Book Image

VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design Cookbook - Third Edition

By : Mike Brown, Hersey Cartwright

Book Image

VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design Cookbook - Third Edition

By: Mike Brown, Hersey Cartwright

Overview of this book

VMware is the industry leader in data center virtualization. The vSphere 6.x suite of products provides a robust and resilient platform to virtualize server and application workloads. This book uses proven infrastructure design principles and applies them to VMware vSphere 6.7 virtual data center design through short and focused recipes on each design aspect. The second edition of this book focused on vSphere 6.0. vSphere features released since then necessitate an updated design guide, which includes recipes for upgrading to 6.7, vCenter HA; operational improvements; cutting-edge, high-performance storage access such as RDMA and Pmem; security features such as encrypted vMotion and VM-level encryption; Proactive HA; HA Orchestrated Restart; Predictive DRS; and more. By the end of the book, you will be able to achieve enhanced compute, storage, network, and management capabilities for your virtual data center.

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Free Chapter

The Virtual Data Center

The Virtual Data Center

Benefits and technologies of virtualization

Becoming a virtual data center architect

Using a holistic approach to data center design

Passing the VMware VCAP6-DCV Design exam

Becoming a VMware Certified Design Expert

Identifying what's new in vSphere 6.7

Planning a vSphere 6.7 upgrade

The Discovery Process

The Discovery Process

Identifying the design factors

Identifying stakeholders

Conducting stakeholder interviews

Using VMware Capacity Planner

Using Windows Performance Monitor

Conducting a VMware optimization assessment

Identifying dependencies

The Design Factors

The Design Factors

Identifying design requirements

Identifying design constraints

Making design assumptions

Identifying design risks

Considering infrastructure design qualities

Creating the conceptual design

vSphere Management Design

vSphere Management Design

Identifying vCenter components and dependencies

Selecting a vCenter deployment option

Determining vCenter resource requirements

Selecting a database for the vCenter deployment

Determining database interoperability

Choosing a vCenter deployment topology

Designing for management availability

Designing a separate management cluster

Configuring vCenter mail, SNMP, and alarms

Using Enhanced Linked Mode

Using the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix

Backing up the vCenter Server components

Planning vCenter HA to increase vCenter availability

Upgrading vCenter Server

Designing a vSphere Update Manager Deployment

vSphere Storage Design

vSphere Storage Design

Identifying RAID levels

Calculating storage capacity requirements

Determining storage performance requirements

Calculating storage throughput

Storage connectivity options

Storage path selection plugins

Sizing datastores

Designing VSAN for virtual machine storage

Using VMware Virtual Volumes

Incorporating storage policies into a design

NFS version 4.1 capabilities and limits

Using persistent memory to maximize VM performance

vSphere Network Design

vSphere Network Design

Determining network bandwidth requirements

Standard or distributed virtual switches

Providing network availability

Network resource management

Using private VLANs

IP storage network design considerations

Using jumbo frames

Creating custom TCP/IP stacks

Designing for VMkernel services

vMotion network design considerations

Using 10 GbE converged network adapters

IPv6 in a vSphere design

Remote direct memory access options

vSphere Compute Design

vSphere Compute Design

Calculating CPU resource requirements

Calculating memory resource requirements

Transparent page sharing

Scaling up or scaling out

Determining the vCPU-to-core ratio

Clustering compute resources

Reserving HA resources to support failover

Using distributed resource scheduling to balance cluster resources

Ensuring cluster vMotion compatibility

Using resource pools

Providing Fault Tolerance protection

Leveraging host flash

vSphere Physical Design

vSphere Physical Design

Using the VMware Hardware Compatibility List

Understanding the physical storage design

Understanding the physical network design

Creating the physical compute design

Creating a custom ESXi image

The best practices for ESXi host BIOS settings

Upgrading an ESXi host

Virtual Machine Design

Virtual Machine Design

Right-sizing virtual machines

Enabling CPU hot add and memory hot plug

Using paravirtualized VM hardware

Creating virtual machine templates

Upgrading and installing VMware Tools

Upgrading VM virtual hardware

Using vApps to organize virtualized applications

Using VM affinity and anti-affinity rules

Using VM to Host affinity and anti-affinity rules

Converting physical servers with vCenter Converter Standalone

Migrating servers into vSphere

vSphere Security Design

vSphere Security Design

Managing the single sign-on password policy

Managing single sign-on identity sources

Security design with the VMware Certificate Authority

Using Active Directory for host authentication

ESXi firewall configuration

ESXi Lockdown Mode

Configuring role-based access control

Virtual network security

Using the VMware vSphere 6 Hardening Guide

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity

Backing up ESXi host configurations

Configuring ESXi host logging

Backing up virtual distributed switch configurations

Deploying Veeam Backup and Replication

Using Veeam Backup and Replication to back up virtual machines

Replicating virtual machines with vSphere Replication

Protecting the virtual data center with Site Recovery Manager

Design Documentation

Design Documentation

Creating the architecture design document

Writing an implementation plan

Developing an installation guide

Creating a validation test plan

Writing operational procedures

Presenting the design

Implementing the design

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Security design with the VMware Certificate Authority

Using digital certificates can give users confidence that the vSphere components with which they're communicating are trusted. With the introduction of the Platform Services Controller (PSC) in vSphere 6.0, VMware included an embedded certificate authority to manage certificates in a vSphere environment called the VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA).

This section will discuss how an architect can use the VMCA to design a secure and trusted vSphere environment. By default, the VMCA creates and issues self-signed certificates. Being self-signed, they're not trusted, because they're not issued by a trusted Certificate Authority (CA). A secure design should include trusted certificates.

How to do it...

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