Book Image

Building VMware Software-Defined Data Centers

By : Valentin Hamburger
Book Image

Building VMware Software-Defined Data Centers

By: Valentin Hamburger

Overview of this book

VMware offers the industry-leading software-defined data center (SDDC) architecture that combines compute, storage, networking, and management offerings into a single unified platform. This book uses the most up-to-date, cutting-edge VMware products to help you deliver a complete unified hybrid cloud experience within your infrastructure. It will help you build a unified hybrid cloud based on SDDC architecture and practices to deliver a fully virtualized infrastructure with cost-effective IT outcomes. In the process, you will use some of the most advanced VMware products such as VSphere, VCloud, and NSX. You will learn how to use vSphere virtualization in a software-defined approach, which will help you to achieve a fully-virtualized infrastructure and to extend this infrastructure for compute, network, and storage-related data center services. You will also learn how to use EVO:RAIL. Next, you will see how to provision applications and IT services on private clouds or IaaS with seamless accessibility and mobility across the hybrid environment. This book will ensure you develop an SDDC approach for your datacenter that fulfills your organization's needs and tremendously boosts your agility and flexibility. It will also teach you how to draft, design, and deploy toolsets and software to automate your datacenter and speed up IT delivery to meet your lines of businesses demands. At the end, you will build unified hybrid clouds that dramatically boost your IT outcomes.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
Building VMware Software-Defined Data Centers
Credits
About the Author
About the Reviewer
www.PacktPub.com
Preface

vRA installation


In vRA version 7, VMware made the installation one of the simplest in the history of the tool. Before that, it was not a simple installation. Sometimes even VMware Professional Services Organization took more than a day to install the tool. Thanks to the engineering effort VMware put into the shiny and new installation routine, this can be accomplished in a couple of hours, depending on the chosen setup (small lab or enterprise).

The very nice thing about the new installer is that it guides the admin through all the steps and events, and provides a controlled way of rolling back after an error by using VMware snapshots, just follow the suggested procedure of the installer and there should be no bad surprises.

First things first

To get started, vRA needs to be downloaded (the vApp) from VMware. The vApp can then be imported into the separate vSphere management cluster. The import will bring up a configuration wizard where the most important specs for the deployment need to be...