Many thanks to Gilles Chekroun and Humair Ahmed for co-writing the VMware Cloud on AWS Networking and Security book with me.
It’s taken us most of 2019 to put it all together and we hope you find it useful.
A few thanks to give:
- Thanks to Tom Gillis for writing the foreword and taking the time out of his busy schedule.
- Thanks to Sarah Pham and Katie Holms for all the support around publishing and marketing.
- Thanks for Venky Deshpande for his technical guidance.
- Thanks to Rob Greanias for reviewing and editing. Technical writing is an under-appreciated skill!
- Thanks to Candace and Connie at Mitchell Design for making the book look pretty!
- Thanks to our managers and leadership at VMware, especially Katherine Lightner & Laith Bashoshy for their support.
Few additional thoughts I learned along the way:
The book was a team effort.
The book was a joint-effort between Humair, Gilles and me. We tried to make it as consistent as possible so that you can’t tell who wrote which chapter. Yes, we started by splitting duties early on but we contributed a lot throughout the process to each other’s sections and hopefully it reads well and you won’t be able to tell who wrote what!
The book won’t be perfect.
We tried our best. We reviewed each chapter on many occasions. Our technical writer edited, improved and re-wrote some of the awkward sentences (remember Gilles and I are not native English speakers). We reviewed it again and again. We eliminated typos, we clarified confusing statements and we polished network diagrams. Still, there will be mistakes left out.
I don’t know at this stage if and when we will have a second edition of the book. But I’d like to know if there are any mistakes or if there are any gaps in the book.
Not everything in the book is new.
You might recognize some content Humair, Gilles and I published across various blogs and platforms.
The posts were updated: the ‘blogging’ writing style and the ‘book’ writing style are different (the book is definitely more formal) and many of the diagrams will have been updated and polished.
There is however a lot of brand new stuff and content you haven’t read anywhere before.
The book does not replace our docs but complements them.
Having been working with our Documentation team over the past few months, I have come to realize some of the challenges they face with keeping accurate and relevant documentations. This book does not replace the VMware Cloud on AWS Networking Docs – it complements them. We don’t tell you in the book how to configure everything (that’s what the docs are for) but focus more on the ‘why you need it’ and ‘how it is meant to work’. There will be some overlaps with the docs naturally but they should complement each other. The docs have the advantage of being updated on a very frequent basis, which leads me to…
The book might become obsolete quickly… and that’s a good thing.
A book on technology is bound to age quickly. A book on cloud services (such as VMware Cloud on AWS) that change at the manic speed we deliver new features will be even worse!
We wrote the book using the VMware Cloud on AWS release 1.7 and many things will change in the coming releases (although I suspect the underlying networking configuration will stay roughly the same). It can only be good for our customers.
I know Humair, Gilles and I will keep writing on our respective blogs whenever something new comes up on the networking and security updates on VMware Cloud on AWS.
What’s next?
Well, Gilles and I were just talking about putting another book together. Shall we focus on hybrid applications between VMware and AWS? Should we instead look at automation and APIs on VMware Cloud on AWS and focus on Python, PowerShell, Terraform? If you care, please leave a comment with what you would like to read from us next.
Many thanks for reading.
nicovibert.com 
Nico, I am open to anything. Let’s put a new skeleton together and discuss. Gilles
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