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After I finished co-writing my second book a few years ago, I pretty much swore off writing books. Ever.  I was just burnt out. Staying up until 1 AM in the morning, writing about IT strategy wasn't exactly how I envisioned my rock-star life in college. (Un)fortunately, data center consolidation was quickly going from IT hype to IT reality, so I started getting calls from my first book's co-author, David. They would go pretty much like this:

DAVID: You know the consolidation book is getting out of date.
ME: Really? That copy on my bookshelf looks completely new.
DAVID: It really need to update it with zones, storage and virtualization.
ME: Yeah, someone really does need to get on that.
DAVID: I think a second edition of the book is in order.
ME: Maybe a blog entry would cover it.
DAVID: Writing the book was really great fun.
ME: I didn't sleep for 4 months.
DAVID: Good times.

And I was serious. You see, writing a second edition of a book is the literary equivalent of 60s-era rocker reunion tours. You've already toured Madison Square Gardens (and Iowa City Municipal Auditorium), met the groupies and gone through rehab. Heck, your drummer has probably already died someone along the way. Either way, that magical newness just isn't there. And without that excitement, it's really difficult to find the time to write late into the night, for night after night.

Which is exactly why David and I are writing the second edition of "Consolidation In The Data Center."

Now that consolidation has matured from something people doubted to standard operating procedure, I think it is even more important that IT managers and architects understand how to best assess, architect and deploy consolidated environments. The advances in technology (most notably within Solaris) have also made new patterns for deployment possible. But ultimately, success relies upon getting good advice to tailor these technologies to your environment. And to that fact, David and I have recruited several other talented authors within Sun to contribute their knowledge of consolidation best practices to the book. So plan expect hope to see new chapters on:

• Consolidation enabling technologies like virtualization and grid
• Characterizing applications for consolidation and criticality.
• New case studies

We'll also be updating almost every chapter with new nuggets of consolidation goodness.

I'll blog more about this (maybe even mention a publication date :> ) as the process wears on. In the meantime, feel free to leave us a comment about topics that you would like to see covered in the second edition. Who knows, we may end up bringing our act to a stadium near you.