What you need for this book

To test the examples provided in Chapters 1 to 7 and to practice further, you need to have access to a vSphere environment with vCenter and ESXi servers. For Chapter 8, Managing vSphere Security, SRM, vCloud Air, and vROps, you need to have access to the vCloud Air and vRealize Operations Manager environment. For Chapter 10, Using REST APIs, you need to have access to the vRealize Automation environment. I have used the following versions of different software to write this book:

If you do not have access to physical server-grade systems, you can build your test setup in a lab environment as well. For most of the book, I used a Whitebox desktop with 32 GB RAM in it. To build a vSphere environment, I have used VMware Workstation Version 12 and nested VMs for ESXi hosts. For vRealize Operations Manager, SRM, and vCloud Air, I had to rely on traditional resources.

So, before you start reading the chapters, I suggest that you get ready to build a vSphere lab. Also, as the chapters progress, we will build the lab step by step because different chapters cover different areas of a vSphere environment, starting from the ground up.