Given the title of this book, one could expect, you'd dive deep into KVM and its related topics, learn to understand its techniques, usecases and traps. From zero to hero in KVM, so to speak. If THIS is the purpose of this book, than it definitely fails. After reading, well... actually while reading (I stopped reading after chapter 5: "Libvirt Storage"), you feel everything but beeing a Master of KVM. I don't even know where to start... As one of the previous reviewer already mentioned: this is not a "working book" but rather a collection of functions and ideas. There is no central theme (kind of: define a (the) usecase, install and setup OS, install KVM and its tools, etc, etc), no best pratices, no "dos and don'ts", whatsoever). Also, the book is not consistent whitin itself (sometimes not even within one chapter). Here are some examples of that what's waiting for the reader: Background and history of KVM is where it starts, which makes sense (Chapter 1 and chapter 2). Chapter 3 is all about installation of KVM and it's tools. Up to here it everything is clear described and understandable... Chapter 4 is all about networking. But there is one problem: its definitely not...This chapter raises more questions then it tries to answer, such as: How to asign a static IP to a VM? What about the possibility of name resolution for the VM? How do the connections look like - to be able to adjust the firewall(s) properly? One more? What about IPv6? Throughout the whole book it's not mentioned at all. Chapter 5: back to the lacking central theme or "working book" structure. When you try to use it as a work book and try to setup a system with the learned techniques chapter after chapter, you realize now, that your setup of the OS is most likely wrong - some of the topics and sections in chapter 5 depend on the proper setup of your OS - the partitioning or e.g. LVM setup - which basically means: back to square one. Re-install OS and start over again. Such architecture or design decissions should be handled at the beginning of the book or at last prior to installation. Another example: at some point one will find the description of how to configure a NFS storage pool. After some time, its written (and i quote): "If we wanted, we could've easily done the same thing via the Virtual Machine Manager GUI" - which gives the impression that the previously performed steps configuring the NFS pool manually can be done using the GUI as well. Only the screenshots are showing different names and IP adresses compared to the "manual way" - and you are asking yourself: is it a typo? Did i miss something? There are many other examples, typos, wrong screenshots/figures and inconsistencies in this book - this is weird especially because this book is titled "Second edition". So, many of the previously described examples could have been attacked or the typos and inconsistencies corrected. As i mentioned above - I stopped reading after this chapter and answered my questions with input from other sources - which is a disappointment if you ask me. The way i see it: I don't need a book called "Mastering KVM" when I have to spend more time on using a search engine and the libvirt project page, rather then on reading this book. If you get the chance to purchase a discounted PDF on their website, go for it, as is has some value but at full price it's not worth the money. Read more

I have been reading this book for last few days and i gave me alot of great insignts in not just KVM but also general understanding of virtualization. Great thing about this is is alot of examples which i was able to follow and get great understanding how to apply it. I highly recommend this book for anyone who wants to get into virtualization and also for someone how is in look for improving existing knowledge. I expect more books from this guy! Read more

Networking, storage, design... and then it hit me even harder with cloud-init, cloudbase-init, Ansible, OpenStack and ELK stack. All of which are really valuable things that I should do in my environment, yet I didn't. There are so many code examples in the book, and after checking a couple of chapters, I'm really happy with that. Everything is explained, and the code works without a hitch. The only thing that is a problem for me is its volume. It's something like 700 pages long. So, be prepared to spend long hours going through it if KVM is your cup of tea. And it would be good if it had just a bit more basic networking information, although I do realize that this is not the book subject. Read more

This book really helped me to understand the way KVM and other related platforms work. I really like the code examples and the procedural way in which it's written. Pictures could be a bit better, as well as the formatting of the book. But overall, really good. Read more