I have order the “vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive” by @DuncanYB most famous by 007 & @FrankDenneman about 3 months back on Amazon. I received the book about one month after ordering due to the distance the book had to travel I guess, although I paid for shipping more than I paid for the book. I can not blame the authors for the long shipping time, as I had this same problem with Amazon with every book I have ever ordered. So if you are in rush for the book, then you might want to look at buying the e-book edition at even a cheaper price than the paper back. This was not available at the time I ordered, though hey having the paper back was worth the wait.
I believe the book was well worth reading for me, although I had a good idea of many of the concepts it had covered it was great to have a refresh of these concepts in one place with the updated best practices. Further, quite few concepts were totally new to me. Over all I think the book was worth my money and time. Further, I believe if I had read the book before going multiple times over HA DeepDive & DRS DeepDive posts on @DuncanYB, I would have got even a ton more surprises in the book. I guess @DuncanYB being kind enough to post that deep on his blog for free should not be punished by not buying his books.
I believe the “vSphere 4.1 HA and DRS Technical Deepdive” is not for everyone & an easy way to find out how good is it for you is by going over Duncan HA DeepDive & DRS DeepDive mentioned earlier in this post and figure out which one of the below people you are:
1- You did not understand a word of what the post say, but you still have to manage or design a vSphere environment <== If you fall into this category then the book is definitely for you as it start with a much simplified concept and explanations of HA & DRS then raise the bar slowly till it reach the depth of these articles and beyond.
2- You had read both these articles and fully understand them, but still curious about more in depth info about it <== This is the category I was in and I believe the book has done a great job at it with a great wealth of information even for the most desirable vSphere geeks.
3- You have read these articles and you understand them, but think they are more than enough knowledge for you <== The book might not be for you, but you might want to still thank these articles writer and buy it.
At the end, I would like to thank @DuncanYB & @FrankDenneman for the effort they had put to write a book into that depth. I have never though someone can write that much about HA & DRS, so I will give them the credit being able to digg that deep into every single detail of HA & DRS.