Book Image

Implementing VxRail HCI Solutions

Book Image

Implementing VxRail HCI Solutions

Overview of this book

Hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI) can help you simplify the provisioning and daily operations of computing and storage. With this book, you'll understand how HCI can offload the day 0 deployment and day-to-day operations of a system administrator. You'll explore the VxRail Appliance, which is an HCI solution that provides lifecycle management, automation, and operational simplicity. Starting with an overview of the VxRail Appliance system architecture and components, you'll understand the benefits of the VxRail system and compare it with the environment of traditional servers and storage. As you advance, the book covers topics such as disaster recovery and active-active and active-passive solutions for VxRail. By the end of this book, you'll have gained the confidence to manage the deployment, administration, planning, and design of a VxRail system.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)
1
Section 1: Getting Started with VxRail HCI System
4
Section 2: Administration of VxRail
10
Section 3: Advanced Solutions for VxRail

Building VMs

In this section, we will discuss how to create VMs with vSAN storage policies on a VxRail cluster. We can build VMs with the following deployment methods:

  • Building a VM: Create a VM and install a guest OS (the Windows or Linux platforms) on the VM.
  • Deploying from a template: Deploy a VM from the VM template that was pre-defined by the OS configuration and customization by the system administrator on day 1.
  • Cloning from a VM: Make a copy of a VM, then perform OS customization.
  • Importing a virtual appliance: Import a virtual appliance from Open Virtualization Format (OVF) into vCenter Server. We only define the management network for this VM, then it can start up.

Now we will show how to create a VM with a vSAN storage policy on a VxRail cluster:

  1. Right-click the host and select New Virtual Machine, and then choose Create a new virtual machine. Then, click the NEXT button:

    Figure 5.39 – Create a new virtual machine

  2. Specify the...