VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V5.0] -...
Transcript of VMware vSphere: Design Workshop [V5.0] -...
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 2 of 29
Version History
Date Ver. Author Description Reviewers
12/2009 V0 Mahesh Rajani
Ben Lin
Initial Draft Shridar Deuskar
Rupen Sheth
1/20/2010 V1 Chirag Patel Content and Format Update
11 Nov 2011 V5 Mike Sutton Final Mike Sutton
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved. This product is protected by U.S. and international copyright and intellectual property laws. This product is covered by one or more patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/download/patents.html.
VMware, VMware vSphere, VMware vCenter, the VMware “boxes” logo and design, Virtual SMP and vMotion are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.
VMware, Inc 3401 Hillview Ave Palo Alto, CA 94304 www.vmware.com
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 3 of 29
Contents
1.1 Summary ............................................................................................................................... 4
1.2 Design Overview ................................................................................................................... 6
1.3 Requirements ........................................................................................................................ 6
1.4 Constraints ............................................................................................................................ 7
1.5 Assumptions .......................................................................................................................... 7
2. Storage .............................................................................................. 9 2.1 Requirements ........................................................................................................................ 9
2.2 Design Patterns ..................................................................................................................... 9
2.3 Logical Design ..................................................................................................................... 11
2.4 Physical Design ................................................................................................................... 12
3. Network ........................................................................................... 13 3.1 Requirements ...................................................................................................................... 13
3.2 Design Patterns ................................................................................................................... 13
3.3 Logical Design ..................................................................................................................... 15
3.4 Physical Design ................................................................................................................... 15
4. Host ................................................................................................. 17 4.1 Requirements ...................................................................................................................... 17
4.2 Design Patterns ................................................................................................................... 17
4.3 Logical Design ..................................................................................................................... 18
4.4 Physical Design ................................................................................................................... 18
5. Virtual Machine ............................................................................... 20
5.1 Requirements ...................................................................................................................... 20
5.2 Design Patterns ................................................................................................................... 20
6. Virtual Datacenter ........................................................................... 21
6.1 Requirements ...................................................................................................................... 21
6.2 Design Patterns ................................................................................................................... 21
6.3 Logical Design ..................................................................................................................... 26
6.4 Physical Design ................................................................................................................... 27
7. Management and Monitoring .......................................................... 28 7.1 Requirements ...................................................................................................................... 28
7.2 Design Patterns ................................................................................................................... 28
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 4 of 29
Overview
1.1 Summary
ACME Recreational Vehicles Corporation is a manufacturer of motor homes in the United States. The company is headquartered in Raleigh, North Carolina, and maintains a remote office in Tucson, Arizona. The company maintains one manufacturing plant and one assembly plant. The CIO is very cost-conscious and will question anything that seems overly complex or overpriced. IT has been asked to introduce virtualization in an effort to reduce costs and promote the fact that the company is going “green.”
As part of a datacenter optimization project, IT has been asked to virtualize all x86-based servers onto the VMware vSphere™ platform. The primary site is in Raleigh, with other remote office in Tucson. The primary site supports Customer Service, Finance, and Web Operations. After consolidation, all servers will be located in the primary datacenter in Raleigh.
ACME Recreational Vehicles’ environment has three “zones”: Production, Development, and QA.
From the preliminary virtualization assessment, it was determined that ACME Recreational Vehicles can consolidate a considerable number of existing and expected future workloads. This increases average server utilization and lowers the overall hardware footprint and associated costs.
The virtualization assessment shows that 210 physical servers can be virtualized. The consolidation ratio depended upon two possible target platforms.
Target Platform Consolidation Ratio
Production Development QA
Blade server. Two-socket, quad-core CPUs 2.93GHz
32GB of RAM
20:1 30:1 30:1
Rack server, four-socket, quad-core CPUs 2.93GHz
64GB of RAM
40:1 60:1 60:1
No estimats for the number of network or storage adapters were made during the assessment. Assume that eight full height blade servers can fit in one blade chassis. The blade chassis is 10U in height. The rack server is 4U in height.
Both the blade and rack servers come with a single dual-port GigE NIC, with capacity for more dual-port or quad-port NICs at an additional cost (budget to buy as needed – you will need to recommend how many). Availability of the virtual machines is an important requirement. Separation of management and production virtual machines is desired.
The 210 physical servers are comprised of 60 Linux servers and 150 Windows servers. Out of 150 Windows Servers, there are three database and two Exchange servers.
Linux server distribution:
25 servers – Production
25 servers – Development
10 servers – QA
Windows server distribution
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 5 of 29
100 servers – Production
30 servers – Development
20 servers – QA
Existing Workloads
Microsoft SQL Server
Exchange Mailbox Servers (~ 400 users)
Exchange CA/HT Servers
IIS Web servers
Custom order processing system
Customer relationship management (CRM)
Domain controllers
HR systems (run at peak in the mornings)
Engineering development servers (run at peak in late mornings through afternoons)
On average, each Windows server is provisioned with a 12GB operating system drive (average used 10GB) and a 30GB (average used 15GB) data drive. Each Linux server is configured with 60GB total storage (40GB average used). Each database server uses 100-120GB on average. Exchange servers use 180- 240GB on average.
Exchange is a critical application that requires high availability. The current deployment uses single-copy clusters to maintain availability. The SQL Server database servers are also configured for clustering.
An active-passive, multiprotocol storage array has been purchased. The array has a 16GB of mirrored cache, with 135 disks in the central system bay. The disk drives are a mix of 146GB Fibre Channel, 300GB Fibre Channel, and 500GB SATA. There is a total of 6TB of Fibre Channel storage and 10TB of SATA storage. More storage bays can be purchased, with 160 disks per bay to expand the system to more than 480 disk drives.
Most of the servers have two CPUs. Some are uniprocessor servers. ACME Recreational Vehicles wants to adopt a “virtualization first” policy. The company plans to provision at least 20 new virtual machines in the next year.
The network infrastructure consists of multiple VLANs to provide separation for network traffic. More VLANs can be added, if necessary. The LAN infrastructure includes multiple access switches to provide redundancy and load balancing. No DMZ is in the environment.
Current VLAN configuration
VLAN 10 Management
VLAN 20 Production
VLAN 30 Development
VLAN 40 QA
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 6 of 29
1.2 Design Overview
The architecture is described by a logical design, which is independent of hardware-specific details. Specifications of physical design components that were chosen for the logical design are also provided.
This architecture design can be used to implement the solution using different hardware vendors, so long as the requirements do not change.
This design includes:
One physical site (Raleigh)
Clusters of hosts for load balancing through VMware® High Availability/VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) for host and guest operating system (virtual machine) failure.
VMware vCenter™ Server integrated with Microsoft Active Directory. vCenter Server will leverage the extensive inventory of existing Active Directory users and groups to secure access to vSphere.
Redundancy in network and storage infrastructure
System component monitoring, with SNMP traps and email alerts
VMware vCenter Update Manager for automating patching of all hosts and VMware Tools
1.3 Requirements
Requirements describe, in business or technical terms, the necessary properties, qualities, and characteristics of a solution. These are provided by the client and used as a basis for the design.
Number Description
R001 Virtualize existing 210 servers as virtual machines with no significant change in performance or stability, compared to current physical workloads.
R002 Establish a sound and best practice architecture design while addressing ACME Recreational Vehicles’ specific requirements and constraints.
R003 Design should be scalable and the implementation easily repeatable.
R004 Design should be resilient and provide high levels of availability where possible.
R005 Automated deployment of systems and services is desirable.
R006 Overall anticipated cost of ownership should be reduced after deployment.
R007 SLA Tier 1: Finance, Messaging, and Web Operations
SLA Tier 2: Customer Service and Engineering
SLA Tier 3: HR
R008 Custom order processing system at primary site must be kept running with no
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 7 of 29
downtime. Currently, it is not clustered as it is not supported by MSCS.
R009 A three-tiered application (Web server, application server, database) exists at the primary site. All components must be run in unison.
R010 Noncritical systems can have a recovery time of up to 30 minutes to restart.
R011 One of the IT administrators has experimented with VM snapshots and wants to use them extensively for the Engineering and HR groups to take daily “backups” of their servers.
R012 Production servers must be completely segregated from all other servers due to network security requirements.
R013 Security policies require that all hosts per location are configured uniformly and that any differences or changes are tracked.
R014 Business-critical applications should be given higher priority to network resources than noncritical virtual machines.
R015 Business-critical applications should be given higher priority to storage resources than noncritical virtual machines.
1.4 Constraints
Constraints can limit the design features as well as the implementation of the design.
Number Description
C001 NFS or iSCSI storage
C002 Target Platform Option 1: Blade server, two quad-core CPUs 2.93 GHz, 32GB RAM
C003 Target Platform Option 2: Rack server, four quad-core CPUs 2.93 GHz, 64GB RAM
C004 Eight full-height blade servers can fit in one blade chassis. Blade chassis is 10U.
C005 The rack server is 4U in height.
C006 There is no SAN infrastructure in place.
C007 There is no budget for hardware HBAs.
1.5 Assumptions Assumptions are expectations regarding the implementation and use of a system. These assumptions cannot be confirmed at the design phase and are used to provide guidance in the design.
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 8 of 29
Number Description
A001 All required upstream dependencies will be present during the implementation phase. ACME Recreational Vehicles will determine which dependencies sit outside of the virtual infrastructure.
A002 All VLANs and subnets required will be configured before implementation.
A003 There is sufficient network bandwidth to support operational requirements.
A004 ACME Recreational Vehicles will maintain a change management database (CMDB) to track all objects in the virtual infrastructure.
A005 Storage will be provisioned and presented to the VMware ESX™ hosts accordingly.
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 9 of 29
2. Storage
2.1 Requirements
- Storage solution must be flexible, highly available, secure, and maintain high performance. - No existing SAN infrastructure is in place. - No budget for hardware HBAs - On average, each Windows server is provisioned with a 12GB operating system drive (average
used 10GB) and 30GB (average used 15GB) data drive. - Each Linux server is configured with 60GB total storage (40GB average used). - Each database servers (3) use 100-120GB on average and Exchange servers (2) use 180-
240GB on average.
2.2 Design Patterns
Storage Array
Design Choice iSCSI SAN with software initiator
Justification Because there is no budget for hardware HBAs and to lower overall SAN cost, iSCSI SAN was selected with software initiator.
Impact Will require additional network considerations because software iSCSI initiator uses NICs.
References (lecture guide page number)
LUN Sizing
Design Choice ~26 x 500GB LUNs will be used for virtual machines and 1 x 100GB LUN will be used for templates.
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 10 of 29
LUN Sizing
Justification Windows: 42GB x 165 VMs = 6,930GB
* Assuming 20 new virtual machines will be Windows and excluding DB and Exchange
Linux: 60GB x 60 VMs = 3,600GB
Database server: 3 x 120GB = 360GB
Exchange server: 2 x 240GB = 480GB
20% for VM swap and snapshots = 20% x (6,930GB + 3,600GB) = 2,106 GB
* (Excluding DB and Exchange)
Template LUN = 100 GB
Total VM Space = 13,072GB
Number of LUNs based on 500GB LUN = ~ 28
Impact -
References (lecture guide page number)
VMFS or RDM
Design Choice For most applications, VMware vStorage VMFS virtual disks will be used unless there is a specific need for raw device mapping (RDM). The use cases for RDM include using Microsoft clustering, NPIV, or running SAN management software inside a virtual machine.
Justification VMFS is a clustered file system engineered for storing virtual machines. A datastore is like a storage appliance that serves up storage space for virtual disks in the virtual machines.
Impact To ensure proper disk alignment, create datastores using the vSphere Client.
References (lecture guide page number)
LUN Presentation
Design Choice LUNs will be masked consistently across all hosts in a cluster.
Justification Having consistent storage presentation ensures that virtual machines can be run on any host in a cluster. This optimizes high availability and DRS while reducing storage troubleshooting. It is important to minimize differences in LUNs visible across hosts within the same cluster or vMotion scope.
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 11 of 29
LUN Presentation
Impact Requires close coordination with the storage team because LUN masking is performed at the array level.
References (lecture guide page number)
Thin vs. Thick Provisioning
Design Choice Unless constrained by specific application or workload requirements, or special circumstances such as being protected by VMware Fault Tolerance (FT), all data volumes will be provisioned as thin disks with the system volumes deployed as thick.
Justification The rate of change for a system volume is low, while data volumes tend to have a variable rate of change.
Impact Alarms must be configured to alert if approaching an "out of space" condition to provide sufficient time to source and provision additional disk.
References (lecture guide page number)
2.3 Logical Design
Attribute Specification
Storage type iSCSI
Number of NICs 2
LUN size 500GB
Total LUNs ~28
VMFS datastores per LUN 1
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 12 of 29
Figure 5. Logical SAN Design
2.4 Physical Design
Attribute Specification
Vendor and model Dell EqualLogic PS6010E
ESXi host multipathing policy Only failover
Min./max. speed rating of switch ports 1GB / 10GB
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 13 of 29
3. Network
3.1 Requirements
- Production traffic should be isolated from Development/QA. - Virtual networking must be configured for availability, security, and performance.
3.2 Design Patterns
vNetwork Standard Switch or vNetwork Distributed Switch
Design Choice A vNetwork standard switch will be configured.
Justification vNetwork distributed switch functionality is not available as a part of the vSphere Enterprise License.
Impact Will need to configure vSwitch on each host
References (lecture guide page number)
vSwitch VLAN Configuration
Design Choice Separate VLANs will be assigned to Mgmt Network, VM Network, vMotion, and Fault Tolerance. Virtual Switch Tagging (VST) will be used with.
Justification Virtual LANs provide isolation and separation of traffic.
Impact All ESXi host facing ports must be configured as trunk ports.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSwitch Load-Balancing Configuration
Design Choice Virtual port ID-based load balancing will be used.
Justification Under this setting, traffic from a given virtual NIC is consistently sent to the same physical adapter unless a failover occurs. This setting provides an even distribution of traffic if the number of virtual NICs is greater than the number of physical adaptors.
Impact This is the default load-balancing setting. Minimal configuration is required.
References (lecture guide page number)
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 14 of 29
vShield Zones
Design Choice vShield Zones will not be implemented.
Justification Inspection of virtual networking traffic is not a current requirement.
Impact Existing hardware firewalls will be utilized to inspect and filter VM traffic.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSwitch Security Settings
Design Choice vSwitch default security settings:
Forged Transmits: Reject, MAC address changes: Reject, Promiscuous Mode: Reject
Justification There are no requirements which necessitate the use of any of the vSwitch security settings.
Impact Setting all options to Reject provides optimal vSwitch security by preventing potentially risky network behavior.
References (lecture guide page number)
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 15 of 29
3.3 Logical Design
Figure 4. ESXi Network Logical Design
Shading denotes active physical adapter to port group mapping. The vmnics shaded in the same color as a given port group will be configured as active, with all other vmnics designated as standby.
3.4 Physical Design
vSwitch vmnic NIC/Slot Port Function
0 0 Onboard
0
Management Network (Active) vMotion (Standby) VM Network – Dev/QA (Active)
1 1 1 VM Network – Prod (Active) Fault Tolerance (Passive)
0 2
PCIe Slot 2 Quad GbE
0
Management Network (Standby) vMotion (Active) VM Network – Dev/QA (Standby)
2 1 iSCSI (Active)
1 2 VM Network – Prod (Passive) Fault Tolerance (Active)
2 3 3 iSCSI (Active)
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 16 of 29
vSwitch Port Group Name VLAN ID
0 Management_VLAN10 10
1 VM Network_Prod_VLAN20 20
0 VM Network_Dev_QA_VLAN30 30
0 VMotion_VLAN40 40
1 FT_VLAN50 50
2 iSCSI_VLAN100 100
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 17 of 29
4. Host
4.1 Requirements
- Host capacity must accommodate the planned virtualization of 210 physical servers. - Size capacity to ensure that there is no significant change in performance or stability, compared
to current physical workloads. - Expect 20 new virtual machines during initial deployment.
4.2 Design Patterns
Blade or Rack Servers
Design Choice Blade servers will be used.
Justification Blade solution is modular and offers increased processing power in less space.
Impact Power and cooling requirements for blade chassis must be considered. Multiple chassis should be deployed for availability.
References (lecture guide page number)
Server Consolidation (minimum number of hosts required)
Design Choice Production: 6 hosts, Development/QA: 3 hosts, New VMs 1 host
Justification Formula: Total hosts / consolidation ratio
Prod: 125 / 20 = 7 hosts
Development + QA: 90 / 30 = 3 hosts
New VMs: 20/20 = 1 host (Assuming all Production)
Impact Additional hosts will be required for high availability.
References (lecture guide page number)
Server Containment (number of additional hosts required)
Design Choice New VMs: 1 host
Justification Formula: New VMs / consolidation ratio
20 / 20 = 1 host
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 18 of 29
Server Containment (number of additional hosts required)
Impact Server containment figures can influence procurement planning.
References (lecture guide page number)
4.3 Logical Design
Attribute Specification
Host type and version ESXi 5.0
Number of CPU sockets
Number of cores per CPU
Total number of cores
Processor speed
2
4
8
2.93GHz (2930MHz)
Memory 32GB
Number of NIC ports 6
4.4 Physical Design
Attribute Specification
Vendor and model Dell PowerEdge M610
Processor type
Total CPU sockets
Cores per CPU
Total number of cores
Processor speed
Intel Xeon X5570 (Nehalem)
2
4
8
2.93GHz
Memory 32GB (8x4GB)
Onboard NIC vendor and model
Onboard NIC ports x speed
Number of attached NICs
NIC vendor and model
Number of ports/NIC x speed
Total number of NIC ports
Broadcom 5709 with TOE
2 x 1GbE
1
Intel Gigabit ET
4 x 1GbE
6
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 19 of 29
Attribute Specification
Number and type of local drives
RAID level
Total storage
N/A
N/A
N/A
System monitoring Dell Management Console
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 20 of 29
5. Virtual Machine
5.1 Requirements
Most physical servers are dual-processor systems.
With the exception of 3 database and 2 exchange servers, the virtual machines have typical network and I/O requirements
The storage the virtual machines will be housed on will not be replicated.
5.2 Design Patterns
Virtual Machine Deployment Considerations
Design Choice "Right-size" virtual machines based on application profile.
Justification Virtual machines must be properly designed, provisioned, and managed to ensure the efficient operation of these applications and services.
Impact Create standardized templates for each guest operating system used in production.
References (lecture guide page number)
Swap and Operating System Paging File Location
Design Choice Place the virtual machine swap files in the same location as the other virtual machine files (default behavior).
Justification Keeping files on the default datastore is easier to manage. Moving the vmswap files to a different location for performance or replication bandwidth issues requires additional configuration and management processes.
Impact If future requirements mandate that virtual machine swap files be moved to a separate location, all relevant virtual machines will need to be reconfigured.
References (lecture guide page number)
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 21 of 29
6. Virtual Datacenter
6.1 Requirements
- Site o 1 primary datacenter (1000 VMs and grow fast)
- Availability o Design for maximum availability o There is an existing highly available SQL database system which can be leveraged
- Management: o All component must use corporate authentication (Active Directory)
- Compute o ???
6.2 Design Patterns
vCenter Server Physical or Virtual (VM or Virtual Appliance)
Design Choice vCenter Server will be provisioned as a virtual machine.
Justification The vCenter Server system will be set up as a virtual system on a separate ESX cluster (Management cluster) due to cost and management considerations. This allows ACME Energy to leverage the benefits of VMware infrastructure like vMotion, DRS, and VMware HA.
The Virtual Appliance version will not be used, as some of the features (SQL database, vCenter Update Manager…) are not available.
Impact To improve manageability, the location of the vCenter Server virtual machine should be static. This can be handled by pinning the vCenter Server virtual machine to a specific ESX host or by setting up a separate management cluster.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
vCenter Server Shared or Dedicated
Design Choice The vCenter Server system will be dedicated, with the exception of vSphere additional components (vCenter Update Manager, Core Dump Collector, Syslog Collector…).
Justification Availability and scalability of a dedicated vCenter Server system is better because resources are not shared with other services.
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 22 of 29
vCenter Server Shared or Dedicated
Impact Cost of a dedicated vCenter Server system is higher. A dedicated vCenter Server system will provide better performance because it is not competing with other services running on the system.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
vCenter Server Database Shared or Dedicated
Design Choice Separate instance on a existing highly available database system
Justification ACME Energy has a clustered production database system that is highly available, so a shared vCenter Server database system offers better availability. If virtual, SQL cluster is hosted on the Management cluster
Impact Database management is offloaded to a separate database team.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
vCenter Update Manager Location
Design Choice VMware Update Manager will be co-located on the vCenter Server system and requires a separate database instance on an external database system.
Justification The vCenter System server will be sized appropriately to accommodate only Update Manager. Only VMware components will be installed on the vCenter System server, to allow for better performance and scalability. The size of the environment required a separate database instance but not a dedicated server VM.
Impact Co-located with vCenter Server will required to allocate more resource to the vCenter VM but will decrease the management cost as no more management VM is required.
References (lecture guide page number)
VMware vSphere Update Manager Sizing Estimator
vCenter Management Assistant (vMA)
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 23 of 29
vCenter Management Assistant (vMA)
Design Choice The vCenter Management Assistant (vMA) will be deploy on a separate ESX cluster (Management cluster)
Justification The vCenter Management Assistant (vMA) will be deploy on a separate ESX cluster (Management cluster) due to cost and management considerations. This allows ACME Energy to leverage the benefits of VMware infrastructure like vMotion, DRS, and VMware HA.
Impact Required more resource on the Management cluster
vSphere Auto-Deploy
Design Choice VMware vSphere Auto-Deploy will not be used
Justification Environment is to small and don’t required this agility level
Impact Longer time to provision or update host
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
vSphere Syslog Collector
Design Choice VMware Syslog Collector will be co-located on the vCenter Server system and requires a separate database instance on an external database system.
Justification The Syslog Collector is most useful for datacenters where ESXi hosts.
Impact Co-located with vCenter Server will required to allocate more resource to the vCenter VM but will decrease the management cost as no more management VM is required.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
vSphere ESXi Dump Collector
Design Choice VMware vSphere ESXi Dump Collector will be co-located on the vCenter Server system and requires a separate database instance on an external database system.
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 24 of 29
vSphere ESXi Dump Collector
Justification The Syslog Collector is most useful for datacenters where ESXi hosts.
Impact Co-located with vCenter Server will required to allocate more resource to the vCenter VM but will decrease the management cost as no more management VM is required.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
vSphere Authentication Proxy
Design Choice VMware vSphere Authentication Proxy will not be used
Justification VMware vSphere Authentication Proxy is not required for ESXi installed
Impact
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
vCLI & PowerShell CLI
Design Choice VMware vCLI will not be used.
VMware PowerShell CLI will be co-located on the vCenter Server system and requires a separate database instance on an external database system.
Justification VMware vCLI is required to configure Auto-Deploy
Impact Co-located with vCenter Server will required to allocate more resource to the vCenter VM but will decrease the management cost as no more management VM is required.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
Web Client
Design Choice VMware Web Client will be co-located on the vCenter Server system and requires a separate database instance on an external database system.
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 25 of 29
Web Client
Justification
Impact Co-located with vCenter Server will required to allocate more resource to the vCenter VM but will decrease the management cost as no more management VM is required.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Installation and Setup Guide
Cluster Architecture
Design Choice Production cluster requires seven hosts.
Development cluster requires three hosts.
A separate Management cluster will be created from existing physical servers (Hardware re-use).
Justification Formula: Minimum hosts + server containment + 1 additional hosts per cluster (N+1 redundancy for HA: N + 2 would add additional cost)
Production + Development/QA + 1 : 7 + 3 + 1 = 11
Impact None
References (lecture guide page number)
Resource Pools
Design Choice Initially, no resource pools will be used.
Justification Separation of workload already exists at the cluster level.
Impact As more virtual machines are added to the clusters, resource pools might need to be configured to guarantee resources to more critical workloads.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere License Edition
Design Choice vSphere Enterprise Edition
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 26 of 29
vSphere License Edition
Justification vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition was considered but since Host Profiles, vNetwork distributed switch, and third-party multipathing features were not mapped to specific technical or business requirements, vSphere Enterprise Edition was selected. This will also keep the overall cost down.
Impact Will not be able to leverage vSphere Enterprise Plus features
References (lecture guide page number)
6.3 Logical Design
Figure 3. Cluster Logical Design
Attribute Specification
vCenter Server version 4.0
Physical or virtual system Virtual
Number of CPUs
Processor type
Processor speed
2
vCPU
N/A
Memory 4 GB
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 27 of 29
Attribute Specification
Number of NIC and ports 1 / 1
Number of disks and disk sizes 2: 30GB (OS) and 50GB (data)
Operating System Type Windows Server 2008 SP2 64 Bit
6.4 Physical Design
Attribute Specification
Vendor and model VMware virtual hardware 7
Processor type VMware vCPU
NIC vendor and model
Number of ports
Network
VMXNET3
1x GbE
Management Network
Local disk N/A
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 28 of 29
7. Management and Monitoring
7.1 Requirements
Requirement 1
Requirement 2
Requirement 3
7.2 Design Patterns
Server, Network, SAN Infrastructure Monitoring
Design Choice All of the physical systems, including the network and SAN, will continue to be monitored directly by the enterprise monitoring system, which will be configured to incorporate any additional such infrastructure required to support vSphere.
Justification Leverages existing enterprise monitoring system. Allows for exploration of virtualization specific offerings in the future.
Impact Requires integration of vCenter Server and ESX with existing monitoring systems.
References (lecture guide page number)
vSphere Management
Design Choice The vSphere infrastructure will be managed through vMA and VMware vSphere PowerCLI.
Justification vMA is a virtual appliance that is preloaded with a 64-bit Enterprise Linux operating system, VMware Tools, vSphere SDK for Perl 4.0, and vSphere CLI 4.0. Centralized logging using vi-logger will be configured to consolidate logs from all ESXi hosts into one location.
Impact Requires compute resources for vMA. vMA should be placed in the management cluster.
References (lecture guide page number)
Backup/Restore Considerations
VMware vSphere: Design Workshop Course Lab
© 2011 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.
Page 29 of 29
Backup/Restore Considerations
Design Choice There currently is an agent-based enterprise backup system that is used to back up each physical system. The plan is to continue using this method to back up virtual machines. Restoring virtual machine guest operating systems, applications, and associated data will also follow the same method as for physical machines.
Justification Leverage existing backup and restore mechanisms. Virtualization-specific solutions will be explored in the future.
Impact RTOs and RPOs should be determined for virtualized workloads.
References (lecture guide page number)