Earlier in the year, I mentioned three good books for virtualization reading. As the holidays come closer, if you are thinking about a gift for an IT pro, I’ve got two really good recommendations. These could even be great in-department gifts, a cool way to assign homework, if you know what I mean!

From my earlier recommendations, I still find myself going back to the vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive. Duncan Epping and Frank Denneman have really done the virtualization community a wonderful service with this book. The Amazon price for the title is around USD $25 and the Kindle version is available for USD $9.99. The Kindle value is amazing. If you don’t have a Kindle, you can actually install the Kindle app on most smartphones as well as your PC. It sounds crazy, but the Kindle app for the PC is actually quite nice.

The vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive explores all aspects of VMware vSphere clustering. If you have any questions on the product, they will be answered with this book. This is especially valuable to explain the newly rewritten HA, the new Storage DRS, and the best explanation of how DRS recommendations are calculated.

Another book that I’d recommend is the newest book by Greg Schulz. Greg’s Cloud and Virtual Data Storage Networking is good because it applies many core logic principles to the new infrastructure that we live in. Greg has a background in storage, but it’s really about the entire infrastructure today. This book does an outstanding job of equipping the reader to be able to draw out all of the arrows for their entire infrastructure, with the new virtualization and cloud technologies in play; this task is very different than before. Greg’s book lists for around USD $69 on Amazon and as a Kindle for around USD $62.

Both of these books, as well as the summer recommendations are all sure bets for good gifts for your IT pro friends or co-workers. Do you have any book recommendations? Share your comments below.