://vcdx.vmware.com.) Martin also holds a range of industry certifications from other vendors such as EMC, Cisco, and Microsoft, including MCITP and MCSE in Windows Server and Messaging.
He has been awarded the annual VMware vExpert title for a number of years for his significant contribution to the community of VMware users. (See the VMware Community vExpert Directory available at https://communities.vmware.com/vexpert.jspa.) This title is awarded to individuals for their commitment to the sharing of knowledge and their passion for VMware technology beyond their job requirements. Martin is also a part of the CTO Ambassador Program, and as such is responsible for connecting the R&D team at VMware with customers, partners, and field employees.
Follow Martin on Twitter: @hoskenm.
About the Technical Reviewer
Ray Heffer is employed as a global cloud architect for VMware's Cloud Provider Software Business Unit. He is also a double VCDX #122 (Desktop and Datacenter). In his previous roles with End User Computing (EUC), Technical Marketing, and Professional Services at VMware, he has led many large-scale platform designs for service providers, manufacturing, and government organizations.
Since 1997 Ray has specialized in administering, designing, and implementing solutions ranging from Microsoft Exchange, Linux, Citrix, and VMware. He deployed his first VMware environment in 2004 while working at a hosting company in the United Kingdom.
Ray is also a regular presenter at VMworld and VMUG events, covering topics such as Linux desktops and VMware Horizon design best practices.
Foreword by Duncan Epping
I had just completed the final chapter of the Virtual SAN book I was working on when Martin reached out and asked if I wanted to write a foreword for his book. You can imagine I was surprised to find out that there was another person writing a book on software-defined storage, and pleasantly surprised to find out that VSAN is one of the major topics in this book. Not just surprised, but also very pleased. The world is changing rapidly, and administrators and architects need guidance along this journey, the journey toward a software-defined data center.
When talking to customers and partners on the subject of the software-defined data center, a couple of concerns typically arise. Two parts of the data center have always been historically challenging and/or problematic – namely, networking and storage. Networking problems and concerns (and those related to security, for that matter) have been largely addressed with VMware NSX, which allows virtualization and networking administrators to work closely together on providing a flexible yet very secure foundation for the workloads they manage. This is done by adding an abstraction layer on top of the physical environment and moving specific services closer to the workloads (for instance, firewalling