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TRANSCRIPT
Germaine Bacon, Virtualization EngineerCarl Olafson, Staff Technical Account Manager
SER2507BU
#Vmworld #SER2507BU
VMware vSphere v6.5
A Customer’s Perspective on Migration Strategies
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• This presentation may contain product features that are currently under development.
• This overview of new technology represents no commitment from VMware to deliver these features in any generally available product.
• Features are subject to change, and must not be included in contracts, purchase orders, or sales agreements of any kind.
• Technical feasibility and market demand will affect final delivery.
• Pricing and packaging for any new technologies or features discussed or presented have not been determined.
Disclaimer
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Goals of Session and Customer Takeaway
This session draws from a presentation performed for VMUG (Los Angeles Chapter).
The Goals are based on the feedback from that session:
Demonstrate that other’s have successfully performed a migration.
Provide guidance on steps to a successful migration.
Provide real world example that customers can relate to.
The same is true for Customer Takeaways:
Have a plan. Without one, you will meander!
Know where to get Enablement to be successful with vSphere v6.5.
Break down the Migration process into manageable phases.
Share your experience with other’s so they may benefit as well.
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Agenda
– High Level Plan (Framework)
- Enablement
- Workshop
- Test Environment (Lab)
- Design
- Migration
– Putting it all together: Customer Use-Case
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High Level Plan
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High Level Plan
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It’s critical to have a Plan / Framework that helps you:
✓ Understand the Technology.✓ Scope the migration.✓ Identify key stakeholders.✓ Validate the Technology.✓ Develop a Design.✓ Implement the Design.✓ Repeat the process as new
features/versions are released.
Note: Based on your size, you may need to expand or collapse these high level building blocks.
Test
Environment
(Lab)
Enablement
Workshop
Design
Migration
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Enablement
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Enablement: VMware Product Landing Page and KB Articles
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The VMware vSphere v6.5 landing page has a considerable amount of content, including the product documentation. And Knowledge Base (KB) articles fill gaps between the documentation and “Real World” issues.
✓ Knowledge Base Articles – Global Support Services writes KBs to cover a plethora of topics where they document commonly occurring issues. If you are getting a specific error message, this is an excellent place to look.
Note: Most issues in your Production environment can be avoided by proper enablement and testing in a Test/Development environment.
Valuable Product Resources (Landing Page)
✓ Product Documentation remains a valuable resource (RTM).
✓ vSphere v6.5 Walkthrough is an excellent augmentation to
the product documentation.
✓ Release Notes – Too many people do not read this important
documentation.
✓ Product White Papers like the vSphere v6.5 What's New
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Enablement: Blogs/Communities and Hands-On Labs
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Blogs sites remain an excellent resource for enablement. And Hands-on Labs remains an excellent tool for Hands-On experience on VMware’s latest solutions.
Blog Sites/Community Forum
✓ The VMware vSphere Blog Site is an excellent starting point and has links to other blog categories.Two examples are:
- Emad Younis – vSphere v6.5 Upgrade Considerations Part-1- Emad Younis – vSphere v6.5 Upgrade Considerations Part-2
✓ The VMware Performance Blog Site is another favorite.✓ Post questions on the vSphere Communities Forum. Also utilize the many sub-forums.
Hands-on Labs – All 1800 Series labs are leveraging vSphere v6.5 with the Photon OS.
✓ Hands-On Labs Landing Page – Main landing page with launch buttons for Labs, Docs and Community Forum.✓ Hands-On Labs Lab Page -- Default filter is on the Focus Labs. Select All Labs to browse all available labs.✓ Hands-On Labs Document Page – Access to download all the manuals for current and previous year labs.
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Enablement: VMware Education / Certification
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Another valuable enablement resource is VMware EDU (MyLearn).
The starting point would be the VMware Education Landing Page. From here you can find:
✓ Instructor Led Classes
- Classroom- Live Online- Self-Paced- vFlex-ILT- Onsite
✓ The Learning Zone (60 Day Free Trial!)✓ Free Webcasts✓ Certifications
- Data Center Virtualization- Network Virtualization- Cloud Management and Automation- Desktop and Mobility
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Enablement: Summary
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I subscribe to a three pillar approach to enablement called:
Education augmented by Experience and backed by Certification
This section was not meant to be exhaustive, but to provide an enablement methodology which can be used separate from incorporating it into a Migration Strategy.
INPUTS:
✓ Out-of-Scope feature from a previous migration.✓ IT/Business drivers for deploying new Versions/Features.
OUTPUTS:
✓ Knowledge of Product Features✓ Experience with Product Features✓ Validation of Education/Experience via Certification
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Workshop
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Workshop: Overview
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Armed with knowledge, it’s critical to bring together key stakeholders and defines high level goals for your vSphere Migration. The person(s) that completed enablement will drive the conversation in the workshop. And the workshop can extend over multiple meetings. Some of the high level goals of the workshop meetings should be:
• Timeline for completing the Migration.• Scope for the Migration Environment (it can be iterative with scoping a specific environment for the first iteration).• Scope for the Features to be Deployed (PSC HA, vCenter HA, Auto Deploy, Encrypted vMotion, Host Profiles,
vCenter Content Library, and VM Encryption).• Scope for Interoperability with other Products/Suites.• Ensure you have Stakeholder involvement/support.
Note: The workshop can be very simple for an SMB (Small and Medium Business) with a single data center / vCenter to very complex for customers with multiple data centers across multiple regions. The more complex the more effort that will go into the initial workshop meeting(s).
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Workshop: Greenfield versus Brownfield
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One of the first steps should be determining the most appropriate deployment path for your Enterprise. Both Greenfield and Brownfield are valid paths.
Greenfield Benefits
✓ Opportunity to clean up design sprawl (Naming Conventions, Standardize design).✓ Reduce number of deployed vCenters.✓ Clean vCenter database.✓ Excellent method to get rid of outdated vSphere environments (vSphere v5.1 and older).✓ Probably the better path for older (vSphere v5.x or later) infrastructures that have been
repeatedly upgraded.
Brownfield Benefits
✓ Quicker upgrade path.✓ Migration tool available to move from vCenter (Windows) to vCenter (Appliance).✓ Probably the better path for newly deployed vSphere v5.5/v6.0 environments.
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VMware Update Manager
Improved Appliance Management
An all-new HA Solution that reduces RTO and is easy to configure. No dependency on expensive 3rd party database clustering solutions or RDMs while eliminating the single point of failure for vCenter Server.
VUM is now integrated into the vCenter Server Appliance. Simple, enabled by default, and removes the requirement for a separate Windows VM.An improved vCenter Server Appliance Management Interface (VAMI) brings more CPU, Memory, Network, and Database monitoring right into the UI. Reduces reliance on CLI for simple monitoring tasks.
Simplified backup and restore with a new native file-based solution. Restore the vCenter Server configuration to a fresh appliance and stream backups to external storage using HTTP, FTP, or SCP protocols.
Workshop: Appliance versus Windows Installable vCenter
Native High AvailabilityNative Backup /
Restore
-- Only available on the vCenter Server Appliance --
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Workshop: Miscellaneous
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As part of the workshop, you should build a list of questions that need to be answered. The list of questions will vary based on environment and tend to expand during the workshop. Here are some examples:
✓ Is there design documents/artifacts for your existing environment to leverage?✓ Is the infrastructure large enough to deploy a separate Management Cluster? This is a “Best Practice”.✓ How many vCenters to be deployed? The trend has been towards vCenter consolidation.✓ Are you extending an SSO domain across multiple datacenters or deploying more than two PSCs? If so, insure
you configure the PSCs in a ring topology.✓ Are you deploying your PSCs in an HA configuration? Insure you properly deploy a load balancer.✓ What vSphere features will be utilized in your version 6.5 design and need to be tested in a Lab?✓ Are you migrating on existing hardware or performing a parallel hardware upgrade? Either way, confirm hardware
is on the HCL (Hardware Compatibility List).✓ What other Products/Suites interact with vSphere and need to maintain compatibility. Backup software and the
VMware SDDC stack being examples.
Note: This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but will help with design considerations as you migrate to vSphere v6.5
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Workshop: Summary
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The workshop is merely a tool that helps scope and define efforts for the migration. There are no hard and fast rules on how to conduct these sessions. As you work with Stakeholders and Business Units you will need to answer the question “Why Upgrade”. The simple answer is if you are on vSphere v5.1 or below is supportability for Production workloads. However, as you scope features to deploy, you should also consider business relevance for the business workloads utilizing those features.
INPUTS:
✓ Knowledge of existing environment.✓ Knowledge of existing/new features of vSphere.✓ List of considerations to be discussed in the workshop.✓ Understanding of key Business drivers/initiatives that support the vSphere Migration.
OUTPUTS:
✓ Timeline for Migration.✓ Scope for Environment, Product/Features and interoperability with hardware and other software products/suites.✓ Stakeholder commitment.
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Test Environment (Lab)
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Test Environment (Lab): Criteria
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Building a development environment is a critical step to:
✓ Learning the new features / function of vSphere v6.5✓ Test / Validate features to be deployed in your environment✓ Determine deployment considerations / constraints✓ Document (Runbook) / Design your vSphere v6.5 environment
The test environment will need to be designed to accommodate the features to be test that were defined in the workshop. For Our environment the following features were important to test:
✓ VM Encryption✓ Auto Deploy✓ DRS Enhancements✓ PSC HA ✓ VMFS 5 to VMFS 6 Migration (Refer to KB 2147824)
Note: This is not an exhaustive list of features tested, but core features for our environment.
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Test Environment (Lab): Design
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Your test environment design will depend on your budget/environmental constraints. Based on your size, here are some lab designs to consider:
✓ Physical
✓ Best case scenario - Matching Production and Permanent!
✓ Worst case scenario: Transient hardware that supports vSphere 6.5
✓ Nested
✓ Increased hardware options by using ESXi v6.0 as the hypervisor to run the Nested workloads.
✓ Nested does introduce constraints including Performance limitations.
✓ Leverage blogs on Nested Virtualization from folks like William Lam
✓ Home Lab or Hands-on Labs
✓ These options are less than optimal, but some form of testing is recommended.
✓ If you have an interest in understanding Home Labs and Hands-on Labs, check out the HOL vs Home Labblog article.
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Test Environment (Lab): Test Plan
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The critical step of the Test Environment phase is building a Test Plan. The Test Plan is critical for building the scenarios you want to test for the features to be deployed in Production. Some examples are:
PSC High Availability
✓ Deploy and configure two PSCs with a load balancer.
✓ Test PSC failure and recovery.
vCenter High Availability
✓ Deploy vCenter HA using the wizard.
✓ Test vCenter failure and recovery.
VM Encryption
✓ Set up and configure 3rd Party KMS (Key Management Server),
✓ Copy Encrypted VM to isolated ESXi host and test encryption.
Note: The level of testing will be constrained based on how closely the Test Environment mimics your production environment.
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Test Environment (Lab): Summary
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We discussed various labs available from SMB to Enterprise. The primary goal of your lab is to reduce risk in your production environment. The lab provides an environment to test feature viability and stability.
INPUTS:
✓ Product/Features to be tested✓ Stakeholder commitment (Lab Budget)
OUTPUTS:
✓ Features to implement ✓ Feature Configuration: Settings/Assumptions/Risks/Constraints✓ Print Screens for RunbookVMworld 2017 Content: N
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Design
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Design: Topologies
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Although this phase is called “Design”, the term is very loose and represents documenting the migration process and key configuration/design changes. The critical starting point for this phase is topology, as supported topologies have changed in vSphere v6.5. KB 2147672 is an excellent article covering the supported topologies in vSphere v6.5.
✓Embedded (Good for customers with single site, single vCenter)
✓ Once Embedded is selected, you cannot transition to External.
✓ Simplest deployment topology.
✓ External (Good for larger, multi-vCenter sites customers)
✓ Allows for Enhanced Link Mode.
✓ Most Flexible Topology to support complex environments.
✓ Fault Tolerance
✓ External PSC required for PSC High Availability (HA).
✓ vCenter HA supported in both Embedded and External models.
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Design: Hardware
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Since we are focused on a migration, the considerations will vary based on whether there is a parallel hardware refresh. The level of effort will vary based on the size/complexity of the environment. Key hardware considerations that are answered in this phase fall into three areas:
✓Compute (CPU/Memory)
✓ Do you need to leverage Enhanced vMotion Compatibility mode (EVC)?
✓ Do you have sufficient capacity to migrate workloads or perform rolling upgrades?
✓ Disk
✓ Have you addressed VMFS 5 to VMFS 6 migrations (in-place upgrade not possible)?
✓ Do you have sufficient capacity to migrate workloads or perform a rolling upgrade of your storage?
✓ Networking
✓ Are you addressing vNIC driver consistency in your environment? This may be an opportunity to upgrade old E1000 vNICs.
Note: The list above was not meant to be exhaustive but gives some buckets (Compute-Disk-Network) to think about and insure you are addressing all hardware concerns for the migration.
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Design: Documenting Features
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Much of this should have come from the Lab Environment phase, where you documented the Configuration / Risks / Constraints / Assumptions for the feature. Using DRS as an example:
Configuration
✓DRS will be enabled for all Clusters regardless of workload type.
✓DRS Automation level will be set to Fully Automated for all Clusters.
✓All other setting will be left as “default”.
Risks
✓Without enabling Predictive DRS and/or Workload Placement (vROps), DRS is “Reactive”.
Constraints
✓ vRealize Operations integration is “Out-of-Scope” for the initial migration.
Assumptions
✓Network-Aware DRS feature will assist in deterring VM migrations to network saturated hypervisors.
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Design: Migration Plan
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This section of the phase is focused on documenting the “What”, “Who” and “When” for all for the components affected during the migration. Based on the size/complexity of the environment, this can become very detailed/lengthy and cross organizational boundaries within the Enterprise. Using ESXiHypervisors as a example:
What: ESXi Hypervisor
✓ Determine if the effort will be a rolling upgrade and the number of hosts within a
single cluster that can be simultaneously in maintenance mode.
✓ Determine if there is any related features/components, like configuring Auto
Deploy and converting ESXi hosts to Auto Deploy.
Who: ESXi Hypervisor
✓ Assign the appropriate resource and insure they are armed with the necessary
enablement and runbook (if applicable).
When: ESXi Hypervisor
✓ Define if the effort requires a maintenance window and open a maintenance
request for the specified window.
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Design: Summary
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The primary goal of this phase is to take all the knowledge from the Enablement, Workshop and Lab Environment phases and document the results. This documentation become critical for defining items that were deemed “Out-of-Scope”.
INPUTS:
✓ Features to be implemented.✓ Feature Configuration: Settings/Assumptions/Risks/Constraints.✓ Print Screens for Runbook.
OUTPUTS:
✓ Design Document.✓ Run Books for repetitive functions like the ESXi build/upgrade leveraging Auto Deploy.✓ Migration Plan.
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Migration
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Migration: Global Support Services (GSS)
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With a solid understanding of the technology and a well thought out design/plan, it is time to implement. One of the most critical resources during this phase is VMware Global Support Services (GSS). Opening Support Requests as issues are encountered will help reduce the meantime to resolution.
VMware GSS has four levels of Support:✓ Basic✓ Production✓ Business Critical Support (BCS)✓ Mission Critical Support (MCS)
Highlight: VMware GSS Premiere Services (BCS/MCS)
✓ Premiere Services is focused on being Strategic/Proactive.✓ Numerous “Proactive” SRs were opened for the vSphere v6.5 Migration to:
- Review Best Practices.- Have another pair of eyes review high level steps.- Troubleshoot issues encountered when deploying new features and migration to v6.5.
Note: I highly recommend leveraging the Technical Support Guide. This document outlines Best Practices for initiating and managing the entire Support Request process.
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Migration: VMware Professional Services / Partners
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This customer has leveraged VMware Professional Services and Partners for other engagements, but they have completed the majority of vSphere upgrades internally. Based on your company’s size consider consulting services to augment your staff.
Highlight: VMware PSO Technical Account Manager
✓ Part of the Professional Services Organization and an advocate for their customer(s).✓ A strategic partnership that focuses on accelerating IT / Business initiatives.✓ Proactive/Strategic Resource to help with all things VMware.✓ For the vSphere v6.5 Migration:
- Helped develop the High Level Plan utilized for the migration.- Facilitated Enablement by providing documentation, running Lunch-n-Learns and elicitingguidance from VMware SMEs.
- Participated in Workshops.- Provided feedback on Design considerations.- Assisting with Migration efforts
Note: The best advice I can give is understand resource constraints and pull in the necessary resources for a successful migration. This can be as simple as leverage Offshore resources for the actual ESXi upgrades.
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Migration: Summary
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This section focused on things to help make your Migration successful. For a migration, the biggest constraint is usually resources to complete the steps in the Migration Plan. The migration progress started with a Greenfield deployment of new vCenters and the associated PSCs across multiple Data Centers with a single SSO domain. Next, features were configured. And finally ESXi hosts were migrated into the new vCenters.
INPUTS:
✓ Design Document.✓ Run Books for repetitive functions like the ESXi build/upgrade leveraging Auto Deploy.✓ Migration Plan.
OUTPUTS:
✓ Completed vSphere v6.5 environment!✓ Amended Design Document (covering any last minute changes).✓ Amended Run Books (covering any last minute changes).✓ Stakeholder sign-off that the Migration was completed to their satisfaction.
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Putting it all together!
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Putting it all together: Customer Use-Case
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Scenario:
After completing Phase 1 “Enablement”, we began Phase 2 “Workshop”. In this phase we encountered an existing vSphere v4.1 environment with a stakeholder requirement of “zero downtime” for the migration. Since vSphere v4.1 was not compatible with vSphere v6.5 for a live migration, this environment was deemed out of scope for the version 6.5 migration and spun off as a separate migration to vSphere v5.5 (highest version compatible with version 4.1). Here is how the 5 phases applied to the vSphere v4.1 to v5.5 migration sub-project.
Phase 1 – Enablement
• Consulted Interoperability Matrix to confirm ESX to vCenter compatibility.• Consulted Hardware Compatibility Matrix to confirm hardware support for ESXi v5.1.
Phase 2 – Workshop
• Identified vSphere v5.5 environment with required VLANs and suitable capacity.• Developed High Level migration strategy, including vDS to vSS reconfiguration.• Opened an MCS Support Request for a “Peer Review”.
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Putting it all together: Customer Use-Case (continued)
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Phase 3 – Test Environment (Lab)
• VMware Technical Account Manager leveraged One Cloud (internal VMware lab much like Hands-On Labs) to deploy a parallel vSphere v4.1 and v5.5 Test Environment.
• The Lab Test included the following steps:- Demote all vDS to vSS in the vCenter v4.1 environment.- Disconnect and reconnect ESXi hosts (and running VMs) to the v5.5 vCenter in a new cluster.- Decommission vCenter v4.1- Upgrade one ESXi v4.1 host to vSphere v5.1 as a “swing” host.- Migrate running VMs from v4.1 hosts to v5.1 swing host- Migrate running VMs from v5.1 swing host to v5.5 swing host w/ vSS switches- Migrate VMs back to vDS and migrate to permanent host- Decommission the ESXi v4.1 hosts.
Phase 4 – Design
• Formalized Migration plan based on the Workshop and Test Environment phases.
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Putting it all together: Customer Use-Case (continued)
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Phase 5 – Migration
The rubber meets the road when you perform the plan in the wild!
• All of the steps through Upgrade one ESXi v4.1 host to vSphere v5.1 as a “swing” host were successful in the Production environment.
• We did encounter some minor host issues during the ESXi v4.1 vDS to vSS reconfiguration and host reboots, but all issues were resolvable. The Host Reboot turned out to be a valuable step uncovered via “Peer” review.
• Ultimately issues were encountered with VMs migrating from v4.1 hosts to the v5.1 swing host. Global Support Services (GSS) attempted “Best Effort”, but in the end we had VMs on 2 out of 10 ESXi v4.1 hosts that would not budge and would require a “Powered Off” migration. The stakeholder was informed and a maintenance window was scheduled for the remaining VMs.
• The migration was wrapped up by confirming with the stakeholder that he was satisfied with the outcome.
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What we hope you got from this session…
Migrations in the real world are rarely perfect, so what defines a successful migration? For this customer they:
✓ Deployed a new vSphere PSC/vCenter Topology on vSphere v6.5 that included PSC HA, vCenter Appliances replacing Windows vCenters and Enhanced Link mode across multiple data centers
✓ Configured and Deployed features validated in a Lab Environment
✓ Utilize supported ESXi versions (vSphere v5.5 or higher)
✓ Received Stakeholder sign-off
Have a plan. Even if you don’t utilize the High Level Plan discussed, take the components that make sense for your environment and craft a repeatable process. This will not be your last migration!
No plan is ever set in stone. Learn from your migration effort and others to refine the methodology/process/framework for future iterations.
Knowledge is King. Leverage available enablement, so your deployment is optimized for your environment and you are leveraging features that are helping with IT/Business Initiatives.
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