Vsphere Design

7/23/2019 Vsphere Design

1/29

Examining vSphere Design Through

a Design Scenario

Forbes Guthrie, vReference

Scott Lowe, VMware

VSVC 995

#VSVC4995


2/29

Presenters: Scott Lowe

VCDX #39, vExpert

Mastering VMware vSphere 4& Mastering

VMware vSphere 5

Co-author, VMware vSphere Design (1st&2ndEditions), Mastering VMware

vSphere 5.5

Blogger, http://blog.scottlowe.org

Available on Twitter at

@scott_lowe

Speaker at VMware-related

events worldwide
http://blog.scottlowe.org/http://blog.scottlowe.org/http://blog.scottlowe.org/


3/29

Presenters: Forbes Guthrie

VMware vSphere Design 1st& 2ndEdition

Contributing author, Mastering VMware

vSphere 5 & 5.5

Blogger, http://www.vreference.com

vExpert

Available on Twitter at @forbesguthrie
http://www.vreference.com/http://www.vreference.com/


4/29

Before we start

Get involved!

If you use Twitter, feel free to tweet about this

session (use hashtags #VSVC4995 &

#vmworld)

We encourage you to take photos or videos

of todays session and share them online

This presentation will be made availableonline after the event


5/29

Agenda

Review key design concepts

Examine the design process

Outline a scenario Extract design factors

Focus on a few design areas

Discuss the impact of our decisions


6/29

Review key design concepts

You must view the design

holistically (intimately

interconnected and

interdependent), not as a

collection of parts

Tying everything together

are the functional

requirements

Decisions are driven by

functional requirements as

well as assumptions and

constraints


7/29

Review key design concepts (contd)

Constraints and assumptions = non-functional

requirements or qualities

Constraints AssumptionsRestrictions(or limitations) placed

on you which affect the design

Expectations that you cant

confirm, so you explicitly exclude

them

Examples:

Must use their existing SAN Servers you recommend must

come from vendorX

Examples:

Sufficient IP addresses areavailable

Windows licenses for vCenter

Update Manager are covered

by companys agreement


8/29

Review key design concepts (contd)

A vSphere design can be measured or

evaluated according to five key dimensions:

Availability

Manageability

Performance

Recoverability

Security Every design decision has an impactand

should bejustifiable


9/29

Examine the design process

Stages come from Zachman EA taxonomy:

- de facto standard for classifying EA artifacts

1. Contextual Scope (Planner/Strategist)

2. Conceptual Requirements (Owner)

3. Logical System model (Designer)

4. Physical Specifications (Builders)

5. Detailed Configuration (Implementer)

6. Functional Operation (User)


10/29

Examine the design process (contd)

The logical design defines the

attributesrequired and their

relationships(the how)

The physical design considers

the constraints and states therealityof the solutionnot

always physical equipment, at

least tangible specifics (the

what)

Logical versus physical is an essential

part of the design process


11/29

Outline a scenario

You have just been appointed as the new infrastructure

architect of eRaw-mv, a distributor/reseller of digital

images and videos.

This is not a greenfield deployment, but you have buy-in

from the CIO to make changes and modernize the

infrastructure (but without much budget).

The CIO enthusiastically hired an external consultancy

company to virtualize his base servers about 4 years

ago, but nothing has really changed since thenit is

running vSphere 4.0


12/29

Outline a scenario: company

eRaw-mvhas around 450

employees.

Headquarters are in San

Francisco with 3 satellite

offices:

o Engineering offices in

Salt Lake City & Denver

o A sales office in LA

The CIO recently signed a 3

year co-lo agreement with

plans to use this for DR.


13/29

Outline a scenario: workloads

eRaw-mvhas 120 VMs and 9 non-virtualized servers in the

headquarters (HQ).

The CIO is keen to fully virtualize all his servers, but there

has been concerns about tier 1 performance.

Existing non-virtualized tier 1 servers are vCenter,

Exchange, MS SQL cluster (for internal apps), and Oracle

DB on Linux (backend for mission critical customer portal)

Application and infrastructure performance stats have been

gathered

Each remote office has 5-10 VMs. They lack

standardization, but are running well and the CIO sees this

as low-priority task.


14/29

Outline a scenario: hardware

The eRaw-mvHQ has 1 year-old rack servers with

sufficient capacity for current growth on existing VMs.

The head office SAN is a FC traditionalarray with no real

caching or tiering options.

The CIO doesnt trust SAN performance for his tier 1

apps. Tier 1 non-virtualized servers each use several

trays of DAS.

The servers in the remote offices are out of warranty.They rely on DAS, and partly because of this the ESX

hosts have never been patched.


15/29

Outline a scenario: next steps?

This is just a bare bones scenario

What additional steps might be needed in real

world?o Collate more informationcurrent state analysis

o Meet with technical teams

o Check colo agreement

o Site visits

o Identify stakeholders

Audience feedback: what else?


16/29

Extract design factors: requirements

Virtualize remaining servers

DR design and implementation

Deal with out of warranty servers in remote

offices

Modernize the infrastructure

Audience feedback: what other requirements?


17/29

Extract design factors: constraints

DR site is fixed (facilities, WAN, services)

DR will be done internally (no DRaaS)

Traditional FC SAN for existing VMs

CAPEX budget for 2013/2014 is very limited

WAN links cannot be upgraded

Audience feedback: what other constraints?


18/29

Extract design factors: assumptions

There are no performance issues with the

existing setup (servers/storage).

No server/storage capacity exists for new

workloads in HQ The neworking hardware will profide sufficient

ports, redundancy and there are no bottlenecks

Audience feedback: what other assumptions?


19/29

Extract design factors: risks

Bandwidth may be insufficient for DR RPOs

WAN bandwidth during failover event to DR

Existing FC SAN isnt good enough for tier 1

apps

Very old version of vSphere

No ESXi security patches applied to remote

office servers

Audience feedback: what other risks?


20/29

Focus on a few requirements

Lets group this by the 3 main requirements:o Virtualize tier 1 servers

o Disaster recovery (DR)

o Remote office/branch office (RO/BO)

Well follow this general framework:

o Conceptualwhat do we want to doo Logical design options > Physical design


21/29

Focus on requirements: Tier 1 apps

P2V or rebuild?Use of VM

reservations/sharesDRS rules

Fault Tolerance vApps New hosts or re-useexisting?

vSphere licensing

impacts

vFlash to improve

existing SAN?

Re-use existing tier 1

DAS

Second SAN Cluster design Alarms/monitoring


22/29

Focus on requirements: RO/BO

Standardized VM

builds

Standardized

hardware

Centralized or

distributed workloads

App deliverymethodologies

Feasible to extendwarranty?

HCL

Enhanced vMotion

(better use of DAS)

Engineering/Sales

differences-similarities


23/29

Focus on requirements: DR

Which VMs

need DR?RPO/RTO

Rate of change vs.

WAN capacity

Active DR site vs.passive DR site

Re-use older RO/BOservers in DR?

DR capacityrequirements

Replication

techniquesLicensing Linked mode?

Base infrastructure

required (tier 0) SSO design impacts


24/29

Summary

Must view the design holistically

The design is driven by both functional &

non-functional requirements (constraints)

Consider the design principles (AMPRS)

Follow Conceptual > Logical > Physical

process

Understand design decision impacts andjustify choices


25/29

Plug for books

VMware vSphere

Design, 2nd Edition

Mastering VMware

vSphere 5.5


26/29

Questions?


27/29

THANK YOU


28/29


29/29

Examining vSphere Design Through

a Design Scenario

Forbes Guthrie, vReference

Scott Lowe, VMware

VSVC 995

#VSVC4995

Documents

Vsphere Design