As a computing architect/engineer, I have cover-to-cover read many books
over my career. Part of my job is also to write detailed step-by-step
technical documentation for work I have done. With that as preamble, I'd
like to say that this book is extremely well written. You can tell
the author endeavored to give the complete story of the VI3 suite without
sacrificing the deep detail for each component. He succeeded. Not long
before I read Chris McCain's book, I participated in a 5 day (12hrs/day)
deeply intensive VMWare course covering the same VI3 material. I'm not
a fan of crash/boot-camp type courses, but this one was an exceptionally
thorough/good one. Well, you can pretty much replace that intensive
course with the contents of the "Mastering VMware Infrastructure 3"
book and one (and preferably two) servers qualified for ESX use. Almost
every aspect of VI3 that could be neatly partitioned off into its
own chapter and thoroughly treated, was in this book. Chapters either
cover a VI3 component and/or covers a real world best-practice use
of it. There is little hand-waiving in this book; and if you enjoy the
UNIX CLI way of doing things, as I do, you'll also appreciate the
ESX commands that are peppered throughout the book to
complement/supplement the UI screen shots. Job well done. Highly
recommended.