student study guide - vtsp 5.5.docx

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Student Study Guide – VTSP 5.5

Studen t Study Guid e - VTSP 5.5

VMware

Technical Solutions Professional Student Study Guide - VTSP 5.5



VTSP 5.5 - Student Study Guide

VTSP 5.5

Course 1 ....................................................................................................................... 10

Module 1: vSphere Overview ..................................................................................... 10

vSphere Product Overview ........................................................................................ 10

Course Objectives ...................................................................................................... 11

vSphere Overview ...................................................................................................... 12

Module 1 Objectives .................................................................................................. 13

VMware Vision ........................................................................................................... 14

vSphere 5.5 Architecture ........................................................................................... 16

vSphere 5.5 Virtualization Layer ................................................................................ 18

Physical Topology of a vSphere 5.5 Data Center ...................................................... 19

Introduction to vSOM ................................................................................................. 20

vSphere with Operations Manager Overview ............................................................. 21

vCenter Operations Manager: Quick Facts ................................................................ 27

Learn More: vSOM Training ....................................................................................... 33

Module Summary ....................................................................................................... 35

Module 2: vSphere Infrastructure and Hypervisor Components ............................ 36

vSphere Infrastructure and Hypervisor Components ................................................. 36

Module 2 Objectives .................................................................................................. 37

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere vMotion ...................................................... 38

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Storage vMotion ........................................ 39

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere High Availability ......................................... 40

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Fault Tolerance .......................................... 42

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere DRS ........................................................... 43

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Storage DRS ............................................. 44

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere DPM ........................................................... 45

vSphere Replication ................................................................................................... 46

vSphere Networking – Network Architecture.............................................................. 47

vSphere Networking – vSphere Standard Switches ................................................... 48

vSphere Networking – vSphere Distributed Switches ................................................ 49

Network I/O Control: An Overview ............................................................................. 50

vSphere Storage Architecture .................................................................................... 51

Virtual Machine File System....................................................................................... 52

Virtual Disks ............................................................................................................... 53

Storage I/O Control .................................................................................................... 54





vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 Architecture ......................................................................... 55

Licensing Requirements for vSphere features ........................................................... 57

Module Summary ....................................................................................................... 58

Module 3: Mapping vSphere Capabilities to Solutions ............................................ 59

Module Overview ....................................................................................................... 60

OPEX Savings Scenario ............................................................................................ 61

Shared Access Optimization Scenario ....................................................................... 64

Migrating to 10Gb Ethernet Scenario ......................................................................... 67

Data Recovery (DR) Scenario .................................................................................... 70

Business Critical Systems Scenario ........................................................................... 73

Course Review ........................................................................................................... 76

Course 2 ....................................................................................................................... 77

VTSP V5.5 Course 2: VMware vSphere: vCenter ...................................................... 77

Course Objectives ...................................................................................................... 78

Module 1: vCenter Overview - Features and Topology ............................................ 79

Module Objectives ..................................................................................................... 80

What is VMware vCenter? ......................................................................................... 81

vCenter Installable and vCenter Appliance ................................................................ 83

vCenter's Components and Connectivity ................................................................... 85

vCenter License Versions .......................................................................................... 88

vSphere Client User Interface Options ....................................................................... 91

vCenter Infrastructure Management Features Overview ........................................... 94

Perfmon DLL in VMware Tools ................................................................................ 105

vCenter Statistics & Database Size Calculator ........................................................ 107

Finding and Retrieving Logs .................................................................................... 109

vCenter Support Assistant ....................................................................................... 110

Fill in the missing Components ................................................................................ 111

Which Client? ........................................................................................................... 112

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 113

Course2 Module 2: vCenter Server Design Constraints ........................................ 114

Module Objectives ................................................................................................... 115

Configuration Maximums for vCenter ....................................................................... 116

Customer requirements for multiple sites ................................................................. 117

Databases ................................................................................................................ 119




VTSP 5.5

Directory Services .................................................................................................... 121

Web Client Server .................................................................................................... 123

Network Connectivity Requirements ........................................................................ 124

Required Ports - vCenter Sever ............................................................................... 125

Plugin and Add-Ons ................................................................................................. 126

Service and Server Resilience ................................................................................. 128

vCenter Server Heartbeat ........................................................................................ 130

Environment Scaling for vCenter Server .................................................................. 133

Knowledge Check - vCenter Multisite Configuration ................................................ 136

vCenter Database Selection .................................................................................... 137

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 139

Course 2 Module 3: vCenter Scalability Features and Benefits ........................... 140


Presenting vMotion .................................................................................................. 142

Presenting HA .......................................................................................................... 144

Presenting DRS ....................................................................................................... 146

Presenting DPM ....................................................................................................... 148

Presenting FT .......................................................................................................... 149

Presenting Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS).................................. 150

Presenting Host Profiles .......................................................................................... 152

Presenting Storage Profiles ..................................................................................... 153

Distributed Virtual Switches ..................................................................................... 155

Auto Deploy ............................................................................................................. 157

Planned Maintenance .............................................................................................. 160

vSphere Standard License ....................................................................................... 161

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 162

Course 3 ..................................................................................................................... 163

VTSP V5.5 Course 3: VMware vSphere: VM Management ..................................... 163

Course 3 Objectives ................................................................................................. 164

Module 1: Virtual Machine Architecture .................................................................. 165

Module 1 Objectives ................................................................................................ 166

What is a virtual machine? ....................................................................................... 167

Virtual Machine Hardware ........................................................................................ 170

Configuration Maximums ......................................................................................... 172





Virtual Machine Licensing Considerations ............................................................... 174

Core Virtual Machine Files ....................................................................................... 176

Knowledge Check: VM Configuration Maximums .................................................... 179

VMware Tools .......................................................................................................... 180

Using Operations Manager for Better Performance and Capacity Utilization ........... 182

Customizing Virtual Machine Settings ...................................................................... 184

NCIS ........................................................................................................................ 185

vRAM ....................................................................................................................... 187

CPUs ....................................................................................................................... 189

SCSI ........................................................................................................................ 190

Knowledge Check: Virtual Machine Customization .................................................. 192

Hot Extending Virtual Disks ...................................................................................... 193

Hot-adding Hardware ............................................................................................... 194

Hot-Add CPU and Memory ...................................................................................... 198

VMDirectPath I/O Generation .................................................................................. 199

Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) Support ...................................................... 201

Raw Device Mapping (RDM) Overview .................................................................... 203

Knowledge Check: Core Virtual Machine Files ........................................................ 204

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 205

Module 2: Copying and Migrating Virtual Machines .............................................. 206


Templates ................................................................................................................ 208

Template Contents ................................................................................................... 209

Cloning a Virtual Machine ........................................................................................ 210

Cloned VMs and Templates Compared ................................................................... 211

Knowledge Check: VM Templates ........................................................................... 212

Snapshots: An Overview .......................................................................................... 213

What is captured in a Snapshot? ............................................................................. 214

Snapshot Relationships in a Linear Process ............................................................ 216

Snapshot Relationships in a Process Tree .............................................................. 217

Best Practices for VM Snapshots ............................................................................. 218

Knowledge Check: VM Snapshot Best Practices ..................................................... 220

Options for Moving a Virtual Machine ...................................................................... 221

Importing and Exporting ........................................................................................... 223




VTSP 5.5

Migration Overview .................................................................................................. 225

Cold Migration .......................................................................................................... 226

vMotion Migration ..................................................................................................... 227

Designing for vMotion .............................................................................................. 228

Storage vMotion ....................................................................................................... 230

Storage vMotion Uses .............................................................................................. 231

Storage vMotion Design Requirements and Limitations .......................................... 232

Enhanced vMotion ................................................................................................... 233

Microsoft Cluster Services Support .......................................................................... 236

Knowledge Check: Storage Design Requirements for Migration ............................. 239

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 240

Module 3: vSphere Replication and vSphere Update Manager ............................. 241


Why should a customer consider vSphere Replication? .......................................... 243

vSphere Replication ................................................................................................. 245

Replication Appliance .............................................................................................. 247

vSphere 5.5 Replication Server Appliances ............................................................. 248

Replication Design Requirements and Limitations ................................................... 250

What is vSphere Data Protection (VDP)? ................................................................ 253

What is vSphere Data Protection (VDP) Advanced? ............................................... 255

VDP Advanced Key Components ............................................................................ 257

VDP Advanced Implementation ............................................................................... 258

Upsell to VDP Advanced .......................................................................................... 261

Update Manager: An Overview ................................................................................ 262

Update Manager Components ................................................................................. 264

Knowledge Check: Update Manager Components .................................................. 266

Knowledge Check: VDP Advanced Implementation ................................................ 267

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 268

Course 4 ..................................................................................................................... 269

VTSP V5.5 Course 4: VMware vSphere: vNetworks ............................................... 269

Module 1: vSphere Networks Overview ................................................................... 271


Data Center Networking Architecture ....................................................................... 273

vSphere Networking Overview ................................................................................. 276





Standard Switch Architecture ................................................................................... 277

Virtual Switch Connection Examples ....................................................................... 282

Distributed Switch .................................................................................................... 283

Distributed Switch Architecture ................................................................................ 284

Third-Party Distributed Switches .............................................................................. 288

Network Health check .............................................................................................. 289

Network Health Check: Knowledge Check .............................................................. 291

Export and Restore .................................................................................................. 292

Automatic Rollback .................................................................................................. 293

Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) ............................................................... 295

Distributed Switches Versus Standard Switches ...................................................... 298

Migrating to Distributed Virtual Switches .................................................................. 301

Specific Licensing Requirements ............................................................................. 303

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 304

Module 2: vSphere Networks: Advanced Features ................................................ 305

Private VLANs: Overview ......................................................................................... 307

Private VLANs: Architecture ..................................................................................... 308

Private VLANs: An Example .................................................................................... 310

VLAN limitations ....................................................................................................... 313

Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN) ...................................................... 315

VXLAN Sample Scenario ......................................................................................... 317

Load Balancing and Failover Policies ...................................................................... 319

Load Balancing Policies ........................................................................................... 321

Traffic Filtering ......................................................................................................... 326

Differentiated Service Code Point Marking .............................................................. 328

Failover Policies ....................................................................................................... 330

Network I/O Control ................................................................................................. 336

Network I/O Control Features .................................................................................. 338

Course 5 ..................................................................................................................... 353

VTSP 5.5 Course 5 vStorage .................................................................................... 353

Course Objectives .................................................................................................... 354

Module 1: vSphere vStorage Architecture .............................................................. 355


The vStorage Architecture - Overview ..................................................................... 357




VTSP 5.5

Virtual Machine Storage ........................................................................................... 359

LUN, Volume, and Datastore ................................................................................... 360

Virtual Machine Contents Resides in a Datastore .................................................... 362

Types of Datastores ................................................................................................. 363

VMFS Volume .......................................................................................................... 365

NFS Volumes ........................................................................................................... 367

New vSphere Flash Read Cache ............................................................................. 369

Storage Approaches ................................................................................................ 374

Isolated Storage or a Consolidated Pool of Storage? .............................................. 378

Virtual Machine and Host Storage Requirements .................................................... 380

VMDK Types – Thick and Thin Provisioning ............................................................ 383

vSphere Thin Provisioning at Array and Virtual Disk Level ...................................... 389

Planning for Swap Space, Snapshots and Thin Provisioning................................... 390

Storage Considerations ........................................................................................... 392

Space Utilization-Related Issues ............................................................................. 394

Raw Device Mapping ............................................................................................... 397

RDM Compatibility Modes........................................................................................ 398

Uses for RDMs ......................................................................................................... 399

Functionality Supported Using Larger VMDK and vRDMS ...................................... 400

VMDirectPath I/O ..................................................................................................... 401

iSCSI Storage Area Networks .................................................................................. 404

Network Attached Storage - NAS ............................................................................. 406

VSA Enables Storage High Availability (HA) ............................................................ 407

VSA 5.5 Capacity ..................................................................................................... 409

Running vCenter on the VSA Cluster ....................................................................... 410

Drive Types .............................................................................................................. 411

Storage Tradeoffs .................................................................................................... 418

Design Limits - Knowledge Check ........................................................................... 420

Virtual Storage Types - Knowledge Check .............................................................. 421

Thick Provisioning - Knowledge Check .................................................................... 422

Usable Capacity - Knowledge Check ....................................................................... 423

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 424

Module 2: Advanced Features for Availability and Performance .......................... 425






Pluggable Storage Architecture ............................................................................... 427

Processing I/O Requests ......................................................................................... 428

Extending PSA ......................................................................................................... 429

Knowledge Check - PSA .......................................................................................... 431

Multipathing .............................................................................................................. 432

FC Multipathing ........................................................................................................ 433

iSCSI Multipathing ................................................................................................... 434

Storage I/O Resource Allocation .............................................................................. 436

Datastore Cluster Requirements .............................................................................. 439

vSphere Storage APIs - Storage Awareness (VASA) .............................................. 445

Knowledge Check - Storage Vendor Providers ........................................................ 447

Profile-Driven Storage .............................................................................................. 448

Knowledge Check - Storage I/O Control .................................................................. 450

Module 3: Determining Proper Storage Architecture ............................................. 453


Performance and Capacity Scenario ....................................................................... 455

Snapshots, SDRS, Templates Scenario .................................................................. 459

Which Solution to Offer ............................................................................................ 462

Module Summary ..................................................................................................... 464




VTSP 5.5

Course 1

Module 1: vSphere Overview

vSphere Product Overview

Welcome to the VTSP 5.5 Course 1 - VMware vSphere Product Overview. There are 3modules in this course as shown here..





Course Objectives

At the end of this course you should be able to:

• Provide an overview of vSphere 5.5 and its new features.• Describe the physical and virtual topologies of a vSphere 5.5 Data Center and

explain the relationship between the physical components and the vSphereVirtual Infrastructure.

• Describe the features and capabilities of vSphere and explain their key benefitsfor a customer.

• Describe the vSphere Hypervisor Architecture and explain its key features,capabilities and benefits.

• Map vSphere Components to Solution Benefits and identify Value Propositions.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Overview

This is module 1, vSphere Overview. These are the topics that will be covered in thismodule.





Module 1 Objectives

At the end of this module you should be able to:

• Provide an overview of vSphere as part of VMware‟s Vision and CloudInfrastructure Solution

• Describe the physical and virtual topologies of a vSphere 5.5 Data Center• Provide an overview of vCenter Operations Manager.• Describe the vApp architecture of vCenter Operations Manager.




VTSP 5.5

VMware Vision

Before we discuss VMware Architecture, let's familiarize ourselves with the VMwarevision.

Our vision is to be efficient, automate quality of service, and have independent choices.We aim to reduce capital and operational costs by over 50% for all applications,automate quality of service, and remain independent of hardware, operating systems,application stacks, and service providers.





VMware Vision At VMware, our goal is to help businesses and governments move beyond “IT as a CostCenter” to a more business-centric “IT as a Service” model. This new model of ITcreates improved approaches at each critical layer of a modern IT architecture:

Infrastructure, Applications, and End-User Access.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere 5.5 Architecture

Now, let's look at vSphere 5.5 Architecture components and services, and how thesecomponents fit into an existing data center environment.

Being a cloud operating system, vSphere 5.5 virtualizes the entire IT infrastructure -servers, storage, and networks. It groups these heterogeneous resources andtransforms the rigid, inflexible infrastructure into a simple and unified manageable set ofelements in the virtualized environment.Logically, vSphere 5.5 comprises three layers: virtualization, management, andinterface layers.

The Virtualization layer of vSphere 5.5 includes two service types:

• Infrastructure Services such as compute, storage, and network services abstract,aggregate, and allocate hardware or infrastructure resources. Examples include

but are not limited to VMFS and Distributed Switch.• Application Services are the set of services provided to ensure availability,

security, and scalability for applications. Examples include but are not limited toVMware vSphere High Availability (HA) and VMware Fault Tolerance (FT).

The Management layer of vSphere 5.5 consists of the vCenter Server, which acts as acentral point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtualized IT environments.

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The Interface layer of vSphere 5.5 is comprised of clients that allow a user to access thevSphere Data Center, for example, vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere 5.5 Virtualization Layer

Next, let's discuss the vSphere 5.5 Virtualization Layer.

vSphere 5.5 virtualizes and aggregates resources including servers, storage, and

networks and presents a uniform set of elements in the virtual environment. WithvSphere 5.5, you can manage IT resources like a shared utility and dynamicallyprovision resources to different business units and projects.

The vSphere 5.5 Virtual Data Center consists of:

• Computing and memory resources called hosts, clusters, and resource pools.• Storage resources called datastores and datastore clusters.• Networking resources called standard virtual switches and distributed virtual

switches.• vSphere Distributed Services such as vSphere vMotion, vSphere Storage

vMotion, vSphere DRS, vSphere Storage DRS, Storage I/O Control, VMware HA,

and FT that enable efficient and automated resource management and highavailability for virtual machines.

• And virtual machines.These features are discussed in Module 2.

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Physical Topology of a vSphere 5.5 Data Center

A typical vSphere 5.5 datacenter consists of basic physical building blocks such as x86computing servers, storage networks and arrays, IP networks, a management server,

and desktop clients. It includes the following components:• Compute Servers: The computing servers are industry standard x86 servers that

run ESXi 5.5 on the bare metal. The ESXi 5.5 software provides resources forand runs the virtual machines.

• Storage Networks and Arrays: Fibre Channel Storage Area Network (FC SAN)arrays, iSCSI (Internet Small Computer System Interface) SAN arrays, andNetwork Attached Storage (NAS) arrays are widely used storage technologiessupported by vSphere 5.5 to meet different datacenter storage needs.

• IP Networks: Each compute server can have multiple physical network adaptersto provide high bandwidth and reliable networking to the entire vSpheredatacenter.

• vCenter Server: vCenter Server provides a single point of control to thedatacenter. It provides essential datacenter services, such as access control,performance monitoring, and configuration. It unifies the resources from theindividual computing servers to be shared among virtual machines in the entiredatacenter.

• Management Clients: vSphere 5.5 provides several interfaces such as vSphereClient and vSphere Web Client for datacenter management and virtual machineaccess.

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VTSP 5.5

Introduction to vSOM

The vSphere Management market is extremely large. More than 50 percent of physicalservers have been virtualized and more than 80% of virtualized environments are usingvSphere.

That 80 percent adds up to about 25 million unmanaged hosts.

This is a massive opportunity for vSphere with Operations Management.

This system combines the benefits of the world‟s best virtualization platform, vSphere,with the functionality of vCenter Operations Manager Standard Edition. vCenterOperations Manager delivers more value to customers through operational insight intothe virtual environment for monitoring and performance, as well as optimized capacitymanagement.

vCenter Operations Manager is an integral part of vSphere with OperationsManagement. It is available as part of the Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise plusversions of vSphere with Operations Management.

Now let‟s explore vCenter Operations Management in more detail.





vSphere with Operations Manager Overview

In today‟s complex environments, operations management personnel needmanagement tools to enable the journey towards the private cloud, self-service, and IT

as a service. While they are being pushed to raise availability and performance,organizations need to reduce cost and complexity.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere with Operations Manager Overview A classic reactive approach - to monitor, isolate, and remediate based on issues - nolonger meets today‟s needs.





vSphere with Operations Manager OverviewModern operations management solutions need a proactive approach to reduce thenumber of false alerts, lower incidents, raise visibility and increase control over theenvironment.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere with Operations Manager OverviewIn today‟s complex environments, operations management personnel needmanagement tools to enable the journey towards the private cloud, self-service, and ITas a service. While they are being pushed to raise availability and performance,organizations need to reduce cost and complexity.

A classic reactive approach - to monitor, isolate, and remediate based on issues - nolonger meets today‟s needs.

Modern operations management solutions need a proactive approach to reduce thenumber of false alerts, lower incidents, raise visibility and increase control over theenvironment.

Let‟s take a look at how this affects a current performance issue. A performance issuecan be caused through a problem in a vApp, a datastore or network I/O. Alternatively, aVMware vSphere cluster itself might be causing poor performance. This implies thereare dozens, or even hundreds of metrics to analyze.





vSphere with Operations Manager OverviewIn today‟s complex environments, operations management personnel needmanagement tools to enable the journey towards the private cloud, self-service, and ITas a service. While they are being pushed to raise availability and performance,

organizations need to reduce cost and complexity. A classic reactive approach - to monitor, isolate, and remediate based on issues - nolonger meets today‟s needs.

Modern operations management solutions need a proactive approach to reduce thenumber of false alerts, lower incidents, raise visibility and increase control over theenvironment.

Let‟s take a look at how this affects a current performance issue. A performance issuecan be caused through a problem in a vApp, a datastore or network I/O. Alternatively, aVMware vSphere cluster itself might be causing poor performance. This implies thereare dozens, or even hundreds of metrics to analyze.

By using its patented analytics engine, vCenter Operations Manager gives theoperations administrator the ability to combine all these metrics into a single view in theeasy-to-use vCenter Operations Manager dashboard. With the help of this acceleratedinformation, administrators can use Smart Alerts to reduce the number of fault alerts.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere with Operations Manager OverviewVMware‟s approach to management helps administrators to become more proactive,instead of reactive to issues. Administrators can identify many potential issues ahead oftime with planning, optimization and automation. Based on this modern toolkit,administrators can fulfill the demand of the organization‟s CIO to improve availability

and performance while reducing cost and complexity.





vCenter Operations Manager: Quick Facts

In virtual and cloud environments, the relationships between performance, capacity,costs and configuration become intricately linked.

Configurations are fluid, while capacity is shared and sourced from many places, suchas multiple providers, infrastructure tiers, and so on. All of these moving parts canimpact performance.

This means that customers need visibility across the system and analytics to figure outwhat is important from the torrent of data produced. All customers benefit from a moreintegrated, automated approach to operations management.

The user gets an integrated solution using vSphere with Operations Manager, throughmanagement dashboards and smart alerts, that allows proactive management for day-to-day operating and support.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Operations Manager: Quick Facts A process of permanently monitoring and analyzing data collection helps to identifyperformance problems, support automated root cause analysis, and delivers informationfor capacity and efficiency optimizations.





vCenter Operations Manager: Quick FactsThere are other vendor solutions, but vCenter Operations Manager stands apart.

vCenter Operations Manager differs from other vendor solutions through patentedperformance analytics.

These include self-learning of normal behavior; service health baseline; trending; andsmart alerts of impending performance degradation.

vCenter Operations Manager provides automated capacity planning and analysis:designed for vSphere and built for the cloud.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Operations Manager 5.7: vApp ArchitectureThe vCenter Operations Manager vApp consists of two virtual machines. Both of thesevirtual machines are auto-connected through OpenVPN, which delivers a highly-secured data channel.

The Analytics virtual machine is responsible for collecting data from vCenter Server,vCenter Configuration Manager, and third party data sources such as metrics, topologyand change events. This raw data is stored in its scalable File System Database(FSDB).

The analytics engines for capacity and performance periodically process this raw dataand store the results in their respective Postgres or FSDB databases.

Users can access the results of the analytics, in the form of badges and scores, throughthe WebApps of the UI virtual machine.

Before deploying the vCenter Operations Manager vApp, you must be aware of therequirements for both virtual machines. You need to take into account the environment

size, landscape and complexity.

These requirements differ with the total amount of monitored resources and collectedmetrics, which influence the amount of vCPU, memory and Disk Storage required.

The Analytics virtual machine also requires a certain amount of IOPS.

In larger environments, collecting all metrics from one or more vCenter Servers mightgenerate performance issues in vCenter Operations Manager. vCenter Operations





Manager 5.7 includes the new Metrics Profile feature that allows a subset to be chosenfrom metrics collected from vCenter Server.

By default, this feature is set to Full Profile, meaning that all metrics from all registeredvCenter Servers are collected. The Balanced Profile setting ensures that only the mostvital metrics from vCenter Server are collected.

The Full Profile allows for 5 million metrics to be collected and the Balanced Profileallows for 2.2 million metrics.

For larger deployments, you may need to add additional disks to the vApp.

vCenter Operations Manager is only compatible with certain web browsers and vCenterServer versions.

For vApp compatibility and requirements you should consult the vApp Deployment andConfiguration Guide.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Operations Manager 5.7: High Level ArchitectureThe vCenter Operations Manager vApp collects data from many different sources suchas VMware vCenter Server, VMware vCenter Configuration Manager, or VMwarevCloud Director.

The vCenter Operations Manager Analytics virtual machine processes the collecteddata, and presents the results through the UI virtual machine.

Possible user interfaces are the vCenter Operations Manager vSphere UI and vCenterOperations Manager Custom UI - which is only available in the Advanced andEnterprise editions.

vCenter Operations Manager also features an Admin UI to perform administrative tasks.

As discussed previously, the monitored resources and collected metrics require certaincomputing resources. These should be taken into account when deploying the vApp.

vCenter Operations Manager is designed as an enterprise solution, so planning andpreparing your environment is critical to successful deployment.

Environment size, landscape, and complexity need to be taken into account.

The vCenter Operations Manager Architecture needs to take into account how large theenvironment is, including the numbers of applications, data sources, resources andmetrics, the physical environment distribution and the number of users.

You also need to know which specific architectural and service level requirements mustbe met, including security, availability, and accessibility.





Learn More: vSOM Training

To learn more about vCenter Operations Manager, visit the VMware Partner UniversitySite or the VMware Partner Mobile Knowledge Portal for iPad or Android Devices.




VTSP 5.5

Learn More: vSOM Training





Module Summary

This concludes module 1, vSphere Overview.

Now that you have completed this module, you should be able to:

• Provide an overview of vSphere as part of VMware‟s Vision and CloudInfrastructure Solution

• Describe the physical and virtual topologies of a vSphere 5.5 Data Center• Provide an overview of vCenter Operations Manager• Describe the vApp architecture for vCenter Operations Manager




VTSP 5.5

Module 2: vSphere Infrastructure and Hypervisor Components

vSphere Infrastructure and Hypervisor Components

This is module 2, vSphere Infrastructure and Hypervisor Components.

These are the topics that will be covered in this module.





Module 2 Objectives

At the end of this module you will be able to:

Identify the key features of vSphere 5.5, describing the key capabilities andidentifying the key value propositions of each one.

Identify any license level restrictions for each feature.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere vMotion

Let's discuss Distributed Services. vMotion, Storage vMotion, VMware HA , FT, DRS,DPM and Replication are distributed services that enable efficient and automatedresource management and high availability for virtual machines.

vMotion enables the migration of live virtual machines from one physical server toanother without service interruption. This live migration capability allows virtualmachines to move from a heavily loaded server to a lightly loaded one. vMotion isdiscussed in Course 3.





vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Storage vMotion

Storage vMotion enables live migration of a virtual machine's storage to a new datastorewith no downtime. Extending the vMotion technology to storage helps the vSphere

administrator to leverage storage tiering, perform tuning and balancing, and controlcapacity with no application downtime.

Storage vMotion copies disk blocks between source and destination and replaces theneed for the iterative pre-copy phase. This was used in the Changed Block Tracking(CBT) method in earlier versions of vSphere. With I/O mirroring, a single-pass copy ofthe disk blocks from the source to the destination is performed. I/O mirroring ensuresthat any newly changed blocks in the source are mirrored at the destination. There isalso a block-level bitmap that identifies hot and cold blocks of the disk, or whether thedata in a given block is already mirrored in the destination disk.

Storage vMotion is discussed in Course 3.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere High Availability

vSphere High Availability (HA) provides easy-to-use, cost effective high availability forapplications running in virtual machines.

In the event of physical server failure, the affected virtual machines are restarted onother production servers which have spare capacity.

In the case of operating system failure, vSphere HA restarts the affected virtual machineon the same physical server.





vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere High AvailabilityvSphere App HA is a plug-in to the vSphere Web Client. This plug-in allows you todefine high availability for the applications that are running on the virtual machines inyour environment, reducing application downtime.

vSphere HA and App HA are discussed in Course 2.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Fault Tolerance

Fault Tolerance (FT) provides continuous availability for applications in the event ofserver failures by creating a live shadow instance of a virtual machine that is in virtuallockstep with the primary instance.

The Secondary virtual machine can take over execution at any point without serviceinterruption.

By allowing instantaneous failover between the two instances in the event of hardwarefailure, FT eliminates even the smallest chance of data loss or disruption.

Fault Tolerance is discussed in Course 2.





vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere DRS

Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) helps you manage a cluster of physical hosts asa single compute resource by balancing CPU and memory workload across the physical

hosts.DRS uses vMotion to migrate virtual machines to other hosts as necessary.

When you add a new physical server to a cluster, DRS enables virtual machines toimmediately take advantage of the new resources because it distributes the runningvirtual machines.

DRS is discussed in Course 2.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Storage DRS

Storage DRS (SDRS) aggregates storage resources of several datastores in to a singledatastore cluster to simplify storage management at scale with vSphere Storage DRS.

During virtual machine provisioning Storage DRS provides intelligent virtual machineplacement based on the IO load and available storage capacity of the datastores.

Storage DRS performs ongoing load balancing between datastores to ensure spaceand I/O bottlenecks are avoided as per pre-defined rules that reflect business needsand changing priorities.

Storage DRS is discussed in Course 5.





vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere DPM

Distributed Power Management (DPM) continuously optimizes power consumption inthe data center.

When virtual machines in a DRS cluster need fewer resources, such as at night and onweekends, DPM consolidates workloads onto fewer servers and powers off the rest toreduce power consumption.

When virtual machine resource requirements increase, DPM brings powered-downhosts back online to ensure service levels are met.

DPM is discussed in Course 2.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Replication

vSphere Replication replicates powered-on virtual machines over the network from onevSphere host to another without needing storage array-based native replication.

vSphere Replication reduces bandwidth needs, eliminates storage lock-in, and allowsyou to build flexible disaster recovery configurations.

This proprietary replication engine copies only changed blocks to the recovery site,ensuring both lower bandwidth utilization and more aggressive recovery point objectivescompared with manual full system copies of virtual machines.

Replication is discussed in Course 3.





vSphere Networking – Network Architecture

The virtual environment provides similar networking elements as the physical world,such as virtual network interface cards, vSphere Distributed Switches (VDS), distributed

port groups, vSphere Standard Switches (VSS), and port groups.Like a physical machine, each virtual machine has its own virtual NIC called a vNIC.

The operating system and applications talk to the vNIC through a standard device driveror a VMware optimized device driver just as though the vNIC is a physical NIC.

To the outside world, the vNIC has its own MAC address and one or more IP addressesand responds to the standard Ethernet protocol exactly as a physical NIC would. In fact,an outside agent can determine that it is communicating with a virtual machine only if itchecks the 6-byte vendor identifier in the MAC address.

A virtual switch, or vSwitch, works like a layer-2 physical switch. With VSS, each host

maintains its own virtual switch configuration while in a VDS, a single virtual switchconfiguration spans many hosts.

Physical Ethernet adapters connected to physical switches provide an uplink forvSwitches.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Networking – vSphere Standard Switches

vSphere Standard Switches allow virtual machines on the same vSphere host tocommunicate with each other using the same protocols used with physical switches.

The virtual switch emulates a traditional physical Ethernet network switch to the extentthat it forwards frames at the data link layer.

Standard switches are discussed in course 4.





vSphere Networking – vSphere Distributed Switches

The vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) simplifies virtual machine networking by enablingyou to set up virtual machine access switching for your entire data center from a

centralized interface.VDS provides simplified virtual machine network configuration, enhanced networkmonitoring and troubleshooting capabilities and support for advanced vSpherenetworking features.

Distributed Switches are discussed in course 4.




VTSP 5.5

Network I/O Control: An Overview

Network I/O control enables the convergence of diverse workloads on a singlenetworking pipe. It provides control to the administrator to ensure predictable networkperformance when multiple traffic types are flowing in the same pipe.

Network I/O control provides sufficient controls to the vSphere administrator in the formof limits, and shares parameters to enable and ensure predictable network performancewhen multiple traffic types contend for the same physical network resources.

Network I/O Control is discussed in Course 4.





vSphere Storage Architecture

The VMware vSphere Storage Architecture consists of layers of abstraction that hideand manage the complexity and differences among physical storage subsystems.

To the applications and guest operating systems inside each virtual machine, thestorage subsystem appears as a virtual SCSI controller connected to one or morevirtual SCSI disks.

These controllers are the only types of SCSI controllers that a virtual machine can seeand access.

The virtual SCSI disks are provisioned from datastore elements in the data center.

The guest virtual machine is not exposed to Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSI SAN, directattached storage, and NAS.

Each datastore is a physical VMFS volume on a storage device. NAS datastores are an

NFS volume with VMFS characteristics.

Datastores can span multiple physical storage subsystems. VMFS also supports rawdevice mapping (RDM). RDM provides a mechanism for a virtual machine to have directaccess to a LUN on the physical storage subsystem (Fibre Channel or iSCSI only).

vSphere Storage Architecture is discussed in Course 5.




VTSP 5.5

Virtual Machine File System

Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is a high-performance cluster file system thatprovides storage virtualization optimized for virtual machines.

VMFS is the default storage management interface for block based disk storage (Localand SAN attached).

VMFS allows multiple instances of VMware vSphere servers to access shared virtualmachine storage concurrently.

VMFS is discussed in Course 5.





Virtual Disks

When you create a virtual machine, a certain amount of storage space on a datastore isprovisioned, or allocated, to the virtual disk files. Each of the three vSphere hosts has

two virtual machines running on it.The lines connecting them to the disk icons of the virtual machine disks (VMDKs) arelogical representations of their allocation from the larger VMFS volume, which is madeup of one large logical unit number (LUN).

A virtual machine detects the VMDK as a local SCSI target.

The virtual disks are really just files on the VMFS volume, shown in the illustration as adashed oval.

Virtual Disks are discussed in Course 3 and Course 5.




VTSP 5.5

Storage I/O Control

vSphere Storage I/O Control (SIOC) is used to provide I/O prioritization of virtualmachines running on a group of VMware vSphere hosts that have access to a sharedstorage pool.

It extends the familiar constructs of shares and limits, which exist for CPU and memory,to address storage utilization through a dynamic allocation of I/O capacity across acluster of vSphere hosts.

Configure rules and policies to specify the business priority of each virtual machine.

When I/O congestion is detected, Storage I/O Control dynamically allocates theavailable I/O resources to virtual machines according to your rules, improving servicelevels for critical applications and allowing you to virtualize more types of workloads,including I/O-intensive applications.

SIOC is discussed in Course 5.





vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 Architecture

VMkernel is a POSIX-like OS developed by VMware and provides certain functionalitiessimilar to that found in other OSs, such as process creation and control, signals, file

system, and process threads. It is designed specifically to support running multiplevirtual machines and provides core functionalities such as resource scheduling, I/Ostacks and device drivers.

The key component of each ESXi host is a process called VMM. One VMM runs in theVMkernel for each powered on virtual machine. When a virtual machine starts running,the control transfers to the VMM, which in turn begins executing instructions from thevirtual machine. The VMkernel sets the system state so that the VMM runs directly onthe hardware.

The devices of a virtual machine are a collection of virtual hardware that includes thedevices shown. The ESXi host provides a base x86 platform and you choose devices to

install on that platform. The base virtual machine provides everything needed for thesystem compliance with x86 standards from the motherboard up.

VMware virtual machines contain a standard set of hardware no matter what platformyou are running. Virtual device drivers allow portability without having to reconfigure theOS of each virtual machine.

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtualmachine's guest OS and improves management of the virtual machine. Installing




VTSP 5.5

VMware Tools in the guest OS is vital. Although the guest OS can run without VMwareTools, you lose important functionality and convenience.

ESXi uses five memory management mechanisms-page sharing, ballooning, memorycompression, swap to host cache, and regular swapping-to dynamically reduce theamount of physical memory required for each virtual machine.

All of these topics are discussed in Course 3.





Licensing Requirements for vSphere features

From this table you can see the types of licenses which are required by each of thefeatures discussed. Take a few moments to take in this table.




VTSP 5.5

Module Summary

This concludes module 2, vSphere Infrastructure and Hypervisor Components.


Identify the key features of vSphere 5.5 describing the key capabilities andidentifying the key value propositions of each one.

Identify any license level restrictions for each feature.





Module 3: Mapping vSphere Capabilities to Solutions

Mapping vSphere Capabilities to SolutionsWelcome to Module 3, Mapping vSphere Capabilities to Solutions. These are the topics

that will be covered in this module.




VTSP 5.5

Module Overview

By the time you have completed this module, you will be able to select vSpherecomponents to meet solution requirements by identifying the capabilities and benefits ofeach solution component in order to present its value proposition.

The module presents a series of customer scenarios that define specific requirementsand constraints.

You will be asked to select vSphere components to meet solution requirements byidentifying the capabilities and benefits of each solution component in order to presentits value proposition.





OPEX Savings Scenario

The Clarke County Library has decided to overhaul its server infrastructure in order toimprove supportability and hopefully reduce ongoing expenditure.

They have a highly variable server workload that peaks during the 3 - 8pm period onweekdays and all day (9am to 6pm) on Saturdays but outside of those periods serverloads on all metrics is typically < 25% of the average during the peak periods.

While out-of-hours load is substantially lower they run a number of critical systems thathave to achieve four nines service uptime.

Their CapEx request needs to demonstrate that any investment will enable substantialOpEx savings.




VTSP 5.5

OPEX Savings ScenarioWhat is the correct answer?

Which advanced vSphere service do they need to meet the library's requirements?





OPEX Savings Scenario

Why is DPM the correct vSphere service to meet their requirements?




VTSP 5.5

Shared Access Optimization Scenario

Mornington Design has an existing vSphere environment running with a vSpherestandard license. All of the VMs are provisioned from a single iSCSI SAN.

Their business critical data warehousing and Exchange E-mail servers are experiencingvariable performance degradation during peak hours due to contention with other non-critical virtual machines whose workloads can temporarily stress the overall SANperformance.

While they could implement a new independent SAN to isolate their business-criticalvirtual machines they are looking for a mechanism to optimize the shared access to thedatastores during peak times when they suffer from contention.





Shared Access Optimization ScenarioWhat is the correct answer?

Which advanced vSphere service do they need at Mornington Design to meet theirrequirements?




VTSP 5.5

Shared Access Optimization ScenarioWhy is Storage I/O Control (SIOC) the correct vSphere service for Mornington Design?





Migrating to 10Gb Ethernet Scenario

Bulldog Clothing have decided to upgrade their existing vSphere cluster hardware withnewer servers and want to migrate all of their core networks over to 10Gb Ethernet at

the same time. As they move from 1Gb to 10Gb, they want to move away from their former policy ofdedicated individual network uplinks to specific services.

They want a solution that will help them aggregate diverse workloads into the reducednumber of 10Gb Ethernet uplink adapters that their new hardware will be outfitted with.




VTSP 5.5

Migrating to 10Gb Ethernet ScenarioWhich advanced vSphere feature does Bulldog Clothing need to meet theirrequirements?





Migrating to 10Gb Ethernet ScenarioWhy is Network I/O Control the correct vSphere feature to meet their requirements?




VTSP 5.5

Data Recovery (DR) Scenario

Alleyn & Associates are an accountancy firm with a number of small satellite offices with20-30 staff each, and a centralized head office where IT support and the coreinfrastructure are located.

They are already using small vSphere clusters with 3 hosts in each office to provide allservices, and staff work on Virtual Desktops.

There is no consistent standard for shared storage, with some sites using NFS arraysand some using FC storage.

A recent flooding incident resulted in significant downtime in one satellite office as theydo not have an effective disaster recovery (DR) process for their remote sites.

They would like to use storage array replication for DR but the diverse range of storagesolutions they use makes the cost of this prohibitive.





Data Recovery ScenarioWhich advanced vSphere feature do Alleyn & Associates need to meet theirrequirements?




VTSP 5.5

Data Recovery ScenarioWhy is vSphere Replication the correct vSphere feature for Alleyn & Associates?





Business Critical Systems Scenario

Catskills Shipping Inc. provides an online order fulfillment service for a range ofcomponent businesses.

Their front-end order handling system is business critical and they cannot tolerate anyservice downtime at all.

They want to move from a physical infrastructure to virtual in order to improve hardwaremaintainability, but this will require them to abandon their current high availabilityclustering solution as it is not supported in virtual environments.




VTSP 5.5

Business Critical Systems ScenarioWhich advanced vSphere feature do Catskills Shipping need to meet theirrequirements?





Business Critical Systems ScenarioWhy is vSphere Fault Tolerance the correct vSphere feature for Catskills Shipping?




VTSP 5.5

Course Review

This concludes the course vSphere Overview.

Now that you have finished this course, you should be able to:

·Provide an overview of vSphere as part of VMware‟s Vision and Cloud InfrastructureSolution,

·Describe the physical and virtual topologies of a vSphere 5.5 Data Center and explainthe relationship between the physical components and the vSphere VirtualInfrastructure,

·Describe the features and capabilities of vSphere and explain their key benefits for acustomer,

·Describe the vSphere Hypervisor Architecture and explain its key features, capabilitiesand benefits, and

·Map vSphere Components to solution benefits and identify value propositions.





Course 2

VTSP V5.5 Course 2: VMware vSphere: vCenter

Welcome to the VTSP 5.5 Course 2: VMware vSphere: vCenter.

There are three modules in this course as shown here.




VTSP 5.5

Course Objectives

After you complete this course, you should be able to:

·Explain the components and features of vCenter

·Communicate design choices to facilitate the selection of the correct vCenter solutionconfiguration

·Explore the customer‟s requirements to define any dependencies that thoserequirements will create.

·Explain the key features and benefits of the distributed services to illustrate the impactthose features will have on a final design.





Module 1: vCenter Overview - Features and Topology

Module 1: vCenter Overview - Features and TopologyThis is module 1 Overview Features and Topology.





VTSP 5.5

Module Objectives

After you complete this module, you should be able to:

Describe vCenter‟s components and infrastructure requirements.

Present the management clients, the VI Client and the Web Client.

Provide an overview of their interfaces with specific emphasis on features thatare only available via the Web Client.





What is VMware vCenter?

The first section discusses the capabilities and components of vCenter and the variousways of accessing it.

You will start by looking at what vCenter is and what it enables the vSphereadministrator to do in the virtualized infrastructure.

vCenter Server is the primary management tool for vSphere administrators. It providesa single point of control for all the components in the virtual data center.

vCenter Server provides the core management functionalities and services, which arerequired by the vSphere administrator to perform basic infrastructure operations.

These operations include configuring new ESXi hosts, configuring storage, network, andthe virtual hardware characteristics of various infrastructure components.

Using vCenter Server, you can manage the storage and resource requirements for each

host machine.

Infrastructure operations also include creating or importing new virtual machines andmonitoring, reporting, and alerting on performance characteristics of guest operatingsystems, virtual machines and the underlying hosts.

Additionally, infrastructure operations include managing rights, permissions, and roles atvarious levels of the virtual infrastructure.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Server is able to unify resources from individual ESXi hosts, enabling them tobe shared among virtual machines in the entire data center.

This is achieved by assigning resources to the virtual machines within a managedcluster of hosts, based on the policies set by the system administrator.





vCenter Installable and vCenter Appliance

vCenter Server is available in two options: vCenter Server Appliance and vCenterServer Installable.

vCenter Server Appliance is a pre-configured SUSE Enterprise Linux based virtualappliance, which contains VMware's vCenter Management Server.

It is deployed as an OVF Template.

vCenter Server Installable is a Windows installable option, supported on Windowsplatforms Windows 2008 64-bit R2 and Windows Server 2012.

Service pack information should be verified before installation. It can be installed ineither a physical or virtual machine.

There are many more differences between the two, which you need to know to ensureyou make the appropriate choice for your environment.

Previous versions of the vCenter Server appliance were limited, when using theembedded database, to environments of up to 5 ESXi hosts and 50 virtual machines.

New in vSphere 5.5, the vCenter Server Appliance can support environments up to 100ESXi Hosts and 3000 virtual machines.

However, both vCenter options can make use of an embedded database.




VTSP 5.5

The vCenter Server Appliance uses a vPostgres database, while the vCenter ServerInstallable uses a Microsoft SQL Express database, which is limited to small scaledeployments of up to 5 ESXi hosts and 50 virtual machines.

For larger environments, external databases are the correct solution.

The vCenter Server Appliance can only use an external Oracle database, whereas thevCenter Server Installable version can be used with either a Microsoft SQL or Oracledatabase.

Also new in vSphere 5.5 is support for clustering of the vCenter Server Database.

Auto Deploy, Syslog Collector and ESXi Dump Collector are separate installations onthe vCenter Server Installable. These are pre-installed in the vCenter Server Appliance.Syslog Collector and ESXi Dump Collector must be registered as a plug-in in vCenterServer.

The vSphere Web Client and Single Sign-On are installed as part of the vCenterServer simple installation or on a separate host for multiple local site instances. They

are pre-installed in the vCenter Server Appliance.For scripting and automation of the data center, vSphere CLI and PowerCLI areseparate installations for the vCenter Server Installable. They cannot be installed in thevCenter Server Appliance.

vCenter Server Installable supports IPv4 and IPv6. The vCenter Server Appliance onlysupports IPv4. Linked Mode is not compatible with the vCenter Server Appliance andvCenter Heartbeat is not compatible with the vCenter Server Appliance.

vCenter Update Manager can be installed on the same server as vCenter ServerInstallable, but cannot be installed in the vCenter Server Appliance.





vCenter's Components and Connectivity

Now let‟s review a whiteboard session looking at vCenter‟s components andconnectivity.

We will discuss what connects to, or is managed by, vCenter, including: Hosts,Directory Service (customers may know this as Inventory Service) and Single Sign On(SSO) Server, Clients and Network Ports.

1. vCenter Server is comprised of a number of interlinked components and interfaces toother services and infrastructure. We will now describe each of the key parts and therole that they play in vCenter.

2. vCenter Server is heavily dependent on the database that is used to storeconfiguration and statistical data.

While there are options for environments that make use of integrated databases, these

are only for small installations.In most environments the database will be provided by a separate database server orservers. It is critically important that databases are sized and prepared before installingvCenter Server.

It is important to note that only certain databases are supported and this selection mayinfluence the vCenter choice to be implemented.

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/C2M1Sc7%20vCenters%20Components%20and%20Connectivity.mp4






VTSP 5.5

We will see the specific database types that are supported for the vCenter Server Appliance and installable versions later in this module.

3. There are four parts to vCenter server installations. These are:

vCenter Single Sign-On, Web Client, vCenter Inventory Service and vCenter Server(Core).

4. VMware vCenter Single Sign-On offers administrators a deeper level ofauthentication services that enable VMware solutions to trust each other.

Single Sign-On allows VMware solutions to utilize multiple directory services and is nolonger limited to Microsoft Active Directory.

It simplifies the management of multi-site and multi-installation environments byallowing users to move seamlessly between multiple environments without re-authentication.

A Single Sign-On Server can be installed separately and can support multiple vCenterinstallations.

5. VMware vCenter Inventory Service optimizes client server communications byreducing the number of client requests on vCenter Server.

It is now a separate independent component that can be off-loaded to a separateserver.

This can be used to reduce traffic and improve client response times. It also enablesusers to create and add inventory object-level tags.

These are then used to organize and provide quicker retrieval when performinginventory searches.

6. Core Services are the basic management services for a virtual Data Center.

These include virtual machine provisioning; statistics and logging; host and virtualmachine configuration; alarms and event management; and task scheduling.

Distributed services are solutions that extend VMware vSphere capabilities beyond asingle physical server.

These solutions include VMware DRS, VMware HA, and VMware vMotion. Distributedservices are configured and managed centrally from vCenter Server.

7. The vCenter API provides access to the vSphere management components.

These are the objects that you can use to manage, monitor, and control life-cycleoperations of virtual machines and other parts of the virtual infrastructure (such as DataCenters, datastores, networks and so on).

The vCenter API provides the interface to vCenter that is used by the vCenter Clients,third party applications, plug-ins and VMware applications.

It is available for administrators, developers and partners to integrate and automatesolutions.





8. The vSphere Web Client provides a rich application experience delivered through across-platform supporting Web browser.

This surpasses the functionality of the trusted VMware vSphere Client (the VI orDesktop Client) running on Windows.

The vSphere Web Client can be installed on the vCenter server along with othervCenter Server components, or it can be installed as a standalone server.

9. The Single Sign-On Server must be able to communicate with your identity sourcessuch as Active Directory, Open LDAP and a Local Operating System.

10. The Inventory service must be able to communicate with the Single Sign-On Server,the vCenter Server and the client.

11. The vCenter Server must be able to communicate with the ESXi hosts in order tomanage them.

12. vCenter Server must also be accessible to any systems that will require access to

the API.13. The Web Client is accessed via a Web browser that connects to the Web ClientServer. All of these services rely heavily on DNS.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter License Versions

VMware vCenter Server provides unified management for VMware vSphere environments and is a required component of a complete VMware vSphere deployment. One instance of vCenterServer is required to centrally manage virtual machines and their hosts and to enable all VMware vSphere features.





vCenter License Versions All products and feature licenses are encapsulated in 25-character license keys that youcan manage and monitor from vCenter Server. Each vCenter Server instance requiresone license key.

VMware vCenter Server is available in the following packages:

VMware vCenter Server for Essentials kits is integrated into the vSphere Essentials andEssentials Plus kits for small office deployment. This edition is aimed at IT environmentsthat run 20 or fewer server workloads.

VMware vCenter Server Foundation provides centralized management for vSphereenvironments with up to three VMware vSphere ESXi hosts.

VMware vCenter Server Standard is the highly scalable management server thatprovides rapid provisioning, monitoring, orchestration and control of all virtual machinesin a VMware vSphere environment of any size.

All editions of vCenter Server include the following capabilities:• The management service acts as a universal hub for provisioning, monitor ing andconfiguring virtualized environments.

• The database server stores persistent configuration data and performanceinformation.

• The inventory service allows administrators to search the entire object inventory ofmultiple VMware vCenter Servers from one place.




VTSP 5.5

• VMware vSphere Clients provide administrators with a feature-rich console foraccessing one or more VMware vCenter Servers simultaneously.

• The VMware vCenter APIs and .NET Extensions allows integration between vCenterServer and other tools, with support for customized plug-ins to the VMware vSphereClient.

• vCenter Single Sign-On simplifies administration by allowing users to log in once andthen access all instances or layers of vCenter without the need for furtherauthentication.

• vCenter Orchestrator streamlines and automates key IT processes.

• vCenter Server Linked Mode enables a common inventory view across multipleinstances of vCenter Server.

Advanced features such as Distributed vSwitches also require that the individual hostlicenses for the hypervisors in the cluster are at the appropriate level. For example avSphere Enterprise Plus license will be required for all hosts if distributed vSwitches

need to be supported.





vSphere Client User Interface Options

You have several ways to access vSphere components through vSphere‟s range ofinterface options.

The vSphere Web Client was introduced with the release of vSphere 5.0 as a newadministration tool for managing your VMware vSphere 5.x environments.

With vSphere 5.5, VMware progresses its transition to the Web Client as the primaryadministration interface.

It features a new enhanced usability experience with added support for OS X. InvSphere 5.5, all of the new vSphere features are only available when using the vSphereWeb Client interface.

The vSphere Web Client is a server application that provides a browser-basedalternative to the traditional vSphere Desktop Client.

You must use a supported Web browser to connect to the vSphere Web Client tomanage ESXi hosts through vCenter Server.

The vSphere Web Client supports almost all of the functionality included in theWindows-based vSphere Desktop Client, such as inventory display and virtual machinedeployment and configuration.




VTSP 5.5

The vSphere Desktop Client is still available for installation with vSphere 5.5. TheDesktop Client must be installed on a Windows machine with direct access to the ESXihost or the vCenter Server systems it will be used to manage.

The interface displays slightly different options depending on the type of server to whichyou are connected.

A single vCenter Server system or ESXi host can support multiple simultaneouslyconnected vSphere Desktop Clients.

You can use vSphere Desktop Client to monitor, manage, and control vCenter Server.

The vSphere Desktop Client does not support vCenter Single Sign-On andcommunicates directly with vCenter Server and Microsoft Active Directory.

The vSphere Client is still used for vSphere Update Manager (or VUM) along with a fewsolutions such as Site Recovery Manager.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Infrastructure Management Features Overview

Now that you have seen an overview of vCenter and the licensing requirements we willlook at an overview of the Infrastructure Management features and capabilities ofvCenter.





Resource MapsvSphere administrators can use resource maps to monitor proper connectivity which isvital for migration operations, such as VMware vSphere vMotion or vSphere StoragevMotion.

Resource maps are also useful to verify VMware vSphere High Availability, VMwareDistributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) cluster memberships are that host and virtualmachine connectivity is valid.

A resource map is a graphical representation of the data center‟s topology. It visuallyrepresents the relationships between the virtual and physical resources available in adata center.

Preconfigured map views that are available are: Virtual Machine Resources, whichdisplays virtual machine-centric relationships; Host Resources, which displays host-centric physical relationships; and vMotion Resources, which displays potential hosts forvMotion migration.

Maps help vSphere administrators find information such as which clusters or hosts aremost densely populated, which networks are most critical, and which storage devicesare being utilized.

Resource Maps are only available using the vSphere Desktop Client..




VTSP 5.5

OrchestratorOrchestrator or vCO is an automation and orchestration platform that provides a libraryof extensible workflows.

It enables vSphere administrators to create and execute automated, configurable

processes to manage their VMware virtual environment.Orchestrator provides drag-and-drop automation and orchestration for the VMwarevirtual environment. Orchestrator is included with vCenter.

As an example, when you create a virtual machine in your environment, you makedecisions about how that virtual machine is configured, how many network cards,processors memory etc. that you want it to be configured with. However, once themachine is created and like many organizations, you have additional IT processes thatneed to be applied.

Do you need to add the VM to active directory? Do you need to update the changemanagement Database, customize the guest OS or notify the VM owner or other teams

that the virtual machine is ready?

vCenter Orchestrator lets you create workflows that automate activities such asprovisioning a virtual machine, performing scheduled maintenance, initiating backups,and many others. You can design custom automations based on vCenter Orchestratorout-of-the-box workflows and run your automations from the workflow engine.





You can also use plugins and workflows published on VMware Solution Exchange, acommunity of extensible solutions plug-ins, to connect to multiple VMware and 3rd partyapplications.

Through an open and flexible plug-in architecture, VMware vCenter Orchestrator allowsyou to automate server provisioning and operational tasks across both VMware andthird-party applications, such as service desks, change management and assetmanagement systems.

These plug-ins provide hundreds of out-of-the-box workflows to help you bothaccelerate and dramatically reduce the cost of delivering IT services across yourorganization.

In addition to plug-ins included with the vCenter Orchestrator, the latest plug-ins can befound on the VMware Solution Exchange.

You need to understand the clients current IT workflow automation capabilities and ifthey are using any other products for this already, you will have to be prepared to

research how Orchestrator integrates with them.To understand how Orchestrator works, it is important to understand the differencebetween automation and orchestration.

Automation provides a way to perform frequently repeated processes without manualintervention. For example, a shell, Perl, or PowerShell script that adds ESXi hosts tovCenter Server.

On the other hand, orchestration provides a way to manage multiple automatedprocesses across heterogeneous systems.

An example of this would be to add ESXi hosts from a list to vCenter Server, update aCMDB with the newly added ESXi hosts, and then send email notification.

Orchestrator exposes every operation in the vCenter Server API, enabling the vSphereadministrator to integrate all these operations into the automated processes.

Orchestrator also enables the administrator to integrate with other management andadministration solutions through its open plug-in architecture. This enables the vSphereadministrator to capture manual and repetitive tasks for the vSphere environment andautomate them through workflows.

Orchestrator provides several benefits.

It helps vSphere administrators ensure consistency and standardization and achieveoverall compliance with existing IT policies. It also shortens the time for deployment of a

complex environment (for example, SAP) to hours instead of days. Orchestrator alsoenables vSphere administrators to react faster to unplanned issues in VMware DataCenter.

For example, when a virtual machine is powered off unexpectedly, the vSphereadministrator can configure options to trigger the “Power -On” workflow to bring thevirtual machine back online.




VTSP 5.5

AlarmsThe vSphere alarm infrastructure supports automating actions and sending differenttypes of notifications in response to certain server conditions. Many alarms exist bydefault on vCenter Server systems and you can also create your own alarms. Forexample, an alarm can send an alert email message when CPU usage on a specific

virtual machine exceeds 99% for more than 30 minutes.

The alarm infrastructure integrates with other server components, such as events andperformance counters.

You can set alarms for objects such as virtual machines, hosts, clusters, data centers,datastores, networks, vNetwork Distributed Switches, distributed virtual port groups, andvCenter Server.

Alarms have two types of triggers.

They can be triggered by either the condition or state of an object or by events occurringto an object.

You can monitor inventory objects by setting alarms on them. Setting an alarm involvesselecting the type of inventory object to monitor, defining when and for how long thealarm will trigger, and defining actions that will be performed as a result of the alarmbeing triggered. You define alarms in the Alarm Settings dialog box.

Alarms should be configured to detect and report. Avoid overly aggressive vCenterServer alarm settings. Each time an alarm condition is met, vCenter Server must take





an appropriate action. Too many alarms place extra load on vCenter Server whichaffects system performance. Therefore identify the alarms that you need to leverage.

You can use the SMTP agent included with vCenter Server to send email notificationsto the appropriate personnel that you wish to be notified when alarms are triggered. Youcan also trap event information by configuring a centralized SNMP server and/oralternatively even run a script when the alarm triggers.




VTSP 5.5

Inventory Object TaggingTags were a new feature of vSphere 5.1 Their purpose is to allow you to add metadatato objects. Tags allow you to bring information about your virtual infrastructure fromoutside vSphere and attach it to objects inside so that actions and decisions can betaken on the basis of that information. In order to avoid conflicts between the many

possible uses of tags, tags are organized into categories.

When you create a category, you specify whether multiple tags in that category can beassigned to a given object at one time, or whether only one tag can be assigned to anobject at a time. For example, a category called Priority might contain the tags High,Medium, and Low, and be configured to allow only one tag in the category to be appliedto an object at a time.

You also specify whether tags in a category can be applied to all objects, or only tospecific object types, such as hosts or datastores.

In order to leverage the benefits of inventory tagging, it is important to identify the

categories that you wish to use in your environment during the design phase.Because of the power of the search and advanced search function, tags can be used toassociate metadata with objects, rather than using a complex folder hierarchy whichwas required in earlier versions.

The main benefit is that you can reduce the complexity of environment hierarchies asthey scale.





Tagging replaces the custom attributes functionality found in previous versions ofvCenter Server. If you have existing custom attributes, you can convert them into tags.

The Inventory Tagging feature is only available using the vSphere Web Client.




VTSP 5.5

Simple and Advanced Search As with previous VMware clients, the vSphere Web Client provides a search capability.This enables users to perform a variety of searches, from simple text-based searches tomore advanced searches utilizing Boolean logic.

The vSphere Web Client also enables administrators to save searches as namedobjects. They can then create complex searches and refer back to them quickly insteadof recreating each search when it is needed.

To perform a task, one first must be able to find the objects upon which to work. In asmall environment, this might not seem very difficult. However, when the environmentscales out to cloud levels it becomes a larger challenge to find objects.

You can also perform Simple and Advanced search operations in vSphere Client. Asearch field is available in all vSphere Client views for this purpose. To display thesearch page, you can select Inventory and then select Search.

By default, a Simple Search can be performed for all the properties of the specified type

or types of objects for the entered search term. The available options are VirtualMachines, Hosts, Folders, Datastores, Networks, and Inventory. vCenter Server filtersthe search results according to permissions and returns the results.

If you are not satisfied with the results of the simple search, perform an advancedsearch.





Advanced Search allows you to search for managed objects that meet multiple criteria.For example, you can search for virtual machines matching a search string or the virtualmachines that reside on hosts whose names match a second search string.

If the vSphere Web Client is connected to a vCenter Server system that is part of aLinked Mode group, you can search the inventories of all vCenter Server systems inthat group.

You can only view and search for inventory objects that you have permission to view. InLinked Mode the search service queries Active Directory for information about userpermissions so you must be logged in to a domain account to search all vCenter Serversystems in a Linked Mode group. If you log in using a local account, searches returnresults only for the local vCenter Server system, even if it is joined to other servers inLinked Mode.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Server Plug-InsvCenter Server plug-ins extend the capabilities of vCenter Server by providing morefeatures and functions.

Some plug-ins are installed as part of the base vCenter Server product for example the

vCenter Service Status plugin which displays the status of vCenter Services and thevSphere Update Manager which is used to apply patches and updates to ESXi hosts.

Some plug-ins are packaged separately from the base product and require separateinstallation. You can update plug-ins and the base product independently of each other.

VMware offers third-party developers and partners the ability to extend the vSphereClient with custom menu selections and toolbar icons that provide access to customcapabilities.

A partner vendor therefore, could supply a plug-in that provides integration with vCenterfor users to monitor server specific hardware functions or create storage volumes.





Perfmon DLL in VMware Tools

VMware Tools include additional Perfmon DLL features that enable vSphereadministrators to monitor key host statistics from inside a virtual machine running a

Windows operating system.The built-in Windows Perfmon counters may not reflect the true load as the OS isunaware that it is running on virtual hardware.

The VMware Perfmon counters provide an accurate indication of what resources areactually being consumed by the virtual machine.

Perfmon is an SNMP-based performance monitoring tool for Windows OperatingSystems. It displays performance statistics at regular intervals and can save thesestatistics in a file. Administrators can choose the time interval, file format, and statisticsthat are to be monitored. The ability to choose which statistics to monitor is based onthe available counters for the selected object.

Installing the ESXi 5.5 version of VMware Tools automatically provides the Perfmonperformance counters VM Processor and VM Memory. Using these counters, theapplication administrator can collect accurate performance data for the host level CPUand memory utilization and compare it side-by-side with the virtual machine‟s view ofCPU and memory utilization.

This enables the application administrator to better understand how resources areconsumed in a virtualized environment.




VTSP 5.5

Also, when a performance problem is identified, the vSphere administrator and theapplication administrator can use a common tool such as Perfmon to isolate the rootcause.

Additionally, third-party developers can instrument their agents to access thesecounters using Windows Management Instrumentation or WMI.





vCenter Statistics & Database Size Calculator

Each ESXi host is connected to a vCenter Server, and vCenter Server is connected to arelational database. vCenter Server collects statistics from each ESXi host periodically

and persists this data to the relational database.The database in turn executes a number of stored procedures that summarize this dataat various intervals.

Each ESXi host collects statistics at a 20-second granularity. In vCenter, these arecalled real-time statistics.

You can view real-time statistics through vSphere Client by selecting the Advancedbutton on the Performance tab. The client always receives real-time statistics directlyfrom the ESXi host. This ensures timeliness of the data and puts no stress on thedatabase. All statistics stored in the database are called historical statistics.

When sizing your database the primary design requirement is that adequate storagespace exists.

For vCenter Server system databases, Microsoft SQL and Oracle sizing tools areavailable on the VMware web site.

The vCenter Server Database sizing calculator is an Excel spread sheet that estimatesthe size of the vCenter Server database.




VTSP 5.5

The calculator sizes your database based on the following assumptions: that yourdatabase is SQL Server Version 2005 or later; That statistics collection intervals aredefault values; and that the information entered is valid for the entire period. It alsoassumes that the level of fragmentation of your database is around 50%.

Results assume a reasonable number of tasks and events.

The results for each statistics collection level are as follows: The number of samplescollected by vCenter Server every five minutes.

The calculation shows the impact of setting a higher statistics level. The estimated sizeof the database after 1 year. The higher and lower bounds of the estimation assume a15% variance.

The amount of space that the temporary database requires during the calculation ofrollup values such as averages. This additional space should be added to the primaryvCenter Server database.

An example of some of the collection statistics that influence the size of the database

are the number of hosts, virtual machines, clusters, resource pools, average number ofCPUs per host.

Another factor in the size of the database is the Statistics Collection Level. The statisticslevel establishes which metrics are retrieved and recorded in the vCenter Serverdatabase. You can assign a statistics level of 1- 4 to each collection interval, with level 4having the largest number of counters.

There is also a „What if‟ calculator built into the vSphere client and web client that canalso be used to estimate the database size after installation. As with the excelspreadsheet you can estimate the space required by the database by selecting theinterval duration, how long to save the statistics, the statistics level as well as the

number of physical hosts and virtual machines.Because the statistics data consumes a large fraction of the database, properfunctioning of statistics is an important consideration for overall database performance.Thus, statistics collection and processing are key components for vCenter Serverperformance and the database is therefore a critical component of vCenter Serverperformance.





Finding and Retrieving Logs

vCenter has several different log files that can be useful in monitoring or troubleshootingyour environment.

These log files can be viewed and searched using the vSphere Desktop Client or WebClient.

Log entries can be searched for a particular word or time and you can filter or save yoursearch. You can also compare log files from two different hosts in the Log Browser.

From time to time a Diagnostic System Log Bundle may be requested by VMwaresupport. This information contains product specific logs and configuration files from thehost on which the product is run.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Support Assistant

VMware vCenter Support Assistant is a free, downloadable plug-in for vCenter Server.

It provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop for creating and managing service

requests, and generating and uploading logs. It also includes a VMware KnowledgeBase search capability, which enables customers to resolve common issues morerapidly.

Support Assistant helps gather more of the information up front that VMware TechnicalSupport finds useful.

By minimizing further data requests from VMware Technical Support, vCenter Support Assistant can help reduce time to resolution and, in turn, minimize system downtime.Customers can use Support Assistant to open Support Requests for any VMwareproduct with a support entitlement.

Logs can only be generated from VMware vSphere hosts and vCenter Servers.

VMware vCenter Support Assistant is available as a VA (virtual appliance).

You will require vCenter 4.1 or above to install Support Assistant and it will generatesupport bundle data from vSphere 4.1, 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 hosts, and vCenter Server 4.1,5.0, 5.1 and 5.5.





Fill in the missing Components

The diagram illustrates vCenter's Components and how they are related.

Complete the whiteboard with the missing labels from the left.




VTSP 5.5

Which Client?

Your customer wants to be able to utilize the following features.

Which feature belongs to each client?





Module Summary

In summary:

vCenter Server is the primary management tool for vSphere administrators providing aconvenient single point of control for all the components in the data center. vCenterServer provides the core management functionality and services for large environments,which are required by the vSphere administrator to perform basic infrastructureoperations.




VTSP 5.5

Course2 Module 2: vCenter Server Design Constraints

vCenter Server Design Constraints

Welcome to module 2, vCenter Server Design Constraints, of the vCenter course.These are the topics that will be covered in this module.





Module Objectives

By the time you have completed this module you should be able to describe:

vCenter Server sizing and dependencies

Installation Options

Network Connectivity Requirements

Plug-ins and Add-ons, and

Service and Server Resilience




VTSP 5.5

Configuration Maximums for vCenter

When you select and configure your virtual and physical equipment, you must stay at orbelow the maximums supported by vSphere 5.5. These limits represent tested,

recommended limits, and they are fully supported by VMware. The most important limits that affect the number and configuration of vCenter serverinstances in an environment are listed in here.

If any of these limits is likely to impact an environment a design decision is required todefine the number and location of vCenter instances and how Virtual Machines shouldbe distributed.

These limits can be affected by other factors, such as performance requirements orgeographical distribution.

You can find configuration maximum information by clicking the link shown on screen.





Customer requirements for multiple sites

vCenter Single Sign-On (SSO) has been redesigned in vSphere 5.5 with a multi-mastermodel.

The architecture has been improved and the need for a separate database has beenremoved.

There is built in automatic replication between and within sites. SSO is now fully siteaware.

There is also a Full suite of diagnostic / Troubleshooting tools that can be downloadedto assist with SSO troubleshooting.

There is now only one deployment model. For multisite configuration you choose theoption to install vCenter Single Sign-On for additional vCenter servers in a new site.

vSphere 5.5 introduces a single authentication domain called vsphere.local which can

be spread across multiple sites.

Automatic detection and federation of SSO data takes place for each additional SSOserver that is added as well as automatic replication of users and groups, policies andidentity sources.

Single Sign On does not provide failover between Single Sign On Servers on differentsites, only replication. Each site should be protected using vCenter HA or vCenterHeartbeat.




VTSP 5.5

It is recommended to install all components on a single virtual machine using simpleinstall in order to ensure high availability of your vCenter Server and SSO.

By default in vSphere 5.5 each site is now independent and does not provide a singlepane of glass view as before.

Linked Mode is therefore required to provide a single pane of glass view acrossgeographically separate vCenters.

Linked mode replicates licenses, permissions and roles across multiple vCenterservers.





Databases

Each vCenter Server instance must have its own database. Multiple vCenter Serverinstances cannot share the same database schema.

Multiple vCenter Server databases can reside on the same database server, or they canbe separated across multiple database servers. Oracle databases can run multiplevCenter Server instances in a single database server provided you have a differentschema owner for each vCenter Server instance.

vCenter Server supports Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases.

After you choose a supported database type, make sure you understand any specialconfiguration requirements such as the service patch or service pack level.

Also ensure that the machine has a valid ODBC data source name (DSN) and that youinstall any native client appropriate for your database.

Ensure that you check the interoperability matrixes for supported database and servicepack information by clicking the link shown on screen.

Performance is affected by the number of hosts and the number of powered-on virtualmachines in your environment.

Correctly sizing the database will ensure that you avoid performance issues. Wherepossible, try to minimize the amount of network hops between vCenter Server and its




VTSP 5.5

database. If both are virtual machines, keep them on the same ESXi host, with a DRSrule if required.

Remember that the bundled MS SQL Server database that is included in the Installableversion of vCenter is for small deployments of no more than five hosts and 50 virtualmachines.

The vCenter Appliance has its own embedded database, vPostgres.

This is only for deployments of up to 100 hosts and 3,000 virtual machines.

The vCenter Appliance only supports Oracle for use as an external database.

Single Sign on no longer requires a database in vSphere 5.5.





Directory Services

vSphere 5.1 introduced Single Sign On. Single Sign On has been completelyredesigned in vSphere 5.5.

Single Sign On in vSphere 5.1 used Active Directory as an LDAP Server as an identitysource.

vSphere 5.5 introduces Native Active Directory support using Kerberos as an IdentitySource.

vCenter Single Sign On creates an authentication domain that users are authenticatedin to access available resources (vCenter etc.)

The System Domain Identity Source is the default Identity Data Store that ships as partof vSphere. The System Domain has a name which is a FQDN: the default isvsphere.local.

The login name for the administrator is always: [email protected].

You should not set the vCenter Administrator to be a Local OS account as this doesn‟tfederate.

There are four identity sources that can be configured for Single Sign On.

Active Directory (Integrated Windows Authentication) which uses Kerberos.




VTSP 5.5

Active Directory as an LDAP server. This option maintains compatibility with vSphere5.1.

OpenLDAP and the local OS for Windows.

vCenter Single Sign on 5.5 has the following prerequisites.

You should ensure that your hostname has a fully qualified domain name. The machineshould have joined to an Active Directory Domain (for most use cases). Finally, youshould ensure that it is DNS resolvable (forward and reverse).





Web Client Server

The vSphere Web Client is a web application that can reside either on the same systemas vCenter Server or a separate system.

The vSphere Web Client has two components: A Java server and an Adobe Flex clientapplication running in a browser.

VMware recommends installing the Web Client on the same server that you areinstalling vCenter Server, SSO and the inventory Service.

For larger deployments a separate Single Sign On and Web Client installation isrecommended.




VTSP 5.5

Network Connectivity Requirements

The VMware vCenter Server system must be able to send data to every managed hostand receive data from every vSphere Client.

To enable migration and provisioning activities between managed hosts, the source anddestination hosts must be able to receive data from each other.

vCenter Server and the vCenter Appliance use several designated ports forCommunication. Managed hosts monitor designated ports for data from the vCenterServer system.

If a Windows firewall exists during install of vCenter Server and it is enabled, theinstaller opens these ports. Custom firewalls, must be manually configured.

To have the vCenter Server system use a different port to receive vSphere Client data,see the vCenter Server and Host Management documentation.

When installing vCenter Server, a Gigabit Ethernet connection is recommended as aminimum on the physical or virtual machine.

You must verify that no Network Address Translation (NAT) exists between the vCenterServer system and the hosts it will manage.

To avoid conflicts, ensure that no other services, such as IIS are using the same port asvCenter Server. As specified above, you can bind vCenter or the conflicting service toanother port.





Required Ports - vCenter Sever

Now let's look at the ports that vCenter Server uses to communicate with the managedhosts and vSphere Client.




VTSP 5.5

Plugin and Add-Ons

Prior to installing a plug-in you should ensure that you have met any infrastructure orhardware pre-requisites that the plug-in may require and that the version of the plug-inmatches the versions of the vSphere Client and vCenter Server in your environment.You should check compatibility of VMware plug-ins on the VMware ProductInteroperability Matrix web page and for 3rd party manufacturers consult their relevantdocumentation.

Before deciding to implement any plug-ins you must discover what impact this plug-inwill have on your overall design.

Take Update Manager as an example. Update Manager is a vCenter Server plug-in thatallows you to apply updates and patches across all ESXi hosts. It is used to deploy andmanage updates for vSphere and third-party software on hosts and it is used to upgradevirtual machine hardware, VMware Tools, and virtual appliances.

Update manager can be installed on the same server as vCenter or on a separateserver. Depending on your needs, you must take into consideration any extra OperatingSystem licenses and the specification of the physical or virtual machine that it willrequire.

The best practice is to have Update Manager on the same host as its database,however this may not be possible depending on your environment. Update Managercannot be installed on an Active Directory Domain Controller.





If using the VMware Update Manager Download service, which can be used if theUpdate Manager server cannot be given access to the Internet, you will require anotherphysical or virtual machine and database to host this component.

With the overall solution in mind, it also is important to know that there is no updatemanager plug-in for the vSphere Web Client.

As you can see, the decision to implement this plug-in not only requires compatibilitychecks, but also there are design choices to be made concerning the allocation andselection of server resources, databases and network connectivity.




VTSP 5.5

Service and Server Resilience

vCenter Server installable can be installed either on a physical Windows machine orinside a Windows virtual machine.

One of the possible reasons for installing vCenter Server on a physical machine mightbe to keep it separate from your virtual environment and therefore isolated from anypossible virtual infrastructure outage. However, there are many more advantages forrunning vCenter Server in a virtual machine. You don't need a dedicated physical serverand you can have more resilience in the event of a failure.

The vCenter Server virtual machine can be protected using High Availability (HA) so ifthe physical server that vCenter is running on fails, HA will restart the vCenter Servervirtual machine on another host in the cluster.

Remember, that this may take a couple minutes, so you need to ensure that this isacceptable for the level of service you need to guarantee.

In the event of a vCenter Server failure, it is important to note that HA will still failovervirtual machines and other virtual machines will still continue to run.

Other services like vMotion, Storage vMotion, DRS will be temporarily impacted by theoutage.

You can manually move a vCenter VM for maintenance tasks and you can createsnapshots of the vCenter Server virtual machine and use them to improve backupspeed, provide rollback options for patching and so on.





The vCenter Server database should also be backed up on a regular basis in the eventthat the database becomes corrupt, so that it can easily be restored.

You may also choose to protect VMware vCenter Server using third-party clusteringsolutions including, but not limited to, MSCS (Microsoft Cluster Services) and VCS(Veritas Cluster Services).

Finally, when virtualizing vCenter Server, consider the services and servers thatvCenter server depends on. For example, you might want to start-up virtual machinesrunning Active Directory, DNS, SQL and SSO in that order first and ensure they powerup with a high-priority.

You should document the shutdown and start-up procedure for the cluster as a whole.You should also consider whether or not you wish the vCenter Server to only reside ona fixed host, where you can guarantee resources. If so, ensure that you change yourDRS automation level accordingly.

If using HA, ensure you change the start-up priority for vCenter Server to High.

To provide comprehensive protection for the vCenter server and guarantee highavailability, consider using vCenter Server Heartbeat which is discussed next.

VMware recommends having vCenter as a virtual machine in most instances.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Server Heartbeat

VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat delivers mission critical high availability for VMwarevCenter Server, protecting virtual infrastructure from application, configuration,operating system, network and hardware-related problems. It is a Windows-basedservice specifically designed to provide high availability protection for vCenter Serverconfigurations without requiring any specialized hardware.

vCenter Server Heartbeat is based on a cloned Active/Passive server pair. This meansthat both machines will be exact copies of each other, including machine name, domainidentification and will have the same IP address. Both servers benefit from a sharednothing architecture, meaning that both servers will have an exact copy of application,configuration and data that is replicated from the primary (production) server to thesecondary (ready-standby) server.

As it is software based, vCenter Server Heartbeat can be implemented in a physical orvirtual environment, supporting both virtual to virtual (V2V), physical to virtual (P2V) andphysical to physical (P2P) configurations. It is hardware agnostic.

The default failover mode is automated physical or virtual machine failover.





vCenter Server HeartbeatWhen implementing vCenter Server Heartbeat, consider the following. A secondnetwork link is required for replication and heartbeat monitoring between the twoservers. If the other vCenter server is on a co-located site, ensure you have a sufficient

network connection between the sites. vCenter Server Heartbeat currently only supportsa 32-bit version of SQL server 2005/2008 installed on an x64 operating system, whichcannot be a domain controller, Global Catalog Server or DNS server.

Virtual to Virtual is the supported architecture if vCenter Server is already installed onthe production (Primary) server running on a virtual machine. Benefits to thisarchitecture include reduced hardware cost, shorter installation time, and use of thePre-Clone technique for installation. This option requires a similar CPU, memoryconfiguration and appropriate resource pool priorities and that you keep each pair on aseparate ESX host. If using the virtual to virtual architecture in a vSphere HA/DRSenabled cluster, set VM anti-affinity rules to ensure the VM's aren't placed on the samehost to guard against failure at the host level.




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Server HeartbeatThe Physical to Virtual architecture is used when the environment requires a mix ofphysical and virtual machines. This architecture is appropriate to avoid adding morephysical servers or if you plan to migrate to virtual technologies over a period of time.This option requires a similar CPU, identical memory and that the secondary virtual

machine has sufficient resources.

Consider that you will require twice the amount of resources in order to setup vCenterServer Heartbeat to protect the secondary vCenter server instance.





Environment Scaling for vCenter Server

As of vSphere 5.5, VMware recommends that all services be installed on a local server.This should be performed using the simple install option.

There are no changes to the architecture and all services are local.

This model supports up to 1000 vSphere hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.




VTSP 5.5

Environment Scaling for vCenter ServerFor larger organizations that require 6 or more vCenter Servers, it is recommended tohave a centralized SSO authentication Server. This is for installations at the samephysical location.

For this type of deployment you install a SSO server and the Web Client on the samevirtual machine and then install vCenter Server and the inventory service on othervirtual machines.

Availability of services is provided using vSphere HA or vCenter Heartbeat. A networkload balancer should also be implemented.

It is possible to mix vCenter 5.1 and 5.5. However it is recommended that you upgradewhen possible





Environment Scaling for vCenter ServervSphere 5.5 Single Sign On and multi master architecture offer benefits to any size oforganization.

You can install a vCenter server in one location and as the organization grows add a

further geographically disparate site to replicate to.

You can also manage both sites using Linked Mode for a single pane of glass view.

Mixed vCenter Server SSO architectures (installable and appliance) can replicate toeach other in the same authentication domain.

For large organizations you can take advantage of a full scale centralized SSO Serverto offload replication and authentication, which also maintains compatibility with existingvCenter Servers running version 5.1.

Together, all of the sites can replicate to each other, offering the enterprise full scaleauthentication services.




VTSP 5.5

Knowledge Check - vCenter Multisite Configuration

vCenter Server can be installed in a multisite configuration.

Which statements do you think are correct?





vCenter Database Selection

Your customer wants to use vCenter Server to manage 10 hosts and 200 virtualmachines.

Which of the following solutions is valid for the customer?




VTSP 5.5

vCenter Database SelectionYour customer wants to use vCenter Server to manage 10 hosts and 200 virtualmachines.

The three valid combinations are in the customer's hands here.





Module Summary

Now that you have completed this module, you should be able to identify sizing anddependencies issues, installation options, network connectivity requirements, plug-ins

and add-ons, and service and server resilience considerations for vCenter Server.




VTSP 5.5

Course 2 Module 3: vCenter Scalability Features and Benefits

Module 3: vCenter Scalability Features and Benefits

Welcome to module 3, vSphere Scalability Features and Benefits. These are the topicsthat will be covered in this module.





Module Objectives

In this module we are going to take a closer look at the distributed services that vCentermanages and enables. These services provide the cluster wide features and advanced

functionality that are the key to vSphere scalability.Many aspects of this module focus on not only explaining the distributed services butalso showing you sample whiteboards of how to present them to customers.

If a particular service/feature/functionality is not a part of the core vSphere Standardlicenses we will mention which license tier in which the feature is available.




VTSP 5.5

Presenting vMotion

The traditional challenge for IT is how to execute operational and maintenance taskswithout disruption to business service delivery. In a non-virtualized environment thisessentially means downtime whenever maintenance is required on the infrastructure.

In a virtualized environment we have virtual machines running on the hypervisor whichis installed on the physical host.

Using vMotion, we can migrate (move) a virtual machine from one host to another hostwithout incurring any downtime. To do this we have to copy the memory footprint andthe running state of the virtual machine progressively across to a separate physical hostand then switch over to the running instance of the virtual machine to the new host, allwithout any loss of data or downtime.

This may require a significant amount of dedicated network bandwidth as we may bemoving a lot of data between each host. Sufficient network bandwidth should be

considered during the planning, implementation and configuration stages (On-goingmonitoring should also be carefully planned).

It also requires that the CPU on each physical host is from the same manufacturer andfamily, i.e. you can‟t vMotion from an Intel to an AMD.

Best practice is for Virtual Machine files to be stored on shared storage systems (i.e. astorage system where multiple hosts can access the same storage), such as a FibreChannel or iSCSI storage area network (SAN), or on an NFS NAS volume.

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/C2M3Sc3%20Presenting%20vMotion.mp4







Performing a vMotion without shared storage is possible using Enhanced vMotion.However, this will require a significantly longer time to copy a virtual machine as all theVM file data AND memory footprint has to be copied across a network before the virtualmachine can be completely moved to the destination host.

A benefit of using shared storage is that vMotion only needs to move the memoryfootprint and CPU state of the running virtual machine from the memory of one physicalhost to another. vMotion with shared storage therefore completes in less time thanvMotion that does not use shared storage. Prior to version 5.1, this was the only optionfor live migration of VMs between hosts. The term vMotion on its own typically impliesthat shared storage is required.

While vMotion allows us to migrate virtual machines between hosts so that we can carryout maintenance operations on those hosts without any downtime, then how do we dothe same for storage? Storage vMotion allows us to move the virtual machine filesbetween storage systems that are connected to the same host, without any serviceinterruption for the users.

All of these vMotion capabilities enable you to load balance between physical hostsand storage systems, carry out planned hardware maintenance without serviceinterruption and they also allow you to carry out system expansions or upgrades suchas moving to newer faster hosts or storage systems without incurring serviceinterruptions.

For vMotion to be supported you require the following:

vMotion requires as a minimum the Essentials Plus license.

Virtual machine files are located on shared storage. Shared storage can be on aFibre Channel or iSCSI storage area network (SAN), or an NFS NAS. EnhancedvMotion does not require shared storage but all other pre-requisites are the same

as for standard vMotion. Hosts must have the same CPU manufacturer andfamily or have the same Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) baseline.Migration with vMotion requires correctly configured network interfaces on sourceand target hosts. On each host, configure a VMkernel port group for vMotion. It isa best practice to have at least one dedicated GigE adapter for vMotion per host.

You must ensure that virtual machines have access to the same subnets onsource and destination hosts. If you are using standard switches for networking,ensure that the network labels used for virtual machine port groups areconsistent across hosts.

If you are using vSphere Distributed Switches for networking, ensure that sourceand destination hosts are members of all vSphere Distributed Switches that

virtual machines use for networking.

Use of Jumbo Frames is recommended for best vMotion performance.




VTSP 5.5

Presenting HA

We‟ve talked about planned outages and how to manage them using vMotion. Whathappens if you have an unplanned outage and how do we deal with it?

In the case of multiple ESXi hosts with virtual machines running on them, and wherefiles used shared storage, we can restart virtual machines on other available hosts ifone of our hosts fails.

This technology is called vSphere High Availability or vSphere HA.

vSphere HA provides high availability for virtual machines and the applications runningwithin them, by pooling the ESXi hosts they reside on into a cluster.

Hosts in the cluster are continuously monitored. In the event of a host failure, the virtualmachines on the failed host attempt to restart on alternate hosts.

vSphere App HA is new in vSphere 5.5. It is a virtual appliance that you can deploy on

the vCenter Server.Using the components of vSphere App HA, you can define high availability policies forcritical middleware applications running on your virtual machines in the Data Center,and configure remediation actions to increase their availability.

This means that you can virtualize Tier 1 applications and create a platform to ensurethat vSphere hosts the most critical part of the business.

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/C2M3Sc4%20Presenting%20HA.mp4







In designing the system, you must ensure that you have enough capacity for HArecovery from a host failure. HA performs failover and restarts virtual machines ondifferent hosts. Its first priority is the immediate availability of all virtual machines.

If you have hosts with too many virtual machines and you don‟t have enough capacity,some of the virtual machines might not start even if HA is enabled.

However, if you do not have sufficient resources, you can prioritize your restart order forthe most important virtual machines.

Virtual machines are restarted even if insufficient resources exist, but you now have aperformance issue because virtual machines contend for the limited resources.

If virtual machines have reservations and those reservations cannot be guaranteed,then some virtual machines might not be restarted.

You should also implement redundant heartbeat network addresses and isolationaddresses, and address the possible issue of a host isolation response (in the casewhere a master heartbeat is lost).

As a minimum, you require an Essentials Plus License to use HA. vSphere App HA isonly available with an Enterprise Plus License.




VTSP 5.5

Presenting DRS

A major concern in IT environments is to ensure that the load is distributed effectivelyacross the available resources. In this example we have two hosts handling all of theload and one host with no load. Ideally, you want your infrastructure to sense this and tomove the loads so that the overall utilization is balanced.

VMware DRS or distributed load balancing monitors host, CPU and memory utilizationand can automatically respond to changes in load by rebalancing virtual machinesacross the cluster when necessary. These virtual machines will be moved usingvMotion.

As new virtual machines are created or started, DRS can decide the optimal placementfor the virtual machines so that CPU and Memory resources are evenly consumedacross the cluster.

When you add a new physical server to a cluster, DRS enables virtual machines to

immediately take advantage of the new resources because it re-distributes the runningvirtual machines across the newly expanded pool of resources. You can also definerules (affinity rules) that allow you to control which virtual machines must be kept on thesame host and which virtual machines run on separate hosts.

In order for DRS to work, the pre-requisites of vMotion apply to the hosts and virtualmachines in a DRS cluster.

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A Combination of HA and DRS can be used to enhance the clusters response to hostfailures by improving the load distribution of the restarted VMs. HA powers on VMs thenDRS load balances VMs on Hosts.

Using DRS you can choose different levels of automation, Fully automated, Partiallyautomated and Manual. Fully Automated automatically places virtual machines onhosts when powered on, as well as automatically migrating virtual machines. Partiallyautomated means that virtual machines will be automatically placed on hosts whenpowered on and vCenter will suggest migrations. Manual will suggest migrationrecommendations for virtual machines.

When designing DRS it is important to ensure that you have shared storage. As DRSuses vMotion you should ensure that you understand the design requirements forvMotion setup.

As a minimum you require an Enterprise License to use DRS.




VTSP 5.5

Presenting DPM

Dynamic Power Management is an enhancement to DRS which monitors overallutilization across a cluster and if it finds that the required protection levels can be met byrunning all VM‟s on a reduced number of hosts, it will evacuate all virtual machines fromone or more hosts and then put those hosts into standby mode in order to save overallpower consumption.

When the virtual machine load increases and the host can no longer provide therequired level of protection, DPM will automatically restart hosts and migrate virtualmachines back onto them once they have come back online. When configuring DPM,you must ensure that the cluster can startup and shutdown each host using IMPI orWake on LAN.

You should configure the vSphere DPM automation level for automatic operation anduse the default vSphere DPM power threshold. This decreases power and cooling costsas well as decreasing administrative management overhead.

As a minimum you require an Enterprise License to use this feature.

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Presenting FT

In some cases it is desirable to have the absolute minimum risk of downtime for somevirtual machines. VSphere fault tolerance or FT maintains an identical copy of a running

virtual machine in lockstep on a separate host. All Inputs and events performed on theprimary virtual machine are recorded and replayed on the secondary virtual machineensuring that the two remain in an identical state.

FT ensures that in the case of a host failure, the lockstep copy instantly takes over withzero downtime.

vSphere Fault Tolerance is currently limited to Virtual Machines with a single vCPU and,like vMotion, dedicated network uplinks on all hosts are recommended in order toensure that there is sufficient bandwidth available. All other standard vMotionconstraints also apply to VMs protected with Fault Tolerance. Consider that you areusing twice the amount of resources, so factor this into your design when using FT.

As a minimum you require a Standard License in order to use FT.

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VTSP 5.5

Presenting Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS)

Just as DRS is utilized to provide benefits such as resource aggregation, automatedload balancing and bottleneck avoidance for host resources, Storage DRS provides thesame capabilities for storage resources. You can group and manage a cluster of similardatastores as a single load-balanced storage resource called a datastore cluster.

Storage DRS collects the resource usage information for this datastore cluster andmakes automated decisions or recommendations about the initial virtual machine fileplacement and migration to avoid I/O and space utilization bottlenecks on thedatastores in the cluster.

Storage DRS affinity rules enable controlling which virtual disks should or should not beplaced on the same datastore within a datastore cluster. By default, a virtual machine'svirtual disks are kept together on the same datastore. Storage DRS offers three types ofaffinity rules:

VMDK Anti-Affinity:Virtual disks of a virtual machine with multiple virtual disks are placed on differentdatastores.

VMDK Affinity:Virtual disks are kept together on the same datastore.

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VM Anti-Affinity:Two specified virtual machines are kept on different hosts from each other.

You should use affinity and anti-affinity rules as needed. As an example, to improve theperformance of an application by keeping the application disk on a datastore separatefrom the operating system disk.

As a minimum you require an Enterprise Plus license to use Storage DRS.




VTSP 5.5

Presenting Host Profiles

A host profile captures the configuration of a specific host in a template form so that thisprofile can then be used to configure other hosts or validate if a host‟s configurationmeets the requirements set by the administrator. This greatly reduces the manual stepsinvolved in configuring hosts and maintaining consistency and correctness in hostconfiguration across the data center.

Host profiles eliminate per-host, manual or UI-based host configuration. vSphereadministrators can use host profile policies to maintain configuration consistency andcorrectness across the data center. Host profile policies capture the blueprint of aknown, validated golden configuration and use this as a baseline to configurenetworking, storage settings, security settings, and other settings on multiple hosts. Thisbaseline can then be used to do a one-click or even scheduled configuration of newly-discovered or re-provisioned hosts.

vSphere administrators can also monitor changes to this baseline configuration, detectdiscrepancies, and fix them. The baseline reduces the setup time when provisioningnew hosts and eliminates the need for specialized scripts to perform ESXi hostconfiguration. The baseline can also be used to roll out administrator passwordchanges.

You should ensure that you set up and properly configure a host that will be used as areference host. Using host profiles is only supported for vSphere 4.0 hosts or later. As aminimum, host profiles require an Enterprise Plus License.





Presenting Storage Profiles

Profile-Driven Storage enables administrators to have greater control over their storageresources. It enables virtual machine storage provisioning to be automatically defined

by the configuration of the virtual machine.Profile-Driven Storage uses VASA to deliver the storage characterization supplied bythe storage vendors to vCenter. VASA improves visibility into the physical storageinfrastructure through vCenter Server. Storage can also be manually tagged by the

Administrator. Instead of only seeing a block or file device with some amount ofcapacity, this allows vCenter to know about replication, RAID, compression,deduplication, and other capabilities and characteristics of the storage that it hasavailable.

With this new information, VMware administrators can create storage profiles that allowthem to define storage in terms of capability and not just capacity. Virtual machines can

then be assigned storage by policy in order to meet their storage performance,protection or other characteristics in addition to capacity. The storage characterizationsare used to create the virtual machine placement rules in the form of storage profiles.

Storage Profiles also provide a way to check a virtual machine‟s compliance againstthese rules.

A key benefit here is that the virtual machine administrator no longer needs to makedetailed storage decisions regarding storage capability when deploying virtual




VTSP 5.5

machines. This also extends to templates so that rapid provisioning can alsoautomatically assign suitable storage without requiring detailed storage allocationdecisions.

For example machines may have their storage automatically selected based on aservice level agreement which matches a particular storage profile. In the case shown

here, the virtual machine has Gold level storage specified for both its configuration filesand one of its virtual disks and, Bronze level storage for the other virtual disk. In thisenvironment, the Gold Storage profile corresponds to a datastore that has fast diskswith a high performance RAID type. The Bronze profile corresponds to a datastore thathas slower disks with a space-efficient RAID type. The use of storage profiles makes iteasier for the administrators to ensure that the correct types of storage resources areautomatically selected.

If you are planning to use storage profiles ensure that your storage system has VMwarevStorage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA).

Because multiple system capabilities for a datastore are not supported, a datastore that

spans several extents assumes the system capability of only one of its extents.Storage profiles require as a minimum an Enterprise Plus License.





Distributed Virtual Switches

In a vSphere infrastructure, if we need to make any changes or add capacity to thenetwork configuration in the cluster, we have to ensure that the changes are configured

correctly across each host, or we run the risk of breaking services such as vMotion,where incorrectly labeled port groups will cause vMotion to fail. Managing the networkconfiguration on each host becomes a significant administrative overhead when dealingwith multiple servers.

The vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) improves virtual machine networking by enablingyou to set up virtual machine access switching for your entire data center from acentralized interface.

This enables the following , improved virtual machine network configuration, enhancednetwork monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities and support advanced vSpherenetworking features such as LACP.

The vSphere Distributed Switch provides the building blocks for many advancednetworking features in a vSphere environment, such as PV-LANs, VXLAN, Network I/Ocontrol, SR-IOV and third-party switch extensions.

vSphere 5.1 also added the ability to export and restore DV switch configurations whichenhances the supportability of virtual switches. It also allows the use of the export as atemplate to create a distributed switch in any other deployment.




VTSP 5.5

DV switches now also support an automatic configuration rollback. This ensures thatmisconfigurations that would significantly impact host or distributed switch behavior areprevented from taking effect by rolling back to the previous valid configuration. Theserollbacks will occur when a network change that disconnects a host or creates any otherinvalid host networking configuration. Rollbacks will also occur when an invalid update

is attempted on a distributed switch, distributed port group or distributed ports. As a minimum you require an Enterprise Plus license to use Distributed VirtualSwitches.

Distributed Virtual Switches are covered in more depth in Course 4.





Auto Deploy

vSphere Auto Deploy facilitates the rapid provisioning of vSphere hosts by leveragingthe network boot capabilities of x86 servers together with the small footprint of the ESXi

hypervisor. Once installed a vCenter host profile is used to configure the host. Afterconfiguration the host is connected to vCenter where it is available to host virtualmachines. The entire process is fully automated allowing new hosts to be quicklyprovisioned with no manual intervention.

Stateless or diskless caching host deployments let you continue operation if the AutoDeploy server becomes unreachable. This was the only mode of install available invSphere 5.0.

Stateless Caching caches the image when you apply the host profile. When you laterreboot, the host continues to use the Auto Deploy infrastructure to retrieve its image. Ifthe Auto Deploy server is not available, the host uses the cached image.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Storage Appliances A VSA cluster leverages the computing and local storage resources of several ESXihosts. It provides a set of datastores that are accessible to all hosts within the cluster.

An ESXi host that runs VSA and participates in a VSA cluster is a VSA cluster member.

A VSA cluster is an affordable resilient shared storage solution that supports vMotion,HA, DRS and other vSphere distributed services that is easy to install, and expandable.

Multiple VSA instances can be managed within a single vCenter Environment.With VSA 1.0, you could create a VSA cluster with two or maximum three VSA clustermembers.

As of vSphere 5.1 the VSA can now support disks in all ESXi hosts in the cluster,supports up to eight 3TB or twelve 2TB disks internally and up to 16 external disks in anexpansion enclosure.

The VSA now has the ability to dynamically enlarge the shared storage managed by theVSA provided there is sufficient additional free physical space on all nodes in the VSAcluster to extend into.

Prior to vSphere 5.1, vCenter could be run on the VSA but had to be installed

somewhere else first before a VSA cluster could be deployed. From VSA 5.1 onwards,you can install a VMware vCenter instance on a local datastore of a VSA cluster virtualmachine.

That VMware vCenter instance then can be used to install the VSA by allocating asubset of local storage, excluding the amount allocated for VMware vCenter (on allhosts) for VSA and once it is configured the vCenter Server can be migrated to the VSAstorage.





You should ensure that you have the resources needed to install a VSA cluster. You willrequire a physical or virtual machine that runs vCenter Server, however you can runvCenter Server on one of the ESXi hosts in the cluster.

You require two or three physical hosts with ESXi installed. The hosts must all be thesame type of ESXi installation. VSA does not support combining freshly installed ESXiand modified ESXi hosts in a single cluster. You require at least one Gb Ethernet or10Gb Ethernet Switch.

As a minimum you require an Essentials Plus License to use one instance of VSA. AVSA License is included in the Essentials Plus and all advanced Kits.

VSA is covered in more depth in Course 5.




VTSP 5.5

Planned Maintenance

Your customer wants to be able to carry out planned maintenance tasks on ESXi hosts without

service interruption.

Which of the following technologies would be a best fit for them?

There are two correct answers.





vSphere Standard License

Your customer has a vSphere Standard License.

Identify three features which are available for the customer to use.




VTSP 5.5

Module Summary

We have now explored the features, benefits and configuration requirements for theadvanced scalability and cluster wide features of vSphere that are managed andcontrolled via vCenter.

Now that you have completed this module, feel free to review it until you are ready tostart the next module.





Course 3

VTSP V5.5 Course 3: VMware vSphere: VM Management

Welcome to VTSP 5.5 Course 3: VMware vSphere: VM Management.There are 3 modules in this course as shown here.




VTSP 5.5

Course 3 Objectives


Define the architecture of vSphere 5.5 Virtual Machines

Explain how, why and when Virtual Machines can be customized in order tosupport specific features, configurations and capabilities

Explain how and why a customer should leverage Virtual Machine templates,cloning and snapshots

Describe the options available for migrating virtual machines including coldmigration, vMotion, and vSphere Replication

Be familiar with the VMware Update Manager and how it is used to manageupdates for vSphere hosts and virtual machines





Module 1: Virtual Machine Architecture

This is module 1, Virtual Machine Architecture, which explores the configuration options

in order to be able to explain the benefits, pre-requisites, licensing and other impactsthat are associated with specific virtual machine configuration and virtual infrastructuredesign choices. These are the topics that will be covered in this module.




VTSP 5.5

Module 1 Objectives

At the end of this module the delegate will be able to:

Describe the architecture of vSphere 5.5 Virtual Machines

Explore the configuration options Explain the benefits, pre-requisites, licensing and other impacts that are

associated with specific VM configuration and virtual infrastructure designchoices.





What is a virtual machine?

A virtual machine (VM) comprises a set of specification and configuration files and isbacked by the physical resources of a host.

Running on an x86-based hardware platform, a VM behaves exactly like a physicalcomputer, and contains its own virtual CPU, RAM, and NIC.




VTSP 5.5

What is a virtual machine? A virtual machine contains virtual hardware, a guest operating system, and one or moreapplications. In the ESXi architecture, applications running in virtual machines accessCPU, memory, disk, and network resources without direct access to the underlyingphysical hardware.

The virtual machine monitor or VMM sends requests for computer resources on behalfof its virtual machine to the ESXi hypervisor, known as the VMkernel.

In turn, the VMkernel presents the VMM resource requests to the physical hardware.

A virtual machine is a collection of virtualized hardware resources that would constitutea physical machine on a native environment

As a physical machine can have a number of CPUs, a virtual machine is assigned anumber of virtual CPUs, or vCPUs. For example, a 4-way virtual machine has fourvCPUs. A virtual machine has one or more vCPU worlds on which guest instructions areexecuted. So, the 4-vCPU virtual machine has 4 vCPU worlds.

There are other worlds associated with the virtual machine that execute managementtasks like handling the mouse and keyboard, snapshots, and legacy I/O devices.

Therefore, it is theoretically possible that a single-vCPU virtual machine can consumemore than 100% of a processor, although this is unlikely because those managementworlds are mostly inactive.

The CPU scheduler in VMware vSphere (ESXi 5.x) is crucial to providing goodperformance in a consolidated environment.





Because most modern processors are now equipped with multi-core processors, it iseasy to build a system with tens of cores running hundreds of virtual machines. In sucha large system, allocating CPU resources efficiently and fairly is critical.

Fairness is one of the major design goals of the CPU scheduler.

Allocation of CPU time to virtual machines has to be faithful to the resourcespecifications like CPU shares, reservations, and limits. The CPU scheduler worksaccording to the proportional share algorithm. This aims to maximize CPU utilizationand world execution efficiency, which are critical to system throughput.

With this in mind, you must ensure that you choose the appropriate amount of vCPUsfor your virtual machine depending on the type of workload that it will execute. This isdiscussed in more detail later.




VTSP 5.5

Virtual Machine Hardware

VMware vSphere 5.5 supports a new virtual machine format, VM Virtual Hardwareversion 10.

The devices of a virtual machine are a collection of virtual hardware that includes thedevices shown on the screen. For example, you can select the amount of RAM toconfigure the virtual machine. The processors that the virtual machine identifies are thesame as those on the physical host.

An important point to remember is that the virtual machine platform provided by theESXi host is independent of the host system and its physical hardware. Every VMwareplatform product provides the same set of virtualized hardware regardless of the systemon which it is running.

For example, you can move a virtual machine from a HP server with an AMD processorand local SCSI disks to an IBM server with an Intel processor and Fibre Channel SAN.

Some flavors of Linux install a kernel module specific to AMD when the virtual machineis initially built on a server with AMD platform.

If you move that same virtual machine unmodified to an Intel based host, it could go intokernel panic upon boot.

The virtual machine can be powered on and run unaffected by the hardwaredifferences.





ESXi supports virtual machines with up to 64 virtual CPUs which allows you to runlarger CPU-intensive workloads on the VMware ESXi platform. ESXi also supports 1TBvirtual RAM(vRAM). This means you can assign up to 1TB of RAM to ESXi 5.5 virtualmachines.

In turn, this means you can run even the largest applications in vSphere including verylarge databases, and you can virtualize even more resource-intensive Tier 1 and 2applications.

With vSphere 5.1, VMware partnered with NVIDIA to provide hardware-based vGPUsupport inside the virtual machine.

vGPUs improve the graphics capabilities of a virtual machine by off-loading graphic-intensive workloads to a physical GPU installed on the vSphere host. vSphere 5.1 wasthe first vSphere release to provide support for hardware-accelerated 3D graphics-virtual graphics processing unit (vGPU)-inside of a virtual machine.

That support was limited to only NVIDIA-based GPUs. With vSphere 5.5, vGPU support

has been expanded to include both Intel- and AMD-based GPUs. Virtual machines withgraphic-intensive workloads or applications that typically have required hardware-basedGPUs can now take advantage of additional vGPU vendors, makes and models.

Virtual machines still can leverage VMware vSphere vMotion technology, even across aheterogeneous mix of vGPU vendors, without any downtime or interruptions to thevirtual machine.

vGPU support can be enabled using both the vSphere Web Client and VMware HorizonView for Microsoft Windows 7 OS and Windows 8 OS. The following Linux OSs also aresupported: Fedora 17 or later, Ubuntu 12 or later and Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL)7. Controlling vGPU use in Linux OSs is supported using the vSphere Web Client.




VTSP 5.5

Configuration Maximums

Before deploying a virtual machine, you must plan your environment. You shouldunderstand the requirements and configuration maximums for virtual machinessupported by vSphere 5.5.

The maximum CPU configuration is 64 vCPUs per virtual machine. You must haveadequate licensing in place if you want to use this many vCPUs.

The maximum amount of RAM per virtual machine is 1TB. Before scaling this much,take into account whether the guest operating system can support these amounts andwhether the client can use these resources for the workload required.

With vSphere 5.5, the maximum size of a virtual disk is 62TB - an increase from almost2TB in vSphere 5.1. 62TB Virtual Mode RDMs can also be created.

vSphere 5.5 adds AHCI SATA controllers. You can configure a maximum of fourcontrollers with support for 30 devices per controller, making a total of 120 devices. This

increases the number of virtual disks available to a virtual machine from 60 to 180.

The maximum amount of virtual SCSI targets per virtual machine is 60, and isunchanged.

Currently, the maximum number of Virtual NICs that a virtual machine can have is 10.Be sure you choose the network adapters appropriate for the virtual machine you arecreating.





Video memory is limited to 512MB per virtual machine.

If you plan an environment with hundreds of desktops, take into account any virtualmachine overhead incurred by using video memory or 3D support.

Most of these limits mean that generally, you do not need to be concerned with the

overall maximums when creating a virtual machine, but as always, bear them in mind.The configuration maximums document can be located by visiting www.vmware.com.




VTSP 5.5

Virtual Machine Licensing Considerations

The new vSphere licensing model for each of vSphere 5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 continues to bebased on processor licenses.

It eliminates the restrictive physical entitlements of CPU cores and physical RAM perserver and does not limit the number of virtual machines or amount of virtual memory(vRAM) on each licensed processor.

Therefore, you can have up to 64 vCPUs in a virtual machine, depending on the numberof licensed CPUs on the host and the type of license.

You cannot start a virtual machine with more virtual processors than the total number oflicensed physical cores on your host.

To use the Virtual Serial Port Concentrator, you must have an Enterprise or EnterprisePlus license.

vSphere Desktop Edition is designed for licensing vSphere in VDI deployments.vSphere Desktop provides all the functionalities of vSphere Enterprise Plus.

It can only be used for VDI deployment and can be leveraged with both VMwareHorizon View and other third-party VDI connection brokers.

VMware vSphere Hypervisor is a free product that provides a way to get started withvirtualization quickly and at no cost.

It cannot connect to a vCenter Server or be managed by one.





Previously in vSphere 5.1 the server was limited to using 32Gb of physical RAM. InvSphere 5.5 this restriction has been removed.




VTSP 5.5

Core Virtual Machine Files

Like a physical computer, a virtual machine runs an operating system and applications.

The virtual machine is comprised of a set of specification and configuration files and is

backed by the physical resources of a host.

These files are stored in a single directory on a VMFS or NFS datastore that isconnected to the host.





Core Virtual Machine FilesConfiguration files ending .vmx contain all the configuration and hardware settings forthe virtual machine. These files are stored in text format.

There are two types of swap file.

The <VM_name>.vswp is created for the virtual machine during power on. This is usedwhen the physical host exhausts its allocated memory and guest swap is used. Its sizeis equal to the allocated RAM less any memory reservation at boot time.

The vmx-<VM_name>.vswp file is used to reduce the VMX memory reservationsignificantly (for example, from about 50MB or more per virtual machine to about 10MBper virtual machine).

This allows the remaining memory to be swapped out when host memory isovercommitted, reducing overhead memory reservation for each virtual machine.

The host creates VMX swap files automatically, provided there is sufficient free disk

space at the time a virtual machine is powered on.Non-volatile RAM stores the state of the virtual machine‟s BIOS in the file<VM_name>.nvram. If this is deleted, the virtual machine will recreate one when it ispowered on.

Log files are created when the virtual machine is power cycled. The current log file isalways called vmware.log

A virtual machine template file has the extension .vmtx.




VTSP 5.5

A Raw Device Map File will have the extension -rdm.vmdk

Each virtual disk drive for a virtual machine consists of a pair of .vmdk files. One is atext file containing descriptive data about the virtual hard disk, and the second is theactual content of that disk.

For example, a virtual machine named examplevm has one disk attached to it. This diskis comprised of a descriptor file, examplevm.vmdk, of under 1KB, and a 10GB examplevm-flat.vmdk flat file which contains virtual machine content.

There are a number of ways to provision virtual disks, which will be discussed later.

Suspend files, are generated when a user or an administrator suspends the virtualmachine from the power-on state.

Snapshot data files, which describe the virtual machine‟s snapshots, if they exist.

Snapshot state files which store the memory state of the virtual machine at the time youtake the snapshot. Note, a .vmsn file is created each time you take a snapshot,regardless of the memory selection.

Snapshot disk file is a snapshot file that represents the difference between the currentstate of the virtual disk and the state that existed at the time the previous snapshot wastaken.





Knowledge Check: VM Configuration Maximums

Your customer has asked about configuration maximums on virtual machines.




VTSP 5.5

VMware Tools

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtualmachine‟s guest OS and improves the management of the virtual machine.

The VMware Tools installer files for Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, NetWare, and Solarisguest OS are built into ESXi as ISO image files.

After installing and configuring the guest OS, you must install VMware Tools.

VMware Tools provide two very visible benefits: better video performance and the abilityto move the mouse pointer freely into and out of the console window.

VMware Tools also install other important components, such as device drivers.

The VMware Tools service performs various tasks such as passing messages from thehost to the guest OS, running scripts that help automate the operations of the OS,synchronizing the time in the guest OS with the time in the host OS, and sending a

heartbeat to the host so that it knows the guest OS is running.On Windows guests, VMware Tools controls grabbing and releasing of the mousepointer.

VMware Tools also enables you to copy and paste text between the desktop of the localhost and the desktop of the virtual machine.





VMware Tools includes a set of VMware device drivers for improved graphical, network,and mouse performance, as well as efficient memory allocation between virtualmachines.

From the VMware Tools control panel, you can modify settings and connect anddisconnect virtual devices.

There is also a set of VMware Tools scripts that help automate the guest OS tasks.

An icon in the notification area of the Windows taskbar indicates when VMware Tools isrunning and provides ready access to the VMware Tools control panel and help utility.




VTSP 5.5

Using Operations Manager for Better Performance and Capacity Utilization

vSphere with Operations Manager provides powerful tools for analyzing the resourcesand the performance of your virtual environment.

You can select an object to get an overview of the Health status of every related object,such as the associated vCenter Server, data centers, datastores, hosts and virtualmachine.

This data allows you to find answers to questions regarding remaining capacity in yourenvironment, how many virtual machines you can deploy before capacity runs out, orwhich resources are constrained in your environment.

Bar graphs display trend views of object counts and resource use activity.

The information tables provide extended forecasts for object counts and for usedresources. It includes the remaining capacity for the next week, month and longerperiods.

Depending on the object you are looking at, you can start a what-if scenario to learnabout the impact of capacity changes.




VTSP 5.5

Customizing Virtual Machine Settings

Before creating a virtual machine, you must consider such factors as the guestoperating system you want to install and the type of workload it will manage. These willaffect the requirements of your virtual machine.

With this in mind, it is useful to understand the impact each component of a virtualmachine has on resources, capacity, licensing and performance; and what impactchanging these can have. These are explored briefly next.

Virtual machines run the applications and services that support individual users andentire lines of business. They must be designed, provisioned, and managed to ensurethe efficient operation of these applications and services.

While it is best to deploy virtual machines with the default settings unless a clear caseexists for doing otherwise, there are some choices you might face that can have animpact on the design of your virtual machine .





NCIS

When you configure a virtual machine, you can add virtual network interface cards(NICs) and specify the adapter type. The types of network adapters that are available

depend on the following factors:

The virtual machine version, which in turn depends on what host created it ormost recently updated it.

Whether the virtual machine has been updated to the latest version for thecurrent host.

The guest OS.Six main NIC types are supported: E1000, Flexible, Vlance, VMXNET, VMXNET 2(Enhanced) and VMXNET3.

The default virtual NIC emulated in a virtual machine is either an AMD PCnet32 device(vlance), an Intel E1000 device (E1000), or an Intel E1000e device (E1000e).

VMware also offers the VMXNET family of paravirtualized network adapters. Theseprovide better performance than default adapters and should be used for optimalperformance within any guest OS for which they are available. The VMXNET virtualNICs (particularly VMXNET3) also offer performance features not found in the othervirtual NICs.

The VMXNET3 paravirtualized NIC requires that the virtual machine use virtualhardware version 7 or later and, in some cases, requires that VMware Tools be installed




VTSP 5.5

in the guest OS. A virtual machine with a VMXNET3 device cannot use vMotion tomigrate to a host running ESX/ESXi 3.5.x or earlier.

When two virtual machines on the same host communicate through a single vSwitch,their network speeds are not limited by the wire speed of any physical network card.Instead, they transfer network packets as fast as the host resources allow. If the virtual

machines are connected to different virtual switches, traffic will go through a wire andincur unnecessary CPU and network overhead.





vRAM

Carefully select the amount of memory you allocate to your virtual machines. Youshould allocate enough memory to hold the working set of applications you will run in

the virtual machine, thus minimizing thrashing. You should also avoid over-allocatingmemory, as this consumes memory that could be used to support more virtualmachines.

ESXi uses five memory management mechanisms-page sharing, ballooning, memorycompression, swap to host cache, and regular swapping-to dynamically reduce theamount of physical memory required for each virtual machine.

When Page Sharing is enabled, ESXi uses a proprietary technique to transparently andsecurely share memory pages between virtual machines, thus eliminating redundantcopies of memory pages. If the virtual machine‟s memory usage approaches its memorytarget, ESXi will use ballooning to reduce that virtual machine‟s memory demands.

If the virtual machine‟s memory usage approaches the level at which host-levelswapping will be required, ESXi will use memory compression to reduce the number ofmemory pages it will need to swap out. If memory compression doesn‟t keep the virtualmachine‟s memory usage low enough, ESXi will next forcibly reclaim memory usinghost-level swapping to a host cache (if one has been configured). Swap to host cache isa feature that allows users to configure a special swap cache on SSD storage. In mostcases this host cache (being on SSD) will be much faster than the regular swap files(typically on hard disk storage), significantly reducing access latency.




VTSP 5.5

If the host cache becomes full, or if a host cache has not been configured, ESXi willnext reclaim memory from the virtual machine by swapping out pages to a regular swapfile. Like swap to host cache, some of the pages ESXi swaps out might be active. Unlikeswap to host cache, however, this mechanism can cause virtual machine performanceto degrade significantly due to its high access latency.

While ESXi uses these methods to allow significant memory overcommitment with littleor no impact on performance, you should avoid overcommitting memory to the point thatactive memory pages are swapped out with regular host-level swapping.





CPUs

When choosing the number of vCPUs consider whether the virtual machine needs morethan one. As a general rule, always try to use as few vCPUs as possible. If the

operating system supports symmetric multiprocessing (SMP), consider whether theapplication is multithreaded and whether it would benefit from multiple vCPUs. Thiscould provide improvements for the virtual machine and the host.

Configuring a virtual machine with more vCPUs than its workload can use might causeslightly increased resource usage, potentially impacting performance on very heavily-loaded systems. Common examples of this include a single-threaded workload runningin a multiple-vCPU virtual machine or a multi-threaded workload in a virtual machinewith more vCPUs than the workload can effectively use.

Unused vCPUs still consume timer interrupts in some guest operating systems, thoughnot with “tickless timer” kernels such as 2.6 Linux kernels.




VTSP 5.5

SCSI

ESXi supports multiple virtual disk types.

Thick provisioned - Thick virtual disks, which have all their space allocated at creation

time, are further divided into eager zeroed and lazy zeroed disks. An eager-zeroed thickdisk has all space allocated and zeroed out at the time of creation. This increases thetime it takes to create the disk, but results in the best performance, even on the firstwrite to each block.

A lazy-zeroed thick disk has all space allocated at the time of creation, but each block iszeroed only on first write. This results in a shorter creation time, but reducedperformance the first time a block is written to. Subsequent writes, however, have thesame performance as eager-zeroed thick disks.

The use of VAAI*-capable SAN storage can speed up disk creation and zeroing byoffloading operations to the storage array.

*VMware vSphere Storage APIs-Array Integration

Thin-provisioned - Space required for a thin-provisioned virtual disk is allocated andzeroed upon first write, as opposed to upon creation. There is a higher I/O cost (similarto that of lazy-zeroed thick disks) during the first write to an unwritten file block, but onsubsequent writes, thin-provisioned disks have the same performance as eager-zeroedthick disks.





The use of VAAI-capable SAN storage can improve thin-provisioned disk first-time-writeperformance by improving file locking capability and offloading zeroing operations to thestorage array.

Thin provisioning of storage addresses a major inefficiency issue by allocating blocks ofstorage to a guest operating system (OS), file system, or database only as they areneeded, rather than at the time of creation.

However, traditional thin provisioning does not address reclaiming stale or deleted datawithin a guest OS, leading to a gradual growth of storage allocation to a guest OS overtime. With vSphere 5.1, VMware introduces a new virtual disk type, the space-efficientsparse virtual disk (SE sparse disk), with the ability to reclaim previously-used spacewithin the guest OS. Currently, SE sparse disk is restricted to VMware Horizon View.

As a guide, use one partition per virtual disk, to deploy a system disk and a separateapplication data disk. This simplifies backup and separate disks help distribute I/O load.Place a virtual machine‟s system and data disks on the same datastore, unless theyhave widely varying I/O characteristics. Do not place all system disks on one datastore

and all data disks on another.

Store swap files on shared storage with the virtual machine files as this option is thedefault and the simplest configuration for administration.




VTSP 5.5

Knowledge Check: Virtual Machine Customization

Your customer's data center team has asked about the maximum amount of virtualdisks they can attach to their virtual machine.





Hot Extending Virtual Disks

With Hot Extending, you can extend a virtual disk without any downtime on the virtualmachine. Not all guest OSs support hot-extending.

Keep in mind that after you increase the size of the virtual disk, you need to use theappropriate tool in the guest OS to allow the file system on this disk to use the newlyallocated disk space.

It is important to note that if a virtual machine has snapshots, and you hot-extend avirtual disk, you can no longer commit a snapshot or revert the base disk to its originalsize.

vSphere 5.5 introduces support for 62TB virtual disks. However, at this time it should benoted that there is no support for hot extending disk files beyond 2TB. The virtual diskmust be offline for this to happen.




VTSP 5.5

Hot-adding Hardware

Examples of hot-addable devices are USB controllers, Ethernet adapters, and hard diskdevices.





Hot-adding HardwareUSB Controllers

USB controllers are available to add to virtual machines to support USB passthroughfrom an ESXi host or client computer to the virtual machine.

You can add multiple USB devices to a virtual machine when the physical devices areconnected to an ESXi host. USB passthrough technology supports adding USB devicessuch as security dongles and mass storage devices to virtual machines that reside onthe host to which the devices are connected.

Devices can connect to only one virtual machine at a time.

For a list of USB device models supported for passthrough, refer to the knowledge basearticle at kb.vmware.com/kb/1021345




VTSP 5.5

Hot-adding HardwareNetwork Interface Cards

You can add a network interface card (NIC) to a virtual machine to bridge a network, toenhance communications, or to replace an older adapter.

When you add a NIC to a virtual machine, you select the adapter type, networkconnection, and indicate whether the device should connect when the virtual machine isturned on.

Ensure that your operating system supports the type of NIC that you wish to use andremember to use the VMXNET3 paravirtualized network adapter for operating systemswhere it is supported.





Hot-adding HardwareHard Disks

To add a hard disk to a virtual machine, you can create a virtual disk, add an existingvirtual disk, or add a mapped SAN LUN. You may have to refresh or rescan the

hardware in an operating system such as Windows 2003.

You cannot hot-add IDE disks.




VTSP 5.5

Hot-Add CPU and Memory

The slide shows details of the Add page.





VMDirectPath I/O Generation

VMDirectPath I/O is a technology that improves CPU efficiency by allowing devicedrivers in virtual machines to bypass the virtualization layer, and directly access and

control physical devices.VMDirectPath I/O relies on DMA Address Translation in an I/O memory managementunit to convert guest physical addresses to host physical addresses.

VMDirectPath I/O is targeted to those applications that benefit from direct access by theguest operating system to the I/O devices.

When VMDirectPath I/O is enabled for a particular device and virtual machine, thatdevice is no longer shown in the ESXi device inventory and no longer available for useby the ESXi I/O stack.

This virtual machine takes full control of the device. Therefore, while the virtual machine

gains performance (mostly CPU), it loses many virtualization features, such as vMotion,virtual device hot add, and virtual machine suspend and resume.

Each virtual machine supports up to six PCI DirectPath devices.

Generally, you cannot migrate a virtual machine configured with a passthrough PCIdevice through vMotion.

However, Cisco Unified Computing Systems (UCS) through Cisco Virtual MachineFabric Extender (VM-FEX) distributed switches support migration of virtual machines.




VTSP 5.5

To ensure that the host hardware is compatible with VM DirectPath I/O, check theVMware Compatibility Guide athttp://www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/search.php





Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) Support

vSphere versions 5.1 and later support Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV).

This feature is beneficial for users who want to offload I/O processing to the physicaladapters to help reduce network latency. vSphere 5.5 introduces a new simplifiedworkflow for SR-IOV configuration.

SR-IOV is a standard that allows one Peripheral Component Interconnect Express(PCIe) adapter to be presented as multiple separate logical devices to the VMs.

The hypervisor manages the physical functions (PF) while the virtual functions (VFs) areexposed to the VMs. In the hypervisor, SR-IOV capable network devices offer thebenefits of direct I/O, which include reduced latency and reduced host CPU utilization.

VMware vSphere ESXi platform‟s VMDirectPath (pass through) functionality providessimilar benefits to the customer, but requires a physical adapter per VM.

In SR-IOV, the pass-through functionality can be provided from a single adapter tomultiple VMs through VFs.

The limitation with this feature is that since the network processing has been offloadedto a physical adapter, vSphere vMotion, vSphere FT, and vSphere HA features are notavailable to the customers when this feature is selected.

vSphere 5.5 enables users to communicate the port group properties defined on thevSphere standard switch (vSS) or VDS to the virtual functions.




VTSP 5.5

For example, if promiscuous mode is enabled in a port group, that configuration is thenpassed to virtual functions, and the virtual machines connected to the port group willreceive traffic from other virtual machines.

To configure SR-IOV, your environment must meet certain criteria.

For example, vSphere must be at version 5.1 on Hosts with Intel processors. AMDprocessors are not supported at version 5.5. For the full list of Support Configuration,check the vSphere Documentation by following the link below.

SR-IOV offers performance benefits and trade-offs similar to those of DirectPath I/O.DirectPath I/O and SR-IOV have similar functionality but you use them to accomplishdifferent things.SR-IOV is not compatible with certain core virtualization features, suchas vMotion.

SR-IOV does, however, allow for a single physical device to be shared amongst multipleguests.

With VMDirectPath I/O, you can map only one physical function to one virtual machine.

With SR-IOV you share a single physical device, allowing multiple virtual machines toconnect directly to the physical function.





Raw Device Mapping (RDM) Overview

Raw Device Mapping (RDM) provides a mechanism for a virtual machine to have directaccess to logical units (LUNs) on the physical storage subsystem. It is available only on

block-based storage arrays.RDM comprises a mapping file in a separate VMFS volume that acts as a proxy for araw physical storage device. It allows a virtual machine to directly access and use thestorage device and contains metadata for managing and redirecting the disk access tothe physical device.

The mapping file gives some of the advantages of direct access to a physical devicewhile keeping some advantages of a virtual disk in VMFS.

As a result, it merges the VMFS manageability with the raw device access.

You can use the vSphere Client to add raw LUNs to virtual machines.

You can also use vMotion to migrate virtual machines with RDMs as long as both thesource and target hosts have access to the raw LUN.

Additional benefits of RDM include distributed file locking, permissions, and namingfunctionalities.

Please note that VMware recommends using VMFS datastores for most virtual diskstorage.

A new LUN is required for each virtual machine with RDM.




VTSP 5.5

Knowledge Check: Core Virtual Machine Files

Match the file types on the left with the correct functions to complete the table on the

right.





Module Summary


Describe the architecture of vSphere 5.5 Virtual Machines

Explore the configuration options

Explain the benefits, pre-requisites, licensing and other impacts that areassociated with specific VM configuration and virtual infrastructure designchoices




VTSP 5.5

Module 2: Copying and Migrating Virtual Machines

This is module 2, Copying and Migrating Virtual Machines. These are the topics that willbe covered in this module.





Module 2 Objectives

At the end of this module, you will be able to:

Describe the options in vSphere 5.5 for copying or moving Virtual Machineswithin and between Virtual Infrastructures.

Explain how and why a customer should make use of these features.




VTSP 5.5

Templates

VMware provides several methods to provision vSphere virtual machines.

The optimal method for your environment depends on factors such as the size and typeof your infrastructure and the goals that you want to achieve.

A template is a master copy of a virtual machine that can be used to create andprovision new virtual machines, minimizing the time needed for provisioning.

The template image usually includes a specific OS, one or more applications, and aconfiguration that provides virtual counterparts to hardware components.

Templates coexist with virtual machines in the inventory and cannot be powered on oredited.

You can create a template by converting a powered-off virtual machine to a template,cloning a virtual machine to a template, or by cloning another template.

Converting a virtual machine to a template is extremely fast as no copy tasks areneeded. The files are just renamed.

Cloning can be relatively slow as a full copy of the disk files needs to be made.

Templates can be stored in a VMFS datastore or an NFS datastore.

You can deploy from a template in one data center to a virtual machine in a differentdata center.





Template Contents

Templates are master images from which virtual machines are deployed. A well-designed template provides the best starting point for most virtual machinedeployments.

When creating a template, you should consider the workload it will be used for, how itcan be optimized to run within ESXi server, and how the guest OS can be optimized.

The type of workload that the virtual machine will process will affect the amount ofvCPU and memory it needs. Size and type of base disk, data disk or disks and defaultSCSI controller all must be considered.

You should disable any devices and ports that the virtual machine will not use. Disableany serial or parallel ports in the virtual machine BIOS that are not required.

Ensure that VMware Tools is installed into the guest OS.

Only use templates for master image deployment ensuring that they are fit for purpose.This minimizes the administration overhead that needs to be done on the guestoperating system.




VTSP 5.5

Cloning a Virtual Machine

Cloning a virtual machine can save time if you are deploying many similar virtualmachines.

You can create, configure, and install software on a single virtual machine.

Then you can clone it multiple times rather than creating and configuring each virtualmachine individually.

You can clone a virtual machine from one data center to another.

Cloning a virtual machine to a template preserves a master copy of the virtual machine.For example, you can create one template, modify the original virtual machine byinstalling additional software in the guest operating system, and create anothertemplate.

You can customize clones in the same way as you can when you deploy from atemplate.

The virtual machine being cloned can either be powered on or powered off.





Cloned VMs and Templates Compared

The table points out some of the differences between templates and clones and whichis appropriate and when to use them.

The virtual machine must be powered off to create a template. A virtual machine can becloned when powered on or off.

A template is a master copy of a virtual machine and can be used to create manyclones. A clone is an exact copy of a virtual machine taken at the time of the clone.

Templates are best for production environments. They are configured as per yoursecurity policy.Clones are ideal for test and development where you need exact copies of a server.

Templates cannot be powered on or edited, whereas clones can.

Templates are suited for mass deployment of virtual machines. Clones are not.




VTSP 5.5

Knowledge Check: VM Templates

Your customer has asked about using templates across data centers.

Is the statement true or false?





Snapshots: An Overview

Snapshots capture the state and data of a virtual machine at a point in time.

Snapshots are useful when you must revert repeatedly to the same virtual machinestate, but you do not want to create multiple virtual machines.

These short-term solutions for capturing point-in-time virtual machine states are not

appropriate for long-term virtual machine backups. Do not run production virtualmachines from snapshots on a long-term basis.

Snapshots do not support some disk types or virtual machines configured with bussharing.

VMware does not support snapshots of raw disks, RDM physical-mode disks, or guestoperating systems that use an iSCSI initiator in the guest.

Snapshots are not supported with PCI vSphere DirectPath I/O devices.

Snapshots can negatively affect the performance of a virtual machine. Performancedegradation depends on how long the snapshot or snapshot tree is in place, the depthof the tree, and how much the virtual machine and its guest operating system havechanged from the time you took the snapshot.

This degradation might include a delay in the time it takes the virtual machine to power-on.

When preparing your VMFS datastore, factor snapshots into the size if you are going touse them. Increase the „datastore usage on disk‟ alarm to a value above 30% to avoidrunning out of space unexpectedly on a VMFS datastore which is undesirable in aproduction environment.




VTSP 5.5

What is captured in a Snapshot?

A snapshot captures the entire state of the virtual machine, including:

- The contents of virtual machine‟s virtual disks,

- The virtual machine settings, and

- The contents of the virtual machine‟s memory (optional).

After a base snapshot is taken, each snapshot file contains the changes made to theVM since the base snapshot.

The original disk image remains unchanged, and all Write actions are made to adifferent image. This differential image becomes a change log, recording every changemade to a file since the snapshot was taken. This means that Read accesses have toread not just one file, but all difference data: the original data plus every change madeto the original data.

When you revert to a selected snapshot, you return the virtual machine‟s memory,settings, and virtual disks to the state that they were in when you took the snapshot.

Note that capturing virtual machine memory within the snapshot consumes a significantamount of hard disk space in the datastore.

A file equal in size to the virtual machine‟s memory is created in the virtual machine‟shome folder on the datastore, in the same directory as the .vmx file.

Taking a snapshot is a synchronous operation. Selecting the Quiesce guest file systemoption will pause any processes running on the operating system to provide a morereliable file system while you capture a snapshot. VMware Tools must be installed onthe guest operating system for this option to function.





Snapshots provide a point-in-time image of the disk that backup solutions can use, butSnapshots are not meant to be a robust method of backup and recovery.

If the files containing a virtual machine are lost, its snapshot files are also lost. Also,large numbers of snapshots are difficult to manage, consume large amounts of diskspace, and are not protected in the case of hardware failure.

Short-lived snapshots play a significant role in virtual machine data protection solutionswhere they are used to provide a consistent copy of the VM while the backup operationis carried out.




VTSP 5.5

Snapshot Relationships in a Linear Process

Taking successive snapshots of a single VM creates generations of snapshots.

In a linear process, each snapshot has one parent and one child, except for the lastsnapshot, which has no child snapshots.

Using snapshots, you can create restore positions in a linear process.

This way, when you add to or modify a virtual machine, you can always revert to anearlier known working state of the virtual machine.





Snapshot Relationships in a Process Tree

Alternatively, you can create a process tree of snapshots.

With a process tree, you can save a number of sequences as branches from a singlebaseline snapshot.

This strategy is often used while testing software.

You can take a snapshot before installing different versions of a program to ensure thateach installation begins from an identical baseline.

In a process tree, each snapshot has one parent, and can have more than one child.The parent snapshot of a virtual machine is the snapshot on which the current state isbased.

If you revert or go to an earlier snapshot, the earlier snapshot becomes the parentsnapshot of the virtual machine.

You can create extensive snapshot trees that you can use to save the virtual machinestate at any specific time and restore the virtual machine state later.

Each branch in a snapshot tree can have up to 32 snapshots.Remember that reverting to a snapshot discards the current disk and memory statesand restores them to how they were when the snapshot was taken.

Do not manually manipulate individual child disks or any snapshot configuration files.This can compromise the snapshot tree and result in data loss.

This restriction includes disk resizing and making modifications to the base parent diskusing vmkfstools.




VTSP 5.5

Best Practices for VM Snapshots

Here are some important facts and best practices to keep in mind when working withVM snapshots.

Snapshots are not backups. As the snapshot file is only a change log relative to theoriginal virtual disk or parent snapshot, do not rely upon it as a direct backup process.

The virtual machine is running on the most current snapshot, not the original vmdk diskfiles.

Snapshots are not complete copies of the original vmdk disk files. The change log in thesnapshot file combines with the original disk files to make up the current state of thevirtual machine.

If the base disks are deleted, the snapshot files are useless.

Snapshot files can grow to the same size as the original base disk file, which is why theprovisioned storage size of a virtual machine increases by an amount equal to theoriginal size of the virtual machine multiplied by the number of snapshots on the virtualmachine.

While maximum supported number of snapshots in a chain is 32, VMware recommendsthat you use no more than 3 snapshots in a chain.

Use no single snapshot for more than 24-72 hours. This prevents snapshots fromgrowing so large as to cause issues when deleting/committing them to the originalvirtual machine disks.

An excessive number of snapshots in a chain or very large snapshots may causedecreased virtual machine and host performance.





Configure automated vCenter Server alarms to trigger when a virtual machine is runningfrom snapshots.

VMware KB 1025279 details a full list of best practices.




VTSP 5.5

Knowledge Check: VM Snapshot Best Practices

Your customer will be using snapshots.

Which three statements about snapshots are correct?





Options for Moving a Virtual Machine

In certain circumstances, you may want to relocate a virtual machine from one locationto another.

These circumstances may include, but are not limited to, moving a virtual machinebetween platforms using different VMware products, troubleshooting issues involvinghigh disk space usage, balancing disk space usage, or cloning or backing up a virtual

machine.

Copying or moving virtual disk files across a network can be accomplished in manyways and on many platforms.

There are several options to move files across to different platforms: FTP file transfer,SCP file transfer, NFS shares. Windows File Sharing (CIFS shares), for example.

Steps on how to enable, configure, and transfer files using these specific methods areoutside of the scope of this course.

You can also download virtual machine files using the datastore browser.

Virtual machines can be cold migrated, which enables the virtual machine to bepowered up on another ESXi host with a different family of CPU, possibly in anotherdata center.

You can conveniently export a virtual machine as an Open Virtualization Formatpackage and transport this to another host, site or country. This can then be importedinto another vCenter for use.

Using vMotion, you can move a live running virtual machine from one ESXi host toanother without downtime.




VTSP 5.5

With Storage vMotion you can migrate a virtual machine and its files from one datastoreto another.

With enhanced vMotion, a virtual machine can change its datastore and hostsimultaneously, even if the two hosts have no shared storage in common.

These are discussed in more detail in the next module and are outlined here.





Importing and Exporting

With vSphere Client, you can import and export virtual machines, virtual appliances, andvApps so that you can share these objects between products and organizations.

You are already familiar with virtual machines.

A virtual appliance is a pre-configured virtual machine that typically includes a pre-

installed guest operating system and software that provides a specific function. A vApp is a container for one or more virtual machines that can be used to package andmanage multi-tiered applications.

You can add pre-configured virtual machines and virtual appliances to the vCenterServer, ESXi host inventory.

When you export a virtual machine, you can create virtual appliances that can beimported by other users.

You can use the Export function to distribute pre-installed software as a virtualappliance or as a means of distributing virtual machine templates to users.

You can also do this for users who cannot directly access and use the templates in yourvCenter Server inventory.

Virtual machines, virtual appliances, and vApps are stored in the Open Virtual MachineFormat or OVF.

This file format that allows for the exchange of virtual machines, virtual appliances, andvApps across products and platforms.

OVF files are compressed, allowing for faster downloads.




VTSP 5.5

The vSphere Client validates OVF files before importing and ensures that they arecompatible with the intended destination servers.

OVF files can include metadata; for example, you can attach an end-user licenseagreement to the OVF package to show to the end user when the package is installed.





Migration Overview

Apart from importing and exporting the virtual machines, you can migrate virtualmachines from one host to another or from one datastore to another.

Choice of migration method will depend on the environment and whether the priority isavoiding downtime, maximizing virtual machine performance, or using new storage.

There are five migration techniques, each one serving a distinct purpose.If a virtual machine is powered off or suspended during migration, we refer to theprocess as cold migration.

With a cold migration, the source and target host do not require shared storage.

If the virtual machine is powered off, it can be moved and powered on using acompletely different host with different CPU family characteristics.

If your virtual machine needs to stay running for any reason, then you can use vMotionto migrate the virtual machines. vMotion is required if you are using VMware DistributedResource Scheduler or DRS, as it allows DRS to balance virtual machines across hostsin the DRS cluster. This will be discussed in detail later.

If you are migrating a virtual machine‟s files to a different datastore to balance the diskload better or transition to a different storage array, use Storage vMotion.

With enhanced vMotion, you can change the location of a VM‟s datastore and hostsimultaneously, even if the two hosts have no shared storage in common.




VTSP 5.5

Cold Migration

A cold migration moves the virtual machine configuration files and optionally relocatesthe disk files, in three basic steps.

First, the vCenter Server moves the configuration files, including the NVRAM and thelog files.

A cold migration also moves the suspend file for suspended virtual machines andoptionally, the disks of the virtual machine from the source host to the destination host‟sassociated storage area.

Then, the vCenter Server registers the virtual machine with the new host.

After the migration is complete, the vCenter Server deletes the old version of the virtualmachine from the source host.

If any errors occur during the migration, the virtual machine reverts to the original stateand location.

If the virtual machine is turned off and configured with a 64-bit guest operating system,vCenter Server generates a warning if you try to migrate it to a host that does not

support 64-bit operating systems.

Otherwise, CPU compatibility checks do not apply when you migrate turned off virtualmachines with cold migration.





vMotion Migration

There are three types of vMotion migration: vMotion, Storage vMotion and enhancedvMotion.

vMotion is a key enabling technology for creating the dynamic, automated and self-optimizing data center.

With vSphere vMotion, you can migrate virtual machines from one physical server toanother with zero downtime, providing continuous service availability and completetransaction integrity.

If you need to take a host offline for maintenance, you can move the virtual machine toanother host. With vMotion, virtual machine working processes can continue throughouta migration.

The entire state of the virtual machine is moved to the new host, while the associatedvirtual disk remains in the same location on storage that is shared between the twohosts. After the virtual machine state is migrated, the virtual machine runs on the newhost. Migrations with vMotion are completely transparent to the running virtual machine.

You can use vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) to migrate running virtualmachines from one host to another to balance the load thanks to vMotion.

Migration with vMotion requires a vMotion license and a specific configuration. vMotionis available in Standard, Enterprise and Enterprise Plus editions of vSphere.




VTSP 5.5

Designing for vMotion

Configure hosts for vMotion with shared storage to ensure that virtual machines areaccessible to both source and target hosts.

Shared storage can be implemented on a VMFS datastore located on a Fibre Channelor iSCSI SAN. It can also be an NFS datastore on NAS storage.

The source and destination hosts must have compatible processors.

vMotion requires that the processors of the target host must be able to resumeexecution using the equivalent instructions that the processors of the source host wereusing when suspended.

Processor clock speeds and cache sizes, and the number of processor cores can vary,but processors must come from the same vendor class (that is, Intel or AMD) and sameprocessor family (for example, P4 or Opteron).

Migration with vMotion also requires correctly configured network interfaces on sourceand destination hosts.

vMotion requires at least a dedicated Gigabit Ethernet network between all vMotion-

enabled hosts.

If only two Ethernet adapters are available then for best security, dedicate the GigEadapter to vMotion, and use VLANs to divide the virtual machine and managementtraffic on the other adapter.

For best availability, combine both adapters into a bond, and use VLANs to divide trafficinto networks: one or more for virtual machine traffic and one for vMotion.





To meet vMotion compatibility requirements, ensure that a virtual machine's swap file isaccessible to the destination host.

Configure a VMkernel port group on each host for vMotion. Use of Jumbo Frames isrecommended for best vMotion performance.

Ensure that virtual machines have access to the same subnets on source anddestination hosts.

Concurrent vMotion and Storage vMotion are possible but may require additionalnetwork resources.

If you need to support storage vMotion or more than four concurrent vMotion migrationsyou must check the product documentation for the limits of simultaneous migrations.

Note that a vMotion migration will fail if the virtual machine uses raw disks for clusteringpurposes.




VTSP 5.5

Storage vMotion

With Storage vMotion, you can migrate a virtual machine and its disk files from onedatastore to another while the virtual machine is running.

You can move virtual machines off arrays for maintenance or to upgrade.

You also have the flexibility to optimize disks for performance, or to transform disktypes, which you can use to reclaim space.

During a migration with Storage vMotion, you can transform virtual disks from Thick-Provisioned Lazy Zeroed or Thick-Provisioned Eager Zeroed to Thin-Provisioned or thereverse.

You can choose to place the virtual machine and all its disks in a single location, orselect separate locations for the virtual machine configuration file and each virtual disk.

The virtual machine does not change execution host during a migration with StoragevMotion.

The Storage vMotion migration process does not disturb the virtual machine. There isno downtime and the migration is transparent to the guest operating system and the

application running on the virtual machine.

You can migrate a virtual machine from one physical storage type to another. StoragevMotion supports FC, iSCSI, and NAS network storage.

Storage vMotion was enhanced in vSphere 5.x to support migration of virtual machinedisks with snapshots.





Storage vMotion Uses

Storage vMotion has a number of uses in virtual data center administration.

For example, during an upgrade of a VMFS datastore, the vCenter Server administratorcan migrate the virtual machines that are running on a VMFS3 datastore to a VMFS5datastore and then upgrade the VMFS3 datastore without any impact on virtualmachines.

The administrator can use Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines back to theoriginal datastore without any virtual machine downtime.

vCenter Server administrators can use Storage vMotion to move virtual machines off astorage device to allow maintenance, reconfiguration, or retirement of the storagedevice without virtual machine downtime.

Another use is for redistributing storage load.

Using Storage vMotion, the administrator can redistribute virtual machines or virtualdisks across a series of storage volumes in order to balance the system capacity andimprove performance.

Alternatively, administrators might migrate virtual machines to tiered storage withdifferent service levels to address the changing business requirements for those virtualmachines, and so help achieve service level targets.




VTSP 5.5

Storage vMotion Design Requirements and Limitations

To ensure successful migration with Storage vMotion, a virtual machine and its hostmust meet resource and configuration requirements for virtual machine disks to bemigrated.

The virtual machine disks must be in persistent mode or RDMs.

For virtual compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file or convert it intothick-provisioned or thin-provisioned disks during migration, as long as the destination isnot an NFS datastore. If you convert the mapping file, a new virtual disk is created andthe contents of the mapped LUN are copied to this disk.

For physical compatibility mode RDMs, you can migrate the mapping file only.

Another limitation is that migration of virtual machines during VMware Tools installationis not supported.

Additionally, the host on which the virtual machine is running must have a license thatincludes Storage vMotion. ESX and ESXi 3.5 hosts must be licensed and configured forvMotion.

ESX and ESXi 4.0 and later hosts do not require vMotion to be configured in order toperform migrations with Storage vMotion.

The host on which the virtual machine is running must have access to both the sourceand target datastores.

And finally, the number of simultaneous migrations with Storage vMotion is limited.Check the product documentation for further information on calculating specific limits.





Enhanced vMotion

vSphere 5.1 enabled a virtual machine to change its datastore and host simultaneously,even if the two hosts don't have any shared storage in common.

It allows virtual machine migration between clusters in a larger data center, which maynot have a common set of datastores between them but also allows virtual machinemigration in small environments without access to expensive shared storage equipment.

Another way of looking at this functionality is supporting VMotion without sharedstorage.

To use enhanced vMotion, the hosts must be connected to the same VMware vCenterand be part of the same data center.

In addition, the hosts must be on the same layer-2 network.

vSphere 5.1 and later allows the combination of vMotion and Storage vMotion into asingle operation.

This combined migration copies both the virtual machine memory and its disk over thenetwork to the destination host.

After all the memory and disk data are send over, the destination virtual machine willresume and the source virtual machine will be powered off.

This vMotion enhancement ensures

Zero downtime migration

No dependency on shared storage

Lower operating cost




VTSP 5.5

Improves service level and performance SLAsEnhanced vMotion is also referred to as cross-host storage vMotion. It can only beinitiated when using the vSphere Web Client.

A virtual machine and its host must meet resource and configuration requirements forthe virtual machine files and disks to be migrated with cross-host storage vMotion.





Enhanced vMotionCross-host storage vMotion is subject to the following requirements and limitations:

The hosts must be licensed for vMotion and running ESXi5.1 or later.

The hosts must meet the networking requirements for vMotion mentionedpreviously.

The virtual machines must be configured for vMotion and Virtual machine disksmust be in persistent mode or be raw device mappings.

The destination host must have access to the destination storage.When you move a virtual machine with RDMs and do not convert those RDMs toVMDKs, the destination host must have access to the RDM LUNs.

Finally, consider the limits for simultaneous migrations when you perform a cross-hoststorage vMotion.

See the vCenter Server and Host Management product documentation for furtherinformation available at

http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vsphere-esxi-vcenter-server-pubs.html




VTSP 5.5

Microsoft Cluster Services Support

Microsoft Cluster Service (MSCS) continues to be deployed in virtual machines forapplication availability purposes. VMware is introducing a number of additional featuresto continue supporting customers who implement this application in their vSphereenvironments. In vSphere 5.5, VMware introduces support for the following featuresrelated to MSCS:

Support for Microsoft Windows 2012 clustering; Round-Robin path policy for shared storage and

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) and iSCSI protocols for shared storage.




VTSP 5.5






Knowledge Check: Storage Design Requirements for Migration

Shared storage may be required for certain migration scenarios.

Which migration type requires shared storage?




VTSP 5.5

Module Summary


Describe the options in vSphere 5.5 for copying or moving Virtual Machineswithin and between Virtual Infrastructures

Explain how and why a customer should make use of these features

Having completed this module, feel free to review it until you are ready to start the nextmodule.





Module 3: vSphere Replication and vSphere Update Manager

This is module 3, vSphere Replication and vSphere Update Manager.





VTSP 5.5

Module 3 Objectives


• Explain the benefits of, and prerequisites for, vSphere Replication and vSphereUpdate Manage





Why should a customer consider vSphere Replication?

With vSphere Replication, administrators can continually replicate a running virtualmachine to another location.

Replication creates a copy of a virtual machine that can be stored locally within a clusteror at another site, providing a data source to rapidly restore a virtual machine withinminutes.

vSphere Replication is provided as a no-charge component of all eligible VMwarevSphere licenses, from the Essentials Plus Kit through the Enterprise Plus Edition.

It offers protection and simple recoverability to the vast majority of VMwareenvironments without extra cost.

This all means you can protect individual virtual machines without the need forexpensive storage replication hardware. vSphere Replication works regardless of yourstorage platform.

It can be regarded as supplementing or replacing your existing replication solution.

vSphere Replication eliminates third party replication costs and helps to create a flexibledisaster recovery plan.

It is aimed at reducing bandwidth by using „seed copy‟ of virtual machines andreplicating delta files across the network.

vSphere Replication operates at the VMDK level, meaning you can repurpose olderstorage at the protection site.




VTSP 5.5

You can also leverage different technologies at opposite sites such as SAN to NAS, FCto iSCSI etc.

vSphere Replication can provide flexible RPOs from 24 hours to as little as 15 minutes,scaling to hundreds of virtual machines per cluster. RPO is Recovery Point Objective,the maximum tolerable period in which data might be lost from an IT service due to a

major incident.





vSphere Replication

vSphere Replication is the only true “hypervisor -level” replication engine availabletoday.

It is integrated with a vSphere Essentials Plus license or higher.

Changed blocks in the virtual machine disk or disks for a running virtual machine at a

primary site are sent to a secondary site, where they are applied to the virtual machinedisks for the offline or protection copy of the virtual machine.

This is cost-efficient because it reduces both storage costs and replication costs.

At the storage layer, vSphere Replication eliminates the need to have higher-endstorage arrays at both sites.

Customers can use lower-end arrays, and different storage across sites, includingDirect-Attached Storage. For example, a popular option is to have Tier 1 storage at theproduction site, but lower-end storage such as less expensive arrays at the failover site.

All this leads to overall lower costs per replication.

vSphere Replication is also inherently less complex than storage-based replication.Replication is managed directly from vCenter, eliminating dependencies on storageteams. As it is managed at the level of individual virtual machines, the setup of SRM isless complicated.

SRM can use vSphere Replication to replicate data to servers at the recovery site.

Despite its simplicity and cost-efficiency, vSphere Replication is still a robust, powerfulreplication solution.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere 5.5 introduces the ability to retain historical point-in-time states of replication.This gives administrators the ability to revert to earlier states after failover if they want torevert to a last-known-good state- for example, to before a virus hit, before datacorruption occurred, or to a pre-patched state.

However, keep in mind the points-in-time are retained as vmdk snapshots at the

recovery site. If there are a lot of very large snapshots on a virtual machine, it could takea long time to commit or revert after failover.

Support for Storage-DRS interoperability is introduced in vSphere 5.5, which allowsreplicated virtual machines to be moved across datastores with Storage vMotion withoutimpacting any ongoing replication.





Replication Appliance

vSphere Replication is distributed as a 64-bit virtual appliance packaged in the .ovaformat.

A previous iteration of vSphere Replication was included with SRM 5.0.

vSphere Replication Management Server and vSphere Replication Server are now

included in the single VR appliance.This allows a single appliance to act in both a VR management capacity and as therecipient of changed blocks.

This makes scaling sites an easy task.

The replication appliance in version 5.5 contains an "add-on" VR appliance. Theseadditional appliances allow you to configure replication to up to a maximum of 10 othertarget locations.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere 5.5 Replication Server Appliances

With vSphere 5.5, topologies with vSphere Replication can now be broadened toencompass replication between and within data centers, and can include many differentmodels of deployment dependent on where the vSphere Replication Server appliancesare deployed.

Each vCenter Server needs to have a single „master' vSphere Replication Appliance

deployed and paired with it, but up to nine further vSphere Replication Servers can bedeployed to locations managed by that vCenter Server to act as the target for changedblocks.

Each VR Appliance can manage at most 500 replications, irrespective of topologies ornumber of VR Appliances present.

Here, a single VR appliance is deployed at the main data center (on the left). Oneremote site has a vCenter Server managing its own data center as well as the hosts andVMs at a tertiary data center (the two sites on the right). The third data center (top right)does not have a vCenter Server, but has a VR Server that is a target for replication fromthe data center in the bottom right.

As an example with this model, the servers at the main data center are replicating to thesecond data center as a completely independent target managed by another VC. Theservers at the secondary data center are replicating to the third data center which ismanaged by the second data center. The servers at the third data center are replicatingback to the primary data center.





The VR Agents on the central data center track changed blocks and distribute them viathe vSphere host's management network to the VR Server defined as the destination foreach individual VM.

Consider the following however. A virtual machine can only be replicated to a singledestination. A virtual machine cannot be replicated to multiple remote locations at onetime. Any target destination must have a vSphere Replication Appliance to act as a VRmanagement component as well as a target, or a vSphere Replication Server to actstrictly as a target for replication.




VTSP 5.5

Replication Design Requirements and Limitations

The vSphere Replication virtual appliance has a dual-core CPU, a 10GB and a 2GBhard disk, and 4GB of RAM. It is distributed as a 64-bit virtual appliance packaged in the.ova format, to be deployed in a vCenter Server environment using the OVF deploymentwizard on an ESXi host.

vSphere Replication does not have a separate license.

You can use vSphere Replication if your edition of vSphere includes the vSphereReplication license.

If you have the correct vSphere license, there is no limit on the number of virtualmachines that you can replicate by using vSphere Replication.

vSphere Replication uses default network ports for communication between hosts. Port80 is used for management traffic, 902 is used for replication traffic to the destinationESXi hosts, and 5480 is used by the administrators web browser.

A further list of ports can be found in the vSphere Replication 5.5 Documentation athttp://www.vmware.com

To ensure successful virtual machine replication, you must verify that your virtualinfrastructure respects certain limits before you start the replication.

Each vCenter Server needs to have a single „master‟ vSphere Replication Appliancedeployed and paired with it.

Each vSphere Replication management server can manage a maximum of 500replicated virtual machines.

vSphere Replication is compatible with certain other vSphere management features.





You can safely use vSphere Replication in combination with certain vSphere features,such as vSphere vMotion. Some other vSphere features, for example vSphereDistributed Power Management, require special configuration for use with vSphereReplication.

You must check that vSphere Replication is compatible with the versions of ESXiServer, vCenter Server and Site Recovery Manager on the site that it will be used.

Check the compatibility matrixes and the VMware compatibility guide athttp://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/sim/interop_matrix.php andhttp://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/search.php?testConfig=16&deviceC ategory=software




VTSP 5.5

Replication Design Requirements and LimitationsThis slide shows an exploded view of the VMware Product Interoperability Matrixesavailable from VMware.com.





What is vSphere Data Protection (VDP)?

VMware vSphere Data Protection (VDP) is a backup and recovery solution for VMware,from VMware. VDP is designed primarily for small and medium sized environments.VDP is based on EMC Avamar providing an enterprise-class backup and recoverysolution at an SMB price point. VDP makes backing up and restoring VMware virtualmachines simple and easy.

VDP is available in two versions:

VDP Advanced, which is sold separately and protects approximately 200 VMsper VDP Advanced virtual appliance. VDP Advanced is licensed per-CPU and isavailable either as a “stand-alone” license or included with the vSphere withOperations Management (vSOM) Enterprise and Enterprise Plus AccelerationKits.

VDP, which is included with vSphere 5.1 Essentials Plus and higher. VDPprovides basic backup and recovery for approximately 50 VMs per VDP virtualappliance.




VTSP 5.5

What is vSphere Data Protection (VDP)?VDP and VDP Advanced are deployed as a Linux-based virtual appliance. Thesesolutions are fully-integrated with the vSphere Web Client, which makes configurationand management of the solution easy and intuitive for the vSphere administrator.

VDP and VDP Advanced utilize the vSphere APIs for Data Protection (VADP) includingChanged Block Tracking (CBT). Once the initial backup of a virtual machine has beencompleted, only the changed blocks are backed up during subsequent backups.

VDP and VDP Advanced are built upon the mature and proven EMC Avamar solution.VDP and VDP Advanced leverage Avamar's robust backup engine and variable lengthde-duplication algorithm.

By levering the vSphere APIs for Data Protection, VDP and VDP Advanced performbackup and recovery of virtual machines without the need for a backup agent. Backupdata is stored on disk, unlike a legacy tape solution, which enables fast and reliablebackups and restores. Backups are performed regardless of the protected virtualmachine's power state. Virtual machine snapshots and vSphere SCSI-Hot-Add areutilized during the backup and recovery processes.

VDP Advanced features agents for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange.

These agents enable granular, application-consistent backup and recovery for theseapplication databases. The agents also provide additional functionality such as logmanagement, multiple backup streams, and client-side de-duplication.

The majority of this training will be focused on VDP Advanced.





What is vSphere Data Protection (VDP) Advanced?

One of the greatest benefits of VDP Advanced is the pure simplicity of the solution.Since it is fully-integrated with the vSphere Web Client, it is very easy and intuitive for avSphere administrator to create backup jobs, perform restores, and manage thesolution. A vSphere administrator does not need to spend a large amount of timelearning a new user interface.

The first time a virtual machine is backed up, all of the blocks that make up the virtualmachine are backed up. Subsequent backups of the same virtual machine leverageChanged Block Tracking (CBT) to determine which blocks have changed since the lastbackup and only those changed blocks are backed up. This reduces the amount of timeit takes to back up virtual machines.

Avamar's variable length de-duplication in conjunction with CBT dramatically reducesthe amount of storage capacity required for backup data. Variable length segment de-duplication is more efficient than fixed length segment de-duplication. The majority ofother backup solutions in the market use fixed length de-duplication.

The ability to backup and restore entire virtual machines without the need for a backup

agent reduces complexity. It is also possible to restore individual files and folders using just a web browser in Windows and Linux virtual machines.

While most virtual machine workloads can be backed up and restored without the needfor an agent, certain tier-1 workloads benefit from agent-based backup and recovery.Seeing that the ideal approach to protecting a virtual machine environment is using amixture of agent-less virtual machine backups and agent-based application-level




VTSP 5.5

backups, VDP Advanced includes agents for tier-1 applications such as Microsoft SQLServer and Microsoft Exchange.





VDP Advanced Key Components

Deploying and managing a VDP Advanced environment requires only a few keycomponents.

A VDP Advanced virtual appliance is deployed from an Open Virtualization Archive(.ova) file. There is no need to manually create a new virtual machine, install a guestoperating system, patch the guest operating system (OS), and install the backup and

recovery software. A VDP and VDP Advanced virtual appliance is preconfigured with aLinux guest OS and the backup solution installed and ready for configuration. Thisdramatically reduces the complexity and amount of time required for deployment.

While VDP Advanced includes agents for SQL Server and Exchange, it can alsoleverage the VSS components to quiesce a Windows guest OS and applications thatare VSS-aware. However, note that the VSS components in VMware Tools does notperform log management. Thus, the need for agents for applications such as SQLServer and Exchange.

A VDP Advanced virtual appliance is deployed with four virtual CPUs and four gigabytesof memory. The backup data storage capacity deployed is two terabytes. Note that this

capacity is de-duplicated backup capacity. It is also possible to dynamically expand thebackup data capacity of a VDP Advanced appliance up to eight terabytes.

VDP Advanced requires vCenter Server and Single Sign On (SSO). The vSphere WebClient is required to manage VDP Advanced. The traditional vSphere Client cannot beused to manage VDP Advanced.




VTSP 5.5

VDP Advanced Implementation

VDP Advanced 5.1 requires vCenter Server 5.1 or higher and VMware Single Sign On(SSO). vCenter Server can be the Windows-based version or the Linux-based vCenterServer Virtual Appliance. vSphere Essentials Plus 4.1 or higher is required.

A VDP Advanced virtual appliance is deployed with two terabytes of de-duplicatedbackup data capacity. Additional storage capacity is also needed for the VDP Advanced

guest OS and application. The total amount of storage needed to deploy a VDP Advanced appliance is approximately 3.1 terabytes. See the VDP Administration Guidefor more details and the complete list of prerequisites.

When designing a VDP Advanced environment, keep in mind a maximum of 10 VDP Advanced appliances per vCenter Server is supported. However, it is recommended tolimit the number of appliances to one per vSphere host. Be sure to deploy the VDP

Advanced appliance(s) to storage with high performance.

A VDP Advanced appliance can back up eight virtual machines concurrently. Thisactivity creates considerable load on the storage. Be sure to place VDP Advanced onstorage that can handle this load.





VDP Advanced ImplementationWhen deploying VDP Advanced, be sure to create a DNS host record for the virtualappliance prior to deployment. Fully Qualified Domain Names (FQDN) should always beused when configuring VMware solutions. VDP Advanced is no exception.

When possible, deploy a VDP Advanced appliance in the same cluster as the virtualmachines it will protect. This enables VDP Advanced to leverage vSphere SCSIHotAdd, which improves backup performance and removes backup traffic from the

network. In cases where SCSI HotAdd cannot be used, VDP Advanced will use theNetwork Block Device (NBD) transport mode, which carries backup traffic across thenetwork.

Make sure time is synchronized across the environment. Variances in time betweenVDP Advanced, vCenter Server, and vSphere hosts can cause issues with VDP

Advanced.

VDP Advanced is deployed by default with two terabytes of de-duplicated backup datacapacity. This capacity can be expanded in two terabyte increments up to a total ofeight terabytes. This capacity expansion is performed in-place. See the VDP

Administration guide for more details and requirements when expanding the capacity of

a VDP Advanced virtual appliance.On average, an eight terabyte VDP Advanced appliance can back up approximately 200virtual machines.

This number assumes average virtual machine sizes, average data change rate, a 30-60 day retention policy, etc.

The maximum supported number of virtual machines that can be backed up is 400.Every environment is different so results will vary.




VTSP 5.5

VDP (not Advanced) can back up approximately 50 virtual machines assuming thesame averages mentioned previously. VDP (not Advanced) supports a maximum of 100virtual machines per appliance.

It is possible to scale out the solution by deploying additional VDP or VDP Advancedappliances - up to 10 appliances per vCenter Server.





Upsell to VDP Advanced

VDP (not Advanced) is included with vSphere 5.1 Essentials Plus and higher. VDP is abasic backup and recovery solution designed for small environments.

Always lead with VDP Advanced. It is sold separately and provides the followingbenefits above VDP:

It offers greater scale - up to eight terabytes of de-duplicated backup data capacity perappliance and up to 10 appliances per vCenter Server.

While VDP Advanced is deployed with two terabytes of de-duplicated backup datacapacity, this capacity can be expanded in place. Existing backup data is preserved.

Many workloads can easily be backed up without the need for a backup agent.However, some tier-1 applications benefit from the use of an agent to provideapplication-consistent backups and restores, granular selection of individual databases,and advanced options such as log management and multiple backup streams. VDP

Advanced includes agents for Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Exchange.

VDP Advanced licensing is simple. It is licensed per-CPU just like vSphere.

If a customer starts with VDP (not Advanced) and later decides they would like to takeadvantage of the additional benefits VDP Advanced offers, it is possible to migrateexisting backup data from VDP to VDP Advanced.

VDP Advanced is virtual machine backup and recovery for VMware, from VMware.




VTSP 5.5

Update Manager: An Overview

Update Manager is a simple patch management solution for the virtual infrastructure. Itis a vCenter Server plug-in for applying security updates and bug fixes to reduce risksfrom vulnerabilities.

With Update Manager, you can apply updates and patches across all ESXi hosts.

You can install and update third-party software on hosts and use Update Manager toupgrade virtual machine hardware, VMware Tools, and virtual appliances.

You can run centralized, automated patch and version management from withinVMware vSphere Server.

Security administrators can compare ESXi hosts, as an example, against baselines toidentify and remediate systems that are not in compliance.





Update Manager: An OverviewUpdate Manager consists of a server part and a plug-in part. You can install the UpdateManager server and Update Manager Client plug-in on Windows machines only.




VTSP 5.5

Update Manager Components

The major components of Update Manager are illustrated here.

Update Manager Server is installed directly on vCenter Server or on a separate system.This must be installed on a 64-bit operating system.

Patch Database: You can use the same database Server that is used by vCenter Serverfor the Patch Database, but it requires a unique database.

If you don‟t specify one, the software installs SQL Server 2005 Express. Installing thedatabase on the same machine increases the minimum specifications.

For best performance, ensure you have two or more logical cores at a speed of 2GHzand 4Gb of RAM. A Gigabit connection is recommended.

Update Manager plug-in runs on the system the vSphere Desktop Client is installed on.This can be a 32-bit or 64-bit OS.

Guest Agents are installed into virtual machines from the Update Manager Server, usedfor scanning and remediation operations.

Update Manager Download Service: If your update manager server does not havedirect access to the Internet, you can create a download server.

This will download patches outside of the internetwork. You can then load them toUpdate Manager using portable media or a shared Repository or URL.

With the UMDS in Update Manager 5.5, you can also configure multiple download URLsand restrict downloads to the product version and type that are relevant to yourenvironment.





UMDS 5.5 can be installed only on 64-bit Windows systems.

The disk storage requirements for Update Manager vary depending on yourdeployment.

Make sure that you have at least 20GB of free space for patch data. Depending on the

size of your deployment, Update Manager requires a minimum amount of free spaceper month for database usage.




VTSP 5.5

Knowledge Check: Update Manager Components

Your customer has asked about the components in the Update Manager.

Which descriptions match the numbered items?





Knowledge Check: VDP Advanced Implementation

VDP Advanced has specific design considerations.

What is the correct answer?




VTSP 5.5

Module Summary


• Explain the benefits of, and prerequisites for, vSphere Replication and vSphereUpdate Manager





Course 4

VTSP V5.5 Course 4: VMware vSphere: vNetworks

Welcome to the VTSP V5.5 Course 4: VMware vSphere: vNetworks.

There are 2 modules in this course: Overview and Advanced Features.




VTSP 5.5

Course Objectives At the end of this course you should be able to:

·Explain the role and function of the components of vSphere virtual networking

·Describe the advanced networking features of vSphere 5.5 and carry out an activity to

determine the proper networking architecture for a customer scenario

This course does not include information on VMware NSX - Network Virtualization.

Information on NSX will be covered in future eLearning training.





Module 1: vSphere Networks Overview

This is module 1, vSphere Networks Overview.





VTSP 5.5

Module 1 Objectives


• Explain the data center networking architecture

• Describe vSphere standard vSwitches, distributed vSwitches and third partyswitches

• Describe the new vSphere 5.5 features for Distributed vSwitches• Identify when customers should migrate virtual machines to a distributed switch





Data Center Networking Architecture

Historically, network administrators have owned the core, distribution, and access layersof a physical network in a physical computing environment. In a physical world, each

server has a dedicated network cable plugged into a physical port on a switch.The access layer provides a good place to monitor network traffic and interpose onnetwork traffic if the need arises.

For organizations that manage physical infrastructure with separate administrators forservers and networks, the switch port is the line of demarcation between servers andnetwork.

When you introduce a new server you must connect the server to the appropriate edgeswitch. You first have to find if there is a physical port on the switch available for you.The cable must be the right type for example an RJ45 or SFP+. The cable must be theappropriate length and handled and managed correctly, as found in a cable

management system. You must ensure that the port configuration is correct, dependingon the VLAN, LAG, trunk mode and so on. You can now connect your physical serverand can access network services.

You will most certainly have more than one physical connection, so you must repeat theabove steps depending on the amount of connections that you wish to use. Once this iscomplete, you will generally have to test each of the connections thoroughly. Forexample to ensure that NIC teaming works correctly. whenever you have to physically

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/C4M1Sc5%20Data%20Center%20Networking%20Architecture.mp4






VTSP 5.5

move or replace a server, you will have to repeat most or all of these steps. This is thepattern that you will have to follow for every server; it is time consuming and logisticallycomplicated.

If you want to monitor or analyze the network traffic for a specific physical server, thebest place to do this is at the access layer.

If you want to segregate or control traffic that flows between servers, you will need toreconfigure the connections that they make at the access layer. This involvesreconfiguring port settings on the physical switches and running appropriate tests toensure that you have connectivity.

Making changes in the physical environment is time-consuming with great potential forerror, and a lot of care must be taken to ensure that the correct changes are beingmade. Unplugging the incorrect cable can have disastrous consequences.Misconfiguration can bring down an entire stack of switches. Preventing human error isa very important consideration when working in the physical network environment.

In a virtual world, the initial hardware setup is the same as a physical environment.However, as we are dealing with a virtual environment we have to map out and designall of the networking uplink requirements for the host and virtual machines prior toinstalling the physical server. For example, we must consider how many managementports we need in order to manage the physical ESXi host. Resilience dictates that allservices have at least two independent uplinks (Physical NIC connections to a switch inthe infrastructure). The uplinks must be able to handle management traffic, IP storage,vMotion, Fault Tolerance and all of the production networks that the virtual machineswill need.

The primary purpose of the virtual network architecture is to provide a way to map theservices and virtual machine network ports to the physical network interfaces. VMware

virtual switches provide this capability. With vSwitches you have the ability to configurethe virtual ports which are used for vSphere services such as management, vMotionand port groups which are used for connecting virtual machine network interfaces(vNICs).

The vSwitch allows us to select which uplinks or pNICs to use for each virtual switchport or port group. In this way we can easily control the network connectivity parametersfor a specific service or virtual machine by changing the configuration of a virtual switch,rather than having to change anything in the physical environment, provided that thephysical connectivity for the ESXi host is in place and is configured correctly external tothe host.

For organizations that manage physical infrastructure with separate administrators forservers and networks, the line of demarcation effectively moves to the distribution layerof the network and eliminates much of the physical work required for connecting andreconfiguring new servers and services.

For example in the configuration shown we have four virtual machines. Virtual machines1 and 2 do not have any uplinks. This is called an internal-only or isolated port group.Virtual machines 3 and 4 have resilient connections to the physical network throughpNIC2 and pNIC3 physical links to the edge or access layer switches. The management





port for this ESXi host has resilient connectivity via pNIC0 and pNIC1. This type ofvirtual switch is used to provide networking for this and only this ESXi host. It is called astandard vSwitch.

If we have more than one host, we then encounter similar logistical problems that wehave in a physical environment such as managing the configuration on multiplesystems. If we are using technologies such as vMotion, Fault tolerance, HA or DRS oreven if we just want to move machines between hosts we must ensure that virtualmachine ports group names are consistent and that they must physically map to thesame networks. This can become increasingly difficult with each host that we add.

The impact of misconfiguration can be minimized using host profiles to deploy ESXiHosts which ensures that all virtual switch configurations are consistent.

Distributed vSwitches will provide the same unified configuration but with additionalfunctionality.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Networking Overview

The vSphere Networking Overview provides two types of virtual networkingarchitecture, the standard virtual switch architecture and the distributed virtual switcharchitecture.

Standard virtual switches manage virtual machines and networking at the host level.This networking architecture is supported on all versions of vSphere.

A distributed virtual switch manages virtual machines and networking at the data centerlevel. Distributed virtual switches are not available in all versions of vSphere. They areonly available in the Enterprise Plus Edition of vSphere 5.1 or later. VMwarerecommends that all networks be set up or migrated using the distributed virtual switcharchitecture, since it simplifies the data center by centralizing network configuration inaddition to providing a more robust feature set.

Although the distributed network architecture is recommended for setting up virtual

networks in vSphere 5.5, it is important to understand how the components of thestandard virtual switch work so you can successfully either migrate components fromthis architecture to the distributed network architecture as required or supportenvironments that only have standard virtual switches implemented.

The next series of screens will explain each type of networking architecture in detail.





Standard Switch Architecture

The components of the standard virtual switch architecture are configured at the hostlevel. The standard virtual environment provides similar networking elements as those

found on actual physical switches.Like a physical machine, each virtual machine has one or more virtual network adaptersor virtual network interface cards or vNICs. The operating system and applicationscommunicate with the vNIC through a standard device driver or a VMware optimizeddevice driver just as though the vNIC is a physical NIC.

The vNIC has its own MAC address, can be configured with multiple IP addresses andresponds to the standard Ethernet protocol exactly like a physical NIC would.Nonetheless, an outside agent can determine that it is communicating with a virtualmachine if it checks the six byte vendor identifier in the MAC address.

A standard virtual switch, or vSwitch, operates just like a layer-2 physical switch. It

maintains a port forwarding table and performs three important functions.

These include looking up each frame's destination MAC when it arrives, forwarding aframe to one or more ports for transmission, and avoiding unnecessary deliveries.

Each host server can have multiple standard virtual switches. You can create up to 127virtual switches on each ESXi host. Each standard virtual switch has two sides to it. Onone side of the virtual switch you have port groups.




VTSP 5.5

Port groups connect virtual machines to the standard virtual switch. On the other side ofthe standard virtual switch you have what are known as uplink ports. Uplink portsconnect the standard virtual switch to physical Ethernet adapters which resides on thehost. In turn, these physical Ethernet adapters connect to physical switches leading tothe outside world.





Standard Switch Architecture : Port Groups A port group is a unique concept in the virtual environment. A port group is amechanism for setting policies that govern the network connected to it. Instead ofconnecting to a particular port on standard virtual switch, a virtual machine connects its

vNIC to a port group. All virtual machines that connect to the same port group belong tothe same network inside the virtual environment.

Port groups can be configured to enforce a number of policies that provide enhancednetwork security, network segmentation, better performance, higher availability, andtraffic management.

Just like port groups that can be created to handle the virtual machine traffic, VMkernelconnection type or VMkernel Port can also be created to provide network connectivityfor the host and handling VMware vMotion, IP storage, and Fault Tolerance.

Moving a virtual machine from one host to another is called migration. Using vMotionyou can migrate powered on virtual machines with no downtime. Please note that your

VMkernel networking stack must be set up properly to accommodate vMotion.

IP storage refers to any form of storage that uses TCP/IP network ESXi. Because thesestorage types are network based, therefore, they can use the same VMkernel interfaceand port group.




VTSP 5.5

vSwitch A standard virtual switch can connect its uplink ports to more than one physical Ethernetadapter to enable NIC teaming. With NIC teaming, two or more physical adapters canbe used for load balancing or to provide failover capabilities in the event of a physicaladapter hardware failure or a network outage.

The virtual ports on a virtual standard switch provide logical connection points amongand between virtual and physical devices. You can think of the virtual ports as virtualRJ-45 ports. Each virtual switch can have up to 4088 virtual Ports, with a limit of 4,096ports on all virtual switches on a host. This system-wide limit includes eight reservedports per standard virtual switch.

Virtual Ethernet adapters (vNICs) connect to virtual ports when you power on the virtualmachine on which the adapters are configured, when you take an explicit action toconnect the device, or when you migrate a virtual machine using vSphere vMotion.

A vNIC updates the virtual switch port with the MAC filtering information when it is

initialized and whenever it changes. A virtual port may ignore any requests from thevirtual Ethernet adapter that would violate the Layer 2 security policy in effect for theport. For example, if MAC spoofing is blocked, the port drops any packets that violatethis rule.

When designing your environment you should consider how many networks areneeded. How many networks or VLANS required depends on the types of trafficrequired for VMware vSphere operation and in support of the organization's servicesand applications.





Types of Virtual Switch Connections A virtual switch allows the following connection types:

• One or more virtual machine port groups, and• VMkernel port:

For IP storage, vMotion migration, VMware vSphere FaultTolerance;

And For the ESXi management network

When designing your environment, you should consider how many networks areneeded. How many networks or VLANS required depends on the types of trafficrequired for VMware vSphere operation and in support of the organization's servicesand applications.




VTSP 5.5

Virtual Switch Connection Examples

More than one network can coexist on the same virtual switch, or networks can exist onseparate virtual switches.

Components that should be on separate networks include Virtual machines, vSphereFault Tolerance, IP Storage iSCSI/NFS, vSphere High Availability, VMware vSpherevMotion and management.

The two main reasons to separate different types of network traffic are to reducecontention and latency and improve performance. High latency can negatively affectperformance. This is especially important when using IP storage, or FT.

You can enhance security by limiting network access. vMotion and IP storage traffic arenot encrypted, so a separate network helps protect what could be sensitive data.

To avoid contention between the different types of network traffic, configure enoughphysical NIC Ports to satisfy bandwidth needs or use Network I/O control which we will

cover later.





Distributed Switch

VMware vSphere 5.1 enhanced the networking capabilities of the distributed switch.

Some of these features like Network Health Check help detect mis-configurationsacross physical and virtual switches.

Configuration Backup Restore allows vSphere admins to store the VDS configuration aswell as recover the network from the old configurations.

You can address the challenges that you face when a management network failurecauses the hosts to disconnect from vCenter Server using rollback and recovery.

Importantly this allows you to recover from lost connectivity or incorrect configurations.

vSphere 5.5 introduces some key networking enhancements and capabilities to furthersimplify operations, improve performance and provide security in virtual networks. LACPhas been enhanced in vSphere 5.5.

Traffic filtering has been introduced as well as Differentiated Service Code PointMarking support.

Distributed virtual switches require an Enterprise Plus license.

Distributed virtual switches are not manageable when vCenter Server is unavailable, sovCenter Server becomes a tier-one application.




VTSP 5.5

Distributed Switch Architecture

Each distributed switch includes distributed ports. A distributed port is a port thatconnects to the VMkernel or to a virtual machine's network adapter.

vCenter Server stores the state of distributed ports in the vCenter Server database, sonetworking statistics and policies migrate with virtual machines when moved acrosshosts.

Migrating the state of a distributed port with vMotion is important when implementingstate-dependent features, such as inline intrusion detection systems, firewalls, andthird-party virtual switches.

Distributed port groups perform the same functions as port groups in standard virtualswitches. They provide a way to logically group distributed ports to simplify configurationand they inherit all distributed switch properties.

A distributed port group does not constitute the means to segregate traffic within the

distributed switch unless you use private VLANs.

dvUplinks provide a level of abstraction for the physical NICs on each host. NICteaming, load balancing, and failover policies on the vDS and DV Port Groups areapplied to the dvUplinks and not the physical NICs on individual hosts.

Each physical NIC on each host is mapped to a dvUplink, permitting teaming andfailover consistency irrespective of physical NIC assignments.





Distributed Switch Architecture (2)Within a distributed virtual switch, the control and I/O planes are separate.




VTSP 5.5

Distributed Switch Architecture (2)The control plane resides in and is owned by vCenter Server. The control plane isresponsible for configuring distributed switches, distributed port groups, distributedports, uplinks, and NIC teaming.

The control plane also coordinates the migration of the ports and is responsible for theswitch configuration.

For example, in the case of a conflict in the assignment of a distributed port (say,because a virtual machine and its template are powered on), the control plane isresponsible for deciding what to do.





Distributed Switch Architecture (2)The I/O Plane is implemented as a hidden standard virtual switch inside the VMkernel ofeach ESXi host.

The I/O plane manages the actual I/O hardware on the host and is responsible for

forwarding packets.

The diagram on the screen shows the components of the I/O plane of a distributedvirtual switch. On each host, an I/O plane agent runs as a VMkernel process and isresponsible for communicating between the control and the I/O planes.

I/O filters are attached to the I/O chains connecting the vNICs to the distributed portsand the distributed ports to the uplinks.

vNetwork Appliance APIs make it possible to define custom filters and apply them to theI/O chains. The APIs also provide the means to preserve filtering information for thevirtual machine connected to each port, even after a vMotion migration.

Inside the I/O plane, the forwarding engine decides how to forward packets to otherdistributed ports.

The engine can forward the packets towards other virtual machines on the samedistributed switch or to an uplink, requiring it to make NIC teaming decisions.Forwarding functions can also be customized using the vNetwork Appliance APIs.

Network applications can make use of these features by creating new filters for examplefor host intrusion detection, traffic analysis and so on.




VTSP 5.5

Third-Party Distributed Switches

vNetwork Appliance APIs allow third-party developers to create distributed switchsolutions for use in a vSphere Data Center. Third-party solutions allow networkadministrators to extend existing network operations and management into the vSphereData Center.

This diagram shows the basic way a third-party solution plugs in to the vNetworkarchitecture.

The Custom Control Plane is implemented outside of vCenter Server, for example itmay be implemented as a virtual appliance.

The vSphere Client includes a plug-in to provide a management interface.

vCenter Server includes an extension to handle the communication with the controlplane.

On the host, a custom I/O plane agent replaces the standard I/O plane agent and theI/O plane itself may be replaced for customization of forwarding and filtering.

An example of a third-party switch that leverages the vNetwork APIs is the Cisco Nexus1000V. Network administrators can use this solution in place of the distributed switch toextend vCenter Server and to manage Cisco Nexus and Cisco Catalyst switches.

Now let‟s take a look at some of the advanced features of distributed switches.





Network Health check

In the absence of a tool to verify whether the physical setup is capable of deployingvirtual machines correctly, debugging even simple issues can be frustrating for vSphere

administrators.Network Health Check, available on ESXi 5.1 distributed switches and later, assuresproper physical and virtual operation by providing health monitoring for physical networksetups including VLAN, MTU or Teaming.

This feature gives you a window into the operation of your physical and virtual network.vSphere admins also can provide failure data to the Network admins to facilitate speedyresolution.

This provides vSphere admins with proactive alerting for problems that have traditionallybeen difficult to troubleshoot.

Network Health Check feature prevents the common configuration errors:• Mismatched VLAN trunks between virtual switch and physical switch• Mismatched MTU setting between vNIC, virtual switch, physical adapter, and

physical switch ports• Mismatched Teaming Configurations

The network health check in vSphere 5.5 monitors the following three networkparameters at regular intervals:




VTSP 5.5

VLAN - Checks whether vSphere distributed switch VLAN settings match trunk portconfiguration on the adjacent physical switch ports.

• MTU - Checks whether the physical access switch port MTU jumbo frame settingbased on per VLAN matches the vSphere distributed switch MTU setting.

• Network adapter teaming - Checks whether the physical access switch ports

EtherChannel setting matches the distributed switch distributed port group IPHash teaming policy settings.

The default interval for performing the configuration check is one minute.

For the VLAN and MTU check, there must be at least two physical uplinks connected tothe VDS.

For the Teaming policy check, there must be at least two active uplinks in the teamingand at least two hosts in the VDS.





Network Health Check: Knowledge Check

The Port Group Configuration shown has been configured in your customer‟senvironment.

Which Configuration shown on screen will be detected by Network Health Check andwill notify the customer of a misconfiguration?




VTSP 5.5

Export and Restore

Export and Restore features of the enhanced distributed switch provide you with a wayto create backups for network settings at the virtual data switch level or at the port grouplevel and save the data anywhere. This feature lets you recreate network configurationseamlessly, giving you a means of restoring full functionality in instances of networksettings failures or VMware vCenter database corruption.

Using the Back Up and Restore feature of the enhanced distributed switch you canexport network configuration backup virtual data switch and port group configurationasynchronously on a disk.

You can use the backed up information for restoring the DVswitch config in the case ofa vCenter database corruption or to rebuild or by replicating a DVswitch config multipletimes (in the case where you need to scale out across multiple DVswitches) orreplicating it in a lab environment or at a DR site.

When restoring the configuration you can restore everything (including unique IDs) oronly configuration parameters (such as port groups names, and so on). The formerwould be for restoring a corrupt DVswitch, the latter would be for copying it.





Automatic Rollback

The management network is configured on every host and is used to communicate withVMware vCenter as well as to interact with other hosts during vSphere HA

configuration. This is critical when it comes to centrally managing hosts through vCenterServer.

If the management network on the host goes down or there is a misconfiguration,VMware vCenter can't connect to the host and thus can't centrally manage resources.

The Automatic rollback and recovery feature of vSphere 5.5 addresses all the concernsthat customers have regarding the use of management network on a VDS.

This feature automatically detects any configuration changes on the managementnetwork and if the host can't reach the vCenter Server, it doesn't permit theconfiguration changes to take effect by rolling back to a previous valid configuration.

There are two types of Rollbacks.• Host networking rollbacks: These occur when an invalid change is made to the

host networking configuration. Every network change that disconnects a hostalso triggers a rollback.

• Distributed switch rollbacks: These occur when invalid updates are made todistributed switch-related objects, such as distributed switches, distributed portgroups, or distributed ports.




VTSP 5.5

In vSphere 5.5, rollback is enabled by default.

However, you can enable or disable rollbacks at the vCenter Server level. If AutomaticRollback is disabled, vSphere 5.1 and later allows you to connect directly to a host to fixdistributed switch properties or other networking misconfigurations using the DirectConsole User Interface (DCUI).

Recovery is not supported on stateless ESXi instances.

The Management Network must be configured on a distributed switch. This is the onlyway you can fix distributed switch configuration errors using the DCUI.





Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP)

As part of the vSphere 5.1 release, VMware introduced support for some Link Aggregation Control Protocol features on distributed switches.

LACP is a standards-based link aggregation method to control the bundling of severalphysical network links to form a logical channel for increased bandwidth andredundancy purposes.

LACP works by sending frames down all links that have the protocol enabled.

If it finds a device on the other end of the link that also has LACP enabled, it will sendframes along the same links enabling the two units to detect multiple links betweenthemselves and then combine them into a single logical link.

This dynamic protocol provides advantages over the static link aggregation methodsupported by previous versions of vSphere.

Plug and Play automatically configures and negotiates between host and access layerphysical switch, whilst dynamically detecting link failures and cabling mistakes andautomatically reconfiguring the links.

Administrators need not worry about network link failures as LACP uses the heartbeatbetween the endpoints to detect link failures and cabling mistakes. LACP alsoreconfigures the broken links automatically.

LACP does have some limitations on a vSphere Distributed Switch.




VTSP 5.5

LACP support is not compatible with software iSCSI multipathing.

LACP support settings do not exist in host profiles.

The teaming and failover health check does not work for LAG (link aggregation group)ports. LACP takes care to check the connectivity of the LAG ports.

The enhanced LACP support can work correctly when only one LAG handles the trafficper distributed port or port group.

Released in vSphere 5.5, several key enhancements are available on a vSphereDistributed Switch.

With the introduction of comprehensive load balancing algorithm support, 22 newhashing algorithm options are available.

For example, source and destination IP address and VLAN field can be used as theinput for the hashing algorithm.

When using LACP in vSphere 5.1 you are limited to using IP Hash load balancing andLink Status Network failover detection.

A total of 64 link aggregation groups (LAGs) are available per host and per vSphereDistributed Switch. LACP 5.1 support only provides one LAG per distributed switch andper host.

Because LACP configuration is applied per host, this can be very time-consuming forlarge deployments.





In this release, new workflows to configure LACP across a large number of hosts aremade available through templates.

In this example, a vSphere host is deployed with four uplinks, and those uplinks areconnected to the two physical switches. By combining two uplinks on the physical andvirtual switch, LAGs are created.

The LACP configuration on the vSphere host is performed on the VDS and the portgroups.

First, the LAGs and the associated uplinks are configured on the VDS. Then, the portgroups are configured to use those LAGs.

In this example, the green port group is configured with LAG1; the yellow port group isconfigured with LAG2.

All the traffic from virtual machines connected to the green port group follows the LAG1path.




VTSP 5.5

Distributed Switches Versus Standard Switches

With a standard virtual switch, a separate configuration in a separate managementpanel is required to maintain each ESXi host's network configuration. So in the exampleon the screen, in order for an administrator to view the network configuration of the datacenter, the administrator would have to view the network configuration tab of eachseparate ESXi host.

With a distributed virtual switch, the administrator only has to view one managementpanel to view the network configuration for the entire data center.

Scaling maximums should be considered when migrating to a distributed virtual switch.





Distributed Switch BenefitsNetwork configuration at the data center level offers several advantages.

First, it simplifies data center setup and administration by centralizing networkconfiguration. For example, adding a new host to a cluster and making it vMotion

compatible is much easier.

Second, distributed ports migrate with their clients. So, when you migrate a virtualmachine with vMotion, the distributed port statistics and policies move with the virtualmachine, thus simplifying debugging and troubleshooting.

There are now new advanced features that are available when using a distributedswitch, such as LACP, VXLAN, Network health check.

Finally, enterprise networking vendors can provide proprietary networking interfaces tomonitor, control, and manage virtual networks.




VTSP 5.5

Drawbacks of Standard vSwitchesThe main drawback of a standard virtual switch is that every ESXi host should haveseparate vSwitches configured on it.

That means that virtual local area networks or VLAN, security policies, and teaming

policies have to be individually configured on each and every ESXi host.If a policy needs to change, the vSphere administrator must change that policy on everyhost.

While vCenter Server does allow the administrator to manage the ESXi hosts centrally,the changes to standard virtual switches still have to be applied to each ESXi hostindividually.

Another drawback is that you cannot create an isolated virtual network connecting twovirtual machines on different hosts without configuring network hardware.

Finally, when a virtual machine is migrated with VMware vMotion, the networking stateof the virtual machine gets reset. This makes network monitoring and troubleshooting amore complex task in a virtual environment.





Migrating to Distributed Virtual Switches

Distributed virtual switches ease the management burden of every host virtual switchconfiguration by treating the network as an aggregate resource.

In this configuration, individual host-level virtual switches are abstracted into a singlelarge vNetwork distributed virtual switch that spans multiple hosts at the data centerlevel.

Although VMware supports standard virtual switches, it is a best practice andrecommended that the distributed virtual switch architecture be used for all virtualnetworking purposes, including the virtual machine connections and the VMkernelconnections to the physical network for VMkernel services such as NFS, iSCSI, orvMotion.

When you want to use any of the advanced features you must move from a standardswitch.

If you are increasing the size of your virtual data center by adding hosts, you shouldalso review the decision to use distributed switches.

If you have a requirement to create complicated sets of virtual machines connected toisolated networks, distributed switches should be considered. A hybrid model ofstandard switches for management and distributed switches for everything else wasrecommended in the past.




VTSP 5.5

This should no longer be a requirement and you should consider migrating hybridmodels to a fully distributed model as the distributed switch auto recovery is a featureimplemented to eliminate the need for standard switches in this case.

If you wish to take advantage of ingress and egress traffic shaping you will need tomove to a distributed switch.

If a customer wishes to make use of load based NIC teaming then distributed switchesmust be used.

You have three options for migration.

The first is fully manual and will involve downtime whilst you restructure the virtualnetwork configuration.

The second and third options involve the migrate virtual machine networking wizard.

The simplest approach is to use the fully automated option which will involve somevirtual machine downtime. In this option the migration of all pNICs and virtual ports(VMkernel Ports such as vMotion and so on) can be migrated in a single step from

vCenter Server. However this then removes all uplinks from the affected standardvSwitch.

At this point you now also migrate the virtual machines from a standard switch to adistributed switch. The virtual machines networks will be disconnected during themigration in this case.

If you want to avoid any downtime, this can be achieved using migration by staging.

The first step in this case is to allocate some pNICs to the distributed switch to ensureconnectivity for the virtual machine networks. Then the migration wizard is used tomigrate just the virtual machines without any downtime.

And finally, the wizard is used to move all the remaining pNICs and VMkernel ports tothe distributed switch.





Specific Licensing Requirements

Certain network features require licenses.

As a minimum, Distributed Switches and Network I/O Control require an Enterprise PlusLicense.

Network I/O Control (NIOC) is discussed in the next module.

Standard switches are included in all license versions.




VTSP 5.5

Module Summary


Explain the data center networking architecture

Describe vSphere standard vSwitches, distributed vSwitches and third partyswitches

Describe the new vSphere 5.5 features for Distributed vSwitches

Identify when customers should migrate virtual machines to a distributed switch





Module 2: vSphere Networks: Advanced Features

Welcome to Module 2 of vSphere Networks: Advanced Features.





VTSP 5.5

Module 2 Objectives At the end of this module you should be able to:

• Describe Private VLANs• Explain the VXLAN enhanced distributed switch and its pre-requisites

• Explain Network load balancing and failover policies• Explain the concept of Network I/O control, what benefits it brings and how acustomer can implement it

• Describe VMware Security Tools/Products





Private VLANs: Overview

Private VLANs support compatibility with existing networking environments using privateVLAN technology.

Private VLANs enable users to restrict communication between virtual machines on thesame VLAN or network segment, significantly reducing the number of subnets requiredfor certain network configurations.

PVLANs are only available on distributed vSwitches.

PVLANs are a way of easily providing layer 2 network isolation between servers in thesame subnet or network, without having to worry about such things as MAC accesscontrol lists.

However it is important to remember that use of PVLANs will require compatiblephysical switches.

The next few screens will explain how private VLANs effect virtual machinecommunication.




VTSP 5.5

Private VLANs: Architecture

Private VLANs or PVLANs allow you to isolate traffic between virtual machines in thesame VLAN.

This allows PVLANs to provide additional security between virtual machines on thesame subnet without exhausting the VLAN number space.

PVLANs are useful on a DMZ where the server needs to be available to externalconnections and possibly internal connections, but rarely needs to communicate withthe other servers on the DMZ.

A PVLAN can be configured in a way that allows the servers to communicate only withthe default gateway on the DMZ, denying communication between the servers.

If one of the servers is compromised by a hacker, or infected with a virus, the otherservers on the DMZ are safe.

The basic concept behind PVLANs is to divide an existing VLAN, now referred to as theprimary PVLAN, into one or more segments, by associating VLAN ID's together.

These segments are called secondary PVLANs. A PVLAN is identified by its primaryPVLAN ID.

A primary PVLAN ID can have multiple secondary PVLAN IDs associated with it.Primary PVLANs are promiscuous, so virtual machines on a promiscuous PVLAN are





reachable by and can reach any node in the same promiscuous PVLAN, as well as anynode in the primary PVLAN.

Ports on secondary PVLANs can be configured as either isolated or community.

Virtual machines on isolated ports communicate only with virtual machines on

promiscuous ports, whereas virtual machines on community ports communicate withboth promiscuous ports and other ports on the same secondary PVLAN.

PVLANs do not increase the total number of VLAN's available, all PVLAN IDs are VLANIDs but their use means that you do not have to dedicate VLAN's for each isolatedsegment.




VTSP 5.5

Private VLANs: An Example

Virtual machines in a promiscuous private VLAN are reachable by and can reach anynode in the same promiscuous private VLAN, as well as any node in the primaryPVLAN.

In the example depicted on the screen, virtual machines E and F are in the promiscuousprivate VLAN 5, so all virtual machines communicate with each other as well as withany nodes in the primary private VLAN 5.





Virtual machines in an isolated private VLAN cannot communicate with other virtualmachines except those in the promiscuous private VLAN.

In this example, virtual machines C and D are in isolated private VLAN 155, so theycannot communicate with each other. However, virtual machines C and D can

communicate with virtual machines E and F.




VTSP 5.5

Virtual machines in a community private VLAN can communicate with each other andwith the virtual machines in the promiscuous private VLAN, but not with any other virtualmachine.

In this example, virtual machines A and B can communicate with each other and with Eand F because they are in the promiscuous private VLAN. However, they cannotcommunicate with C or D because they are not in the community private VLAN.

Network packets originating from a community are tagged with the secondary PVLANID as it transverses the network.

There are a couple of things to note about how vNetwork implements private VLANs.

First, vNetwork does not encapsulate traffic inside private VLANs. In other words, thereis no secondary private VLAN encapsulated inside a primary private VLAN packet.

Also, traffic between virtual machines on the same private VLAN, but on different ESXihosts, moves through the physical switch.

Therefore, the physical switch must be private VLAN-aware and configuredappropriately so that traffic in the secondary private VLAN can reach its destination.





VLAN limitations

Traditional VLAN-based switching models suffer challenges such as operationallyinefficient fault tolerance.

High-availability technologies such as VMware Fault Tolerance work best with “flat”Layer 2 networks, but creating and managing this architecture can be operationallydifficult, especially at scale.




VTSP 5.5

VLAN limitationsIP address maintenance and VLAN limits become challenges as the data center scales,particularly when strong isolation is required or in service provider environments.

In large cloud deployments, applications within virtual networks may need to be logically

isolated.For example, a three-tier application can have multiple virtual machines requiringlogically isolated networks between the virtual machines.

Traditional network isolation techniques such as VLAN (4096 LAN segments through a12-bit VLAN identifier) may not provide enough segments for such deployments evenwith the use of PVLANs.

In addition, VLAN-based networks are bound to the physical fabric and their mobility isrestricted.





Virtual Extensible Local Area Network (VXLAN)

A VXLAN is a Layer 2 overlay over a Layer 3 network. For example, it allows you toconnect devices across Layer 3 networks and make them appear like they share the

same Layer 2 domain.The original Layer 2 Ethernet frame from a virtual machine is given a VXLAN ID and isthen encapsulated as a UDP packet which in total adds only 50 bytes of overhead toeach packet.

A VXLAN segment is identified by a 24-bit VXLAN identifier which means that a singlenetwork can support up to 16 million LAN segments.

This number is much higher than the 4,094 limit imposed by the IEEE 802.1Q VLANspecification.

VXLAN fabric is elastic, enabling traffic to traverse clusters, virtual switches and layer 3

networks.Cross cluster placement of virtual machines fully utilizes network resources without anyphysical re-wiring.

Virtual machines do not see the VXLAN ID. VXLAN virtual wires thus provideapplication level isolation.. It provides for scalable Layer 2 networks across the datacenter for efficient workload deployment.

Physical network infrastructure works „as is' without the need to upgrade.




VTSP 5.5

IP multicasting is used to support broadcast and unknown unicast traffic between theVXLAN endpoints.

VXLAN technology has been submitted to the Internet Engineering Task Force forstandardization.

VXLAN technology enables the expansion of isolated vCloud Architectures across layer2 domains, overcoming the limitations of the IEEE 802.1Q standard.

By utilizing a new MAC in UDP encapsulation technique, it allows a virtual machine tocommunicate using an overlay network that spans across multiple physical networks. Itdecouples the virtual machine from the underlying network thereby allowing the virtualmachine to move across the network without reconfiguring the network.

To operate a VXLAN you require a few components to be in place.

Ensure that you have vCenter Server 5.1 or later, ESXi 5.1 or later, and vSphereDistributed Switch 5.1 or later.

Verify that DHCP is available on VXLAN transport VLANs.

The physical infrastructure MTU must be at least 50 bytes more than the MTU of thevirtual machine vNICs. For Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP), 5- tuple hashdistribution must be enabled.

Get a multicast address range from your network administrator and segment ID pool.

You must also ensure that you have deployed the vShield Manager Appliance.

If you are creating a cluster, VMware recommends that you use a consistent switch typeand version across a given network scope.

Inconsistent switch types can lead to undefined behavior in your VXLAN virtual wire.





VXLAN Sample Scenario

It this scenario your customer has several ESXi hosts on two clusters. The Engineeringand Finance departments are on their own port groups on Cluster1. The Marketing

department is on Cluster2. Both clusters are managed by a single vCenter Server 5.5.The company is running out of compute space on Cluster1 while Cluster2 is under-utilized.

The network supervisor asks you to figure out a way to extend the Engineeringdepartment to Cluster2 so that virtual machines belonging to Engineering on bothclusters can communicate with each other.

This would enable the company to utilize the compute capacity of both clusters bystretching the company's L2 layer.

If you were to do this the traditional way, you would need to connect the separate

VLANs in a special way so that the two clusters can be in the same L2 domain.This might require the company to buy a new physical device to separate traffic, andlead to issues such as VLAN sprawl, network loops, and administration andmanagement overhead.




VTSP 5.5

VXLAN Sample ScenarioYou remember seeing a VXLAN virtual wire demo at VMworld 2012, and decide toevaluate the vShield 5.5 release.

You conclude that building a VXLAN virtual wire across dvSwitch1 and dvSwitch2 will

allow you to stretch the company's L2 layer.Note that VXLAN is not currently supported as the transport for vMotion or for creatinglayer 2 stretched environments for SRM.





Load Balancing and Failover Policies

If a design requires more uplink bandwidth than can be provided by a single physical networklink, or if the resilience provided by NIC teams is necessary to avoid any single point of failure

for a particular network, then more than one physical uplink is required for the virtual switch or port group.

Multiple physical uplinks are required to meet minimum acceptable resilience criteria for most

production networks in a vSphere environment:

• Host management networks

• IP Storage networks

• Fault Tolerant logging networks

• vMotion and Storage vMotion networks

• All production virtual machine networks

When defining host NIC requirements, the design must have sufficient uplinks to provide therequired level of resilience for each network, that is physical NICs in each host.

It must also have sufficient bandwidth to meet peak bandwidth needs and sufficient isolation

between networks that cannot, or should not, use shared uplinks.

The behavior of the uplink traffic from a virtual switch or port group is controlled through theuse of load balancing and failover policies which are typically configured at the virtual switch

level but can also be configured at the Port Group level if more specific control is required.




VTSP 5.5

Correct use of load balancing and failover policies will allow higher levels of consolidation of

networking resources and help to minimize the number of physical NICs required per host, and

the number of physical switch ports needed in a design.

Load balancing and failover policies allow you to determine how network traffic is distributed

between adapters and how to re-route traffic in the event of a failure.

You can edit your load balancing and failover policies by configuring the load balancing policy,failover detection, and network adapter order.

The choices you make for these policies can have a significant impact on your overall networkdesign as the choices you make will determine if you need dedicated NICs for a specific set ofvirtual networks or if you can safely share physical uplinks between virtual networks.

These choices also impact the number of switch ports required, the switch configuration and the

topology of the inter-switch links in your upstream network infrastructure.

Load balancing and failover policies can be controlled at either the Standard virtual switch level

or port group level.

On a distributed switch, these are controlled at the distributed switch level and DV port grouplevel and can be set in the vSphere Client.





Load Balancing Policies

The settings for load balancing enable you to specify how a physical uplink should beselected by the VMkernel.

The teaming policies define how the VMkernel decides which physical uplink to use forVMkernel or Virtual machine traffic.




VTSP 5.5

Load Balancing PoliciesRoute-Based on the Originating Port ID

Routing traffic based on the originating port ID balances the load based on the virtualport where the traffic enters the vSwitch or dvSwitch. Port ID-based assignments use

fixed assignments.In some cases, multiple heavy loaded virtual machines are connected to the same pNICand the load across the pNICs is not balanced.

The image on the screen shows that pNIC1 is connected to two virtual machines withheavier load and is overloaded, whereas pNIC0 has only one virtual machine with a lowload.

This policy does not require any specific physical switch configuration. Considercreating teamed ports in the same L2 Domain teamed over two physical switches.





Load Balancing PoliciesRoute Based on IP Hash

Route based on IP hash chooses an uplink based on a hash of the source anddestination IP addresses of each packet. Evenness of traffic distribution depends on the

number of TCP/IP sessions to unique destinations.

Prior to vSphere 5.1 when using the IP hash policy, physical switch ports that wereattached would have to be set to static Etherchannel. This is called “Etherchannel modeon” on certain switch types like Cisco and HP.

You cannot use IP hashing with static Etherchannel across non-stacked switches.

New with vSphere 5.1 you have the option to use Link Aggregation Control Protocol ondistributed virtual switches only. Using LACP helps avoid misconfiguration issues andswitch settings that do not match. It is possible to troubleshoot connections more easilywith LACP as you can tell if cables or links are configured correctly via the switch LACPStatus information.

LACP must first be enabled on the distributed switch before use and configured on thephysical switch.




VTSP 5.5

Load Balancing PoliciesRoute Based on Source MAC Hash

When using route based on source MAC hash option on a drop-down menu in thevSphere Client, an uplink is selected based on the hash from the source Ethernet

adapter.When you use this setting, traffic from a given virtual Ethernet adapter is consistentlysent to the same physical adapter unless there is a failover to another adapter in theNIC team. The replies are received on the same physical adapter as the physical switchlearns the port association.

This setting provides an even distribution of traffic if the number of virtual Ethernetadapters is greater than the number of physical adapters. A given virtual machinecannot use more than one physical Ethernet adapter at any given time unless it usesmultiple source MAC addresses for traffic it sends.

This policy does not require any specific physical switch configuration. Consider

creating teamed ports in the same L2 Domain teamed over two physical switches toimprove network resilience.





Load Balancing PoliciesLoad-Based Teaming

Although teaming can be configured on a standard virtual switch, load-based teaming isonly available with distributed virtual switches. Initially, ports are assigned the way they

are assigned in source port-based load balancing.

The algorithm in load-based teaming regularly checks the load of all teaming NICs. Ifone NIC gets overloaded while another has bandwidth available, the distributed virtualswitch reassigns the port-NIC mapping to reach a balanced status.

Until the next check is performed, the mapping maintains a stable state.

The load-based teaming policy ensures that a distributed virtual switch's uplink capacityis optimized.

Load-based teaming avoids the situation of other teaming policies where some uplinksare idle while others are completely saturated. This is the recommended teaming policy

when the network I/O control feature is enabled for the vNetwork Distributed Switch.This policy does not require any specific physical switch configuration.

From a design perspective, Load-Based Teaming allows for higher levels ofconsolidation at the virtual network level as physical NIC uplink capacity can be usedmore efficiently.

Fewer physical NICs may be required to deliver the required bandwidth for specificnetwork functions.




VTSP 5.5

Traffic Filtering

In a vSphere distributed switch (version 5.5 and later), the traffic filtering and markingpolicy allows you to protect the virtual network from unwanted traffic and securityattacks.

It also allows you to apply a QoS (Quality of Service) tag to a certain type of traffic.

Traffic filtering is the ability to filter packets based on the various parameters of thepacket header.

This capability is also referred to as access control lists (ACLs), and is used to provideport-level security.

The vSphere Distributed Switch supports packet classification.

This is based on the following three different types of qualifier:

MAC SA and DA qualifiers, System traffic qualifiers, such as vSphere vMotion, vSphere

management, vSphere FT, and so on; and, IP qualifiers, such as Protocol type, IP SA,IP DA, and port number.





Traffic Filtering After the qualifier has been selected and packets have been classified, users have theoption either to filter or tag those packets.

When the classified packets have been selected for filtering, users have the option to

filter ingress, egress, or traffic in both directions.

Traffic-filtering configuration is at the port group level.




VTSP 5.5

Differentiated Service Code Point Marking

Differentiated Service Code Point (DSCP) Marking or Tagging helps classify networktraffic and provide Quality of Service (QoS).

Important traffic can be tagged so that it doesn‟t get dropped in the physical networkduring congestion.

Physical network devices use tags to identify important traffic types and provide Qualityof Service based on the value of the tag.

Because business-critical and latency-sensitive applications are virtualized and are runin parallel with other applications on an ESXi host, it is important to enable the trafficmanagement and tagging features on a vSphere Distributed Switch.





Differentiated Service Code Point MarkingThe traffic management feature on vSphere Distributed Switch helps reserve bandwidthfor important traffic types, and the tagging feature enables the external physical networkto detect the level of importance of each traffic type.

It is a best practice to tag the traffic near the source, which helps achieve end-to-endQuality of Service.

During network congestion scenarios, the highly tagged traffic doesn‟t get dropped,providing the traffic type with higher Quality of Service.

VMware has supported 802.1p tagging on VDS since vSphere 5.1. The 802.1p tag isinserted in the Ethernet header before the packet is sent out on the physical network.

In vSphere 5.5, the DSCP marking support enables users to insert tags in the IPheader.

IP header-level tagging helps in layer 3 environments, where physical routers function

better with an IP header tag than with an Ethernet header tag.




VTSP 5.5

Failover Policies

Virtual network uplink resilience is provided by the failover policies within the propertiesof the NIC team, at the virtual switch or port group level.

The failover policy specifies whether the team has standby physical NIC capacity, andhow that standby capacity is used.

Failover policies determine the method to be used for failover detection and how trafficis re-routed in the event of a physical adapter failure on the host.

The failover policies that can be set are network failure detection, notify switches,failback, and failover order.

It is important to remember that physical uplinks can be mapped to only one vSwitch ata time while all port groups within a vSwitch can potentially share access to its physicaluplinks.

This allows design choices where standby NICs can be shared amongst multiple virtualnetworks that are otherwise fully isolated, or all uplinks are active but some are alsodefined as standby for alternative networks.

This type of design minimizes the total number of physical uplinks while maintainingreasonable performance during failures without requiring dedicated standby NICs thatwould otherwise be idle.





This capability becomes less useful as the number of vSwitches on each hostincreases; hence best practice is to minimize the number of vSwitches.

During switch and port configuration, you can define which physical NICs are reservedfor failover and which are excluded.

Designs should ensure that under degraded conditions, such as when single networklink failures occur, not only is continuity ensured via failover, but acceptable bandwidthis delivered under those conditions.




VTSP 5.5

Failover PoliciesNetwork Failover Detection

Network failover detection specifies the method to use for failover detection. The policycan be set to either the Link Status only option or the Beacon Probing option within the

vSphere Client.When the policy is set to Link Status only, failover detection will rely solely on the linkstatus that the network adapter provides. This option detects failures, such as cablepulls and physical switch power failures. However, it does not detect configurationerrors, such as a physical switch port being blocked by spanning tree protocol ormisconfigured to the wrong VLAN or cable pulls on the other side of a physical switch.

The Beaconing option sends out and listens for beacon probes on all NICs in the teamand uses this information, along with link status, to determine link failure. This optiondetects many failures that are not detected by Link Status only alone.

LACP works with Link Status Network failover detection.





Failover PoliciesNotify Switches

When you use the notify switches policy, you must specify how the VMkernelcommunicates with the physical switches in the event of a failover.

The notify switches can be set to either Yes or No.

If you select Yes, a notification is sent out over the network to update the lookup tableson physical switches whenever a virtual Ethernet adapter is connected to the vSwitch ordvSwitch or whenever that virtual Ethernet adapter's traffic is routed over a differentphysical Ethernet adapter in the team due to a failover event,.

In almost all cases, this is desirable for the lowest latency when a failover occurs.




VTSP 5.5

Failover PoliciesFailback

By default, NIC teaming applies a failback policy.

This means that if a physical Ethernet adapter that had failed comes back online, the

adapter is returned to active duty immediately, displacing the standby adapter that tookover its slot. This policy is in effect when the Rolling Failover setting is set to No. If theprimary physical adapter experiences intermittent failures, this setting can lead tofrequent changes in the adapter in use.

Another approach is to set Rolling Failover to Yes.

With this setting, a failed adapter is left inactive even after recovery until anothercurrently active adapter fails, requiring replacement. Please note that the Failover Orderpolicy can be set in the vSphere Client.





Failover PoliciesFailover Order

You can use the Failover Order policy setting to specify how to distribute the work loadfor the physical Ethernet adapters on the host.

You can place some adapters in active use, designate a second group as standbyadapters for use in failover situations, and designate other adapters as unused,excluding them from NIC Teaming.

Please note that the Failover Order policy can be set in the vSphere Client.




VTSP 5.5

Network I/O Control

Let's have a look at network I/O control and its architecture.

In environments that use 1 Gigabit Ethernet or GigE physical uplinks, it is not

uncommon to see multiple physical adapters dedicated to certain traffic types.

1 GigE is rapidly being replaced by 10 GigE networks. While it provides amplebandwidth for all traffic, this presents a new challenge. Different kinds of traffic, whichwas limited to the bandwidth of a single 1 GigE can now use up to 10 GigE. So, foroptimum utilization of 10 GigE link, there has to be a way to prioritize the network trafficby traffic flows. Prioritizing traffic will ensure that latency sensitive and critical trafficflows can access the bandwidth they require.

Network I/O control enables the convergence of diverse workloads on a singlenetworking pipe. It provides control to the administrator to ensure predictable networkperformance when multiple traffic types are flowing in the same pipe. It provides

sufficient controls to the vSphere administrator in the form of limits and sharesparameters to enable and ensure predictable network performance when multiple traffictypes contend for the same physical network resources.

Network resource pools determine the bandwidth that different network traffic types aregiven on a vSphere distributed switch.

When network I/O control is enabled, distributed switch traffic is divided into predefinednetwork resource pools: Fault Tolerance traffic, iSCSI traffic, vMotion traffic,





management traffic, vSphere Replication (VR) traffic, NFS traffic, and virtual machinetraffic. As a best practice for networks that support different types of traffic flow, takeadvantage of Network I/O Control to allocate and control network bandwidth. You canalso create custom network resource pools for virtual machine traffic. The iSCSI trafficresource pool shares do not apply to iSCSI traffic on a dependent hardware iSCSI

adapter.

Without network I/O control you will have to dedicate physical uplinks (pNICs)specifically and solely for software iSCSI traffic if you are using the software iSCSIadapter.

Network I/O control is only available on distributed switches. It must be enabled andlicensed using as a minimum an Enterprise Plus license.




VTSP 5.5

Network I/O Control Features

Network I/O control provides its users with different features. These include isolation,shares, and limits.





Network I/O Control FeaturesIsolation

Isolation ensures traffic isolation so that a given flow will never be allowed to dominateover others, thus preventing drops and undesired jitter.

When network I/O control is enabled, distributed switch traffic is divided into thefollowing predefined network resource pools: VMware Fault Tolerance traffic, iSCSItraffic, management traffic, NFS traffic, virtual machine traffic, vMotion traffic vSphereReplication or VR traffic.




VTSP 5.5

Network I/O Control FeaturesLimits

Limits specify an absolute bandwidth for a traffic flow. Traffic from a given flow is neverallowed to exceed its limit. The limit is specified in megabits per second. Limits are

useful when you do not want to have the other traffic affected too much by othernetwork events.

The system administrator can specify an absolute shaping limit for a given resource-pool flow using a bandwidth capacity limiter. As opposed to shares that are enforced atthe dvUplink level, limits are enforced on the overall vNetwork distributed switch or vDSset of dvUplinks, which means that a flow of a given resource pool will never exceed agiven limit for a vDS out of a given vSphere host.

Consider an example where virtual machine and iSCSI traffic use nearly all theavailable bandwidth. vMotion starts and consumes a large percentage of the bandwidth.In this case, it might be a good idea to limit the bandwidth of vMotion.





Network I/O Control FeaturesShares

Shares allow a flexible networking capacity partitioning to help users in dealing withover commitment when flows compete aggressively for the same resources. Network

I/O control uses shares to specify the relative importance of traffic flows.

The system administrator can specify the relative importance of a given resource-poolflow using shares that are enforced at the dvUplink level. The underlying dvUplinkbandwidth is then divided among resource-pool flows based on their relative shares in awork-conserving way. This means that unused capacity will be redistributed to othercontending flows and won't go to waste.

As shown in the image, the network flow scheduler is the entity responsible forenforcing shares and therefore is in charge of the overall arbitration under overcommitment. Each resource-pool flow has its own dedicated software queue inside thescheduler so that packets from a given resource pool are not dropped due to high

utilization by other flows.




VTSP 5.5

VMware Security StrategyTo secure the vSphere environment, the first thing that needs to be secured is theplatform.

The platform comprises of the physical hardware, the VMware ESXi virtualization layer,

and the virtual hardware layer of the virtual machines.The next level of security ensures that the guest operating systems, which are theendpoints of the virtual machine, are secure.

VMware vShield Endpoint optimizes antivirus and other host and endpoint security foruse in vSphere environments.

You can use vShield App to protect your applications against internal network-basedthreats.

vShield App also reduces the risk of policy violations in the corporate security perimeter.It does so by using application-aware firewalls with deep packet inspection andconnection control that is based on source and destination IP addresses.

Finally, when using vShield Edge, you get comprehensive perimeter network securityfor virtual data centers.

vShield Edge provides port group isolation, and network security gateway services toensure the security of your data centers.

Before installing vShield Edge, you must become familiar with your network topology.





vShield Edge can have multiple interfaces, but you must connect at least one internalinterface to a portgroup or VXLAN virtual wire before you can deploy the vShield Edge.

Before you install vShield in your vCenter Server environment, consider your networkconfiguration and resources.

You can install one vShield Manager per vCenter Server, one vShield App or onevShield Endpoint per ESX host, and multiple vShield Edge instances per data center.




VTSP 5.5

VMware vCloud Networking and SecurityvCloud Networking and Security launched with vSphere 5.1.

vShield functionality was integrated along with vShield Edge, Endpoint, App and DataSecurity capabilities.

vSphere 5.1 also introduced two versions of vCloud Networking and Security.

These were Standard, which provided essential software defined networking andintegrated security and Advanced which provided high availability and cloud loadbalancing.

With the introduction of vSphere 5.5, both editions have now been integrated into asingle edition in vCloud Suite aimed at vSphere environments only.





Network Activity 1Your customer has approached you for help with the design of their environment. On asingle ESXi host they have eight physical 1Gbps Network cards.

They have already decided to use one standard virtual switch with five port groups, as

they want to keep the design uncomplicated.

They want to connect Production and Test & Development virtual machines to theStandard vSwitch.

They propose the connections as shown for the vNICs to the relevant Port Groups.

The customer predicts that several virtual machines will be added to the production portgroup in the near future and wants to ensure that the physical connections to this portgroup are as resilient as possible.

The customer cannot tolerate any loss of management due to the loss of a physicalswitch or physical network adapter.

The customer wants to use IP Storage, avail of vMotion with all other ESXi hosts, andhave a separate port group for Management.

Have a look at the options A, B, C and D to see how the Physical network adaptersmight be connected, then select the best configuration for this customer and clickSubmit.

Option A is displayed here.




VTSP 5.5

Network Activity 1 Option B is displayed here.

Network Activity 1Option C is displayed here.





Network Activity 1Option D is displayed here.




VTSP 5.5

Network Activity 1The correct solution was Option C.

This configuration will allow several virtual machines to be added to the production portgroup in the future and ensure that the physical connections to this port group are as

resilient as possible.There is no risk of loss of management due to the loss of a physical switch or physicalnetwork adapter.

The customer can use IP Storage, avail of vMotion with all other ESXi hosts, and have aseparate port group for Management.





Network Activity 2Your customer has 4 virtual machines that they wish to use placed in controllednetworks to restrict communication to and from the machines. These virtual machineswill all need to be able to communicate with the default gateway device. They have

approached you with the following requirement:Virtual machine A must be able to communicate with any node in the Primary PVLAN.

Virtual machine B must be able to communicate with virtual machine A but not withvirtual machines C or D.

Virtual machine C must be able to communicate with virtual machine A and D. It mustnot be allowed to communicate with virtual machine B.

Virtual machine D must be able to communicate with virtual machine A and C. It mustnot be allowed to communicate with virtual machine B.

Place each VM into the correct PVLAN.




VTSP 5.5

Network Activity 2The correct solution is shown.

Virtual Machine A can communicate with any node in the Primary PVLAN.

Virtual Machine B can communicate with Virtual Machine A but not with Virtual Machine

C or D.

Virtual Machine C can communicate with virtual machine A and D. It cannotcommunicate with Virtual Machine B.

Virtual Machine D can communicate with virtual machine A and C. It cannotcommunicate with Virtual Machine B.





Network Activity 3 A customer has approached you for help in scaling out their network environment. Theyhave recently purchased several new ESXi hosts, as well as some 10Gps networkadapters.

The customer has requested a solution that can be deployed across the ESXi Servers,simplifying data center setup and administration.

They want a solution that enables the convergence of diverse workloads on each10Gps networking connection for optimum utilization of a 10 GigE link as well asoptimizing uplink capacity.

Finally they want to know which level of vSphere License they will require in order toachieve this.

From the solutions shown on screen, choose the most appropriate solution for eacharea of deployment.




VTSP 5.5

Module 2 SummaryThis concludes Module 2, vSphere Networks - Advanced Features.


• Describe Private VLANs

• Explain the VXLAN enhanced distributed switch and its pre-requisites• Explain Network load balancing and failover policies• Explain the concept of Network I/O control, what benefits it brings and how a

customer can implement it.• Describe VMware Security Tools/Products





Course 5

VTSP 5.5 Course 5 vStorage

Welcome to the VTSP V5.5 Course 5: VMware vSphere: vStorage.

There are 3 modules in this course as shown here.




VTSP 5.5

Course Objectives


Explain the vStorage architecture, virtual machine storage requirements and the

function of the types of storage available to vSphere solutions. Describe the vSphere PSA, SIOC, VAAI, VASA and Storage DRS and explain

the benefits and requirements of each.

Determine the proper storage architecture by making capacity, performance andfeature capability decisions.

Information & Training on VSAN or virtualization of storage are not included in thisoverview.





Module 1: vSphere vStorage Architecture

This is module 1, vSphere vStorage Architecture.





VTSP 5.5

Module 1 Objectives


Explain the high level vSphere Storage Architecture.

Describe the capacity and performance requirements for Virtual MachineStorage.

Describe the types of physical storage vSphere can utilize and explain thefeatures, benefits and limitations of each type.





The vStorage Architecture - Overview

The VMware vSphere storage architecture consists of layers of abstraction that hideand manage the complexity and differences among physical storage subsystems.

The Virtual Machine guest operating systems and their applications see the storage asSCSI attached local disks.

In most cases these virtual SCSI disks are files stored in vSphere datastores, butsometimes it is desirable to map block storage directly to virtual machines using RawDevice Mappings (RDM).

The virtual SCSI disks, or VMDKs, are provisioned as files on vSphere datastores whichmay be backed by either local SCSI storage, SAN attached block storage, or NFS NASstorage. The datastore abstraction is a model that assigns storage space to virtualmachines while insulating the virtual machine and its guest OS from the complexity ofthe underlying physical storage technology.

The guest virtual machine is not exposed directly to the Fibre Channel SAN, iSCSISAN, local storage, or NAS. The storage available to a virtual machine can be extendedby increasing the size of the VMDK files.

New virtual disks can be added at any time, but this additional virtual disk capacity maynot be immediately usable without some reconfiguration within the Guest operatingsystem.

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VTSP 5.5

Each vSphere datastore is either a physical Virtual Machine File System (VMFS)volume on a block storage device or an NFS share on a NAS array.

Datastores can span multiple physical storage subsystems if necessary and a singleVMFS volume can contain one or more LUNs from a local SCSI disk, a Fibre ChannelSAN disk array, or an iSCSI SAN disk array.

New LUNs added to a physical storage subsystem are detected and can be madeavailable to existing datastores, or used to create new datastores. If the physicalstorage system supports increasing LUN sizes dynamically, vSphere will recognize thisincrease in available capacity and it can be used to extend a datastore or create a newdatastore if needed. Storage capacity on datastores can be extended using eitherapproach without powering down physical hosts or storage subsystems.

When more direct access to block storage is required, this can be provided through anRDM. While RDMs bypass the VMFS layer, they are associated with a mapping file thatallows vSphere to interact with and manage them in much the same way as VMDKslocated in VMFS or NFS Datastores.

The capacity and performance requirements of the VMFS datastores are provided bythe physical capacity of the storage that is connected to the ESXi host, either locally orvia a SAN. Similarly, the capacity and performance of the NFS datastores are providedby the NAS systems to which the NFS datastores are mapped.

vSphere 5.5 sees the introduction of VSAN. VSAN provides customers with adistributed compute and storage architecture which is fully integrated and managed byvCenter. At this time it is in public beta and as such is not covered in this course. Itshould be noted that its introduction will impact how you design and deploy yourenvironment. The diagram shown on this slide does not reflect these changes.





Virtual Machine Storage

Guest operating systems see only virtual disks that are presented through virtualcontrollers. Virtual controllers appear to a virtual machine as different types of

controllers, including BusLogic Parallel,LSI Logic Parallel, LSI Logic SAS, VMware Paravirtual SCSI, and SATA.

The virtual machine internally sees these disks as local drives and has no knowledge ofthe underlying storage architecture.

Each virtual machine can be configured with up to 8 virtual controllers. These can befour SCSI and four SATA. SCSI can manage up to 15 virtual disks each, whilst SATAcan manage up to 30 virtual disks per controller.

This allows a virtual machine to have a maximum of 180 virtual disks, 60 of these asSCSI and 120 of these as SATA.

Each virtual disk is mapped to a VMDK file on a vSphere datastore available to theESXi host or in the case of SCSI, mapped to a raw device in cases where more directaccess to the underlying storage is required.




VTSP 5.5

LUN, Volume, and Datastore

When working with physical storage and vSphere Infrastructure, it's important tounderstand the terms LUN, volume, and datastore.

A Logical Unit Number, or LUN, is a single allocation of block storage presented to aserver.

This LUN is the unique identification a host has assigned to a given block deviceresource (disk) it finds when it scans its storage systems. The term disk is often usedinterchangeably with LUN.

From the perspective of an ESXi host, a LUN is a single unique raw storage blockdevice or disk. In the first example illustrated in the diagram, the storage administratorhas provisioned 20GB of storage on a SAN array and presented it to the ESXi host asLUN 10.

A VMFS volume is a collection of storage resources managed as a single shared

resource formatted with VMFS. In most cases the VMFS volume contains a single LUN.

In those cases the datastore and the VMFS volume are identical. However, in somecases the VMFS volume might span two or more LUNs and be composed of multipleextents as in the example here with LUN 11 and LUN 12.

Some VMFS volumes have many extents, and in some rare cases several VMFSvolumes might exist on a single LUN, as in the final example here where LUN 15 isused to create two 10 GB Volumes.





When creating VMFS formatted datastores, the vSphere Administrator must first choosethe LUN that will provide the physical storage capacity for the datastore and then selecthow much of the LUN's capacity will be allocated to that datastore.

This allocation is called a volume. VMFS volumes can span multiple LUNS in whichcase each part is called a VMFS volume extent.

For best performance, a LUN should not be configured with multiple VMFS datastores.Each LUN should only be used for a single VMFS datastore.

In contrast, NFS shares are created by the storage administrator and are presented andmounted to ESXi hosts as NFS Datastores by the vSphere Administrator.

Whether they are based on VMFS formatted storage or NFS mounts, all datastores arelogical containers that provide a uniform model for storing virtual machine files.




VTSP 5.5

Virtual Machine Contents Resides in a Datastore

Datastores provide the functional storage capacity used by ESXi hosts to store virtualmachine content and other files used by vSphere such as templates and ISOs.

As we see here, a virtual machine is stored as a set of files: the Virtual Disks that wehave seen already and other files that store the virtual machine configuration, BIOS andother functions we will cover later.

These are usually stored in one directory located in a single datastore. Some files maybe stored in other directories, or even other datastores, but they are stored in onedirectory by default.

Since virtual machines are entirely encapsulated in these sets of files, they can bemoved, copied and backed up efficiently.

VMFS5 allows up to 256 VMFS volumes per ESXi host, with the minimum volume sizeof 1.3GB and maximum size of 64TB. By default, up to 8 NFS datastores per ESXi host

can be supported, and that can be increased to 64 NFS datastores per system.

These important limits may affect design decisions, particularly in larger environments.





Types of Datastores

The type of datastore to be used for storage depends upon the type of physical storagedevices in the data center. The physical storage devices include local SCSI disks and

networked storage, such as FC SAN disk arrays, iSCSI SAN disk arrays, and NASarrays.

Local SCSI disks store virtual machine files on internal or external storage devicesattached to the ESXi host through a direct bus connection.

On networked storage, virtual machine files are stored on external shard storagedevices or arrays. The ESXi host communicates with the networked devices through ahigh-speed network.

Let's add the HBAs and Switches in the diagram. Notice that there are front-endconnections on the SAN and NAS arrays.

As we mentioned earlier, block storage from local disks, FC SANs and iSCSI SANs areformatted as VMFS volumes. NAS storage must use NFS v3 shares for an ESXi host tobe able to use it for NFS Datastores.

The performance and capacity of the storage subsystem depends on the storagecontrollers (the capability and quantity of local RAID controllers, SAN HBAs andNetwork Adapters used for IP storage), the SAN or NAS array controllers for remotestorage.

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VTSP 5.5

The performance capabilities of each datastore depend primarily on the configuration ofthe physical disks allocated and can vary significantly depending on the type, quantityand RAID configuration of the disks that are assigned for the datastores used by thevSphere host.

All of the components involved must be selected appropriately if the required storage

capacity and performance needs are to be met.

There are many storage options available, but to be supported, the specific combinationof hardware used in the solution must be on the vSphere Hardware Compatibility List.





VMFS Volume

A VMFS volume is a clustered file system that allows multiple hosts read and writeaccess to the same storage device simultaneously.

The cluster file system enables key vSphere features, such as fast live migration ofrunning virtual machines from one host to another, to be supported when virtualmachines are stored on SAN storage that is shared between multiple vSphere hosts.

It also enables vSphere HA to automatically restart virtual machines on separate hosts ifneeded, and it enables clustering of virtual machines across different hosts.

VMFS provides an on-disk distributed locking system to ensure that the same virtualmachine is not powered-on by multiple hosts at the same time.

If an ESXi host fails, the on-disk lock for each virtual machine can be released so thatvirtual machines can be restarted on other ESXi hosts.

Besides locking functionality, VMFS allows virtual machines to operate safely in a SANenvironment with multiple ESXi hosts sharing the same VMFS datastore. Up to 64 hostscan be connected concurrently to a single VMFS-5 volume.

VMFS can be deployed on a variety of SCSI-based storage devices, such as FC andiSCSI SAN arrays. A virtual disk stored on a VMFS always appears as a mounted SCSIdevice to a virtual machine.




VTSP 5.5

The virtual disk hides the physical storage layer from the virtual machine‟s operatingsystem. This feature allows operating systems that are not certified for SANs to be runinside a virtual machine.

You can create or store multiple virtual machines on the same VMFS volume whereeach virtual machine is defined by a set of files that are usually stored together in a

single directory.

The ability to place multiple virtual machines in a shared datastore greatly simplifies thetask of managing storage but it requires careful planning to ensure that the underlyingphysical storage can deliver the aggregate performance needed by all of the virtualmachines in the shared datastore.





NFS Volumes

NFS is a file-sharing protocol that is used by NAS systems to allow multiple remotesystems to connect to a shared file system. It is used to establish a client-server

relationship between the ESXi hosts and NAS devices. In contrast to block storageprovided by local SCSI disks or SAN arrays, the NAS system itself is responsible forcontrolling access and managing the layout and the structure of the files and directoriesof the underlying physical storage.

ESXi hosts mount NFS volumes as NFS Datastores. Once these are created theyprovide the same logical structure for storage that VMFS datastores provide for blockstorage.

NFS allows volumes to be accessed simultaneously by multiple ESXi hosts that runmultiple virtual machines. With vSphere 5.5 NFS datastores provide the same advancedfeatures that depend on shared storage as VMFS datastores.

The strengths of NFS are similar to those of VMFS datastores. After storage isprovisioned to the ESXi hosts, the vCenter administrator is free to use the storage asneeded.

One major difference between VMFS and NFS datastores is that NFS shares can bemounted on other systems even while they are mounted on ESXi hosts. This can makeit simpler to move data in or out of an NFS datastore for example if you want to copyISO files into an ISO library stored on an NFS datastore or simply wish to copy virtual




VTSP 5.5

machine data files between systems without directly involving vSphere clients orinterfaces. Obviously, care must be taken not to interfere with running virtual machineswhen doing this.





New vSphere Flash Read Cache

vSphere 5.5 introduces a new storage solution called vSphere Flash Read Cache, anew Flash-based storage solution that is fully integrated with vSphere.

Flash Read Cache is a configurable resource in the vSphere Web Client. It providesVMDK caching to accelerate I/Os in a shared storage environment.

Flash Read Cache has an open framework to allow third- party flash cache solutions inthe VMware storage I/O stack.

vSphere Flash Read Cache enables the pooling of multiple Flash-based devices into asingle consumable vSphere construct called vSphere Flash Resource, which isconsumed and managed in the same way as CPU and memory are done today invSphere.

vSphere Flash Read Cache framework design is based on two major components:

vSphere Flash Read Cache software and vSphere Flash Read Cache infrastructure.




VTSP 5.5

New vSphere Flash Read CacheThe vSphere Flash Read Cache infrastructure is responsible for integrating the vSpherehosts‟ locally attached Flash-based devices into the vSphere storage stack.

This integration delivers a Flash management platform that enables the pooling of

Flash-based devices into a vSphere Flash Resource.The vSphere Flash Read Cache software is natively built into the core vSphere ESXiHypervisor.

vSphere Flash Read Cache provides a write-through cache mode that enhances theperformance of virtual machines without the modification of applications and operatingsystems.

Virtual machines cannot detect the described performance and the allocation ofvSphere Flash Read Cache.

The performance enhancements are introduced to virtual machines based on theplacement of the vSphere Flash Read Cache, which is situated directly in the virtualmachine‟s virtual disk data path.

vSphere Flash Read Cache enhances virtual machine performance by acceleratingread-intensive workloads in vSphere environments.

The tight integration of vSphere Flash Read Cache with vSphere 5.5 also deliverssupport and compatibility with vSphere features such as vSphere vMotion, vSphereHigh availability and vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduling.





vSphere hosts can be configured to consume some of the vSphere Flash Resource asvSphere Flash Swap Cache, which replaces the Swap to SSD feature previouslyintroduced with vSphere 5.0.

The cache reservation is allocated from the Flash Read Cache resource.

The Flash Read Cache can be reserved for any individual VMDK in a Flash ReadCache pool.

A Flash Read Cache is created only when a virtual machine is powered on, and it isdiscarded when a virtual machine is suspended or powered off.




VTSP 5.5

vSphere Flash Read Cache RequirementsvSphere Flash Read Cache has a number of software and hardware requirements thatmust be fulfilled.

You must be running vCenter Server version 5.5, and vFlash can only be configured

and managed when using the Web client.This is the same with all of the new features in vSphere 5.5.

You must have at least one vSphere ESXi 5.5 host as minimum.

The maximum size of a cluster in version 1.0 is 32 nodes. It should be noted that notevery host in the cluster needs to bear flash storage to benefit from vFlash Read Cache.

The virtual machine hardware version must be at version 10 and compatible withvSphere 5.5 or later.

Solid State devices (SSDs) are used for read cache only. When a local SSD disk isformatted as VMFS, it becomes unavailable for Flash Read Cache.

If the SSD that you plan to use with Flash Read Cache is already formatted with VMFS,you must remove the VMFS datastore.

To set up a Flash Read Cache resource, use an SSD device connected to your host. Ifyou need to increase the capacity of your Flash Read Cache resource, you can addmore SSD devices, up to eight in total.

Finally, not all workloads benefit with a Flash Read Cache. The performance boostdepends on your workload pattern and working set size.





Read-intensive workloads with working sets that fit into the cache might benefit from aFlash Read Cache configuration.




VTSP 5.5

Storage Approaches

When considering storage options for a design it is important to fully understand thebenefits and limitations of each type of storage solution.

Shared and Local Storage

Shared storage is more expensive than local storage, but it supports a larger number ofvSphere features.

However, local storage might be more practical in a small environment with only a fewESXi hosts.

Shared VMFS or NFS datastores offer a number of benefits over local storage.

Shared storage is a pre-requisite for vSphere HA & FT and significantly enhances thespeed of vMotion, DRS and DPM machine migrations. Shared storage is ideal forrepositories of virtual machine templates or ISOs. As environments scale shared

storage initially simplifies and eventually becomes a pre-requisite for increased growth.To deliver high capacity, high performance with recoverability a shared storage solutionis required.





Isolated StorageIsolated storage is a design choice where each virtual machine is mapped to a singleLUN, as is generally the case with physical servers.

When using RDMs, such isolation is implicit because each RDM volume is mapped to a

single virtual machine.

The primary advantage of this approach is that it limits the performance impact thatvirtual machines can have on each other at the vSphere storage level although thereare security situations where storage isolation is desirable.

Given the advances in current storage systems, performance gains of RDMs is minimaland should be used sparingly or if required by an application vendor.

The disadvantage of this approach is that when you scale the virtual environment, youwill reach the upper limit of 256 LUNs and VMFS volumes that can be configured oneach ESXi host. You may also need to provide an additional disk or LUN each time youwant to increase the storage capacity for a virtual machine.

This situation can lead to a significant management overhead. In some environments,the storage administration team may need several days' notice to provide a new disk ora LUN. You can also use vMotion to migrate virtual machines with RDMs as long asboth the source and target hosts have access to the raw LUN.

Another consideration is that every time you need to grow the capacity for a virtualmachine, the minimum commit size is that of an allocation of a LUN.




VTSP 5.5

Although many arrays allow LUNs to be of any size, the storage administration teammay avoid carving up lots of small LUNs because this configuration makes it harder forthem to manage the array.

Most storage administration teams prefer to allocate LUNs that are fairly large.

They like to have the system administration or application teams divide those LUNs intosmaller chunks that are higher up in the stack.

VMFS suits this allocation scheme perfectly and is one of the reasons VMFS is soeffective in the virtualization storage management layer.





Consolidated StorageWhen using consolidated storage, you gain additional management productivity andresource utilization by pooling the storage resource and sharing it with many virtualmachines running on several ESXi hosts.

Dividing this shared resource between many virtual machines allows better flexibility,easier provisioning, and simplifies ongoing management of the storage resources forthe virtual environment.

Keeping all your storage consolidated also enables Storage DRS to be used to ensurethat storage resources are dynamically allocated in response to utilization needs.

Compared to strict isolation, consolidation normally offers better utilization of storageresources.

The main disadvantage is additional resource contention that, under somecircumstances, can lead to a reduction in virtual machine I/O performance.

By including consolidated storage in your original design, you can save money in yourhardware budget in the long run.

Think about investing early in a consolidated storage plan for your environment.




VTSP 5.5

Isolated Storage or a Consolidated Pool of Storage?

The questions you have to consider before you decide on isolated or consolidatedstorage are:

• How many virtual machines can share a VMFS volume?• What is the throughput of these virtual machines?• Are the virtual machines running mission critical applications?• Are the virtual machine structures spread out?

The answers to these questions will help you decide if you need isolated orconsolidated storage. In general, it‟s wise to separate heavy I/O workloads from theshared pool of storage. This separation helps optimize the performance of those hightransactional throughput applications - an approach best characterized as “consolidationwith some level of isolation.”

Due to varying workloads, there is no exact rule to determine the limits of performanceand scalability for allocating the number of virtual machines per LUN. These limits alsodepend on the number of ESXi hosts sharing concurrent access to a given VMFSvolume.

The key is to recognize the upper limit of 256 LUNs and understand that this can limitthe consolidation ratio if you take the concept of “one LUN per virtual machine” too far.

Many different applications can easily and effectively share a clustered pool of storage.





After considering all these points, the best practice is to have a mix of consolidated andisolated storage.




VTSP 5.5

Virtual Machine and Host Storage Requirements

Each virtual machine requires storage capacity for its configuration files, virtual disks,Virtual Memory Swap and Snapshots.

These capacity requirements are primarily driven by the size of the virtual disksassociated with the virtual machine, but for precise sizing the space needed for VMswap files and active snapshots must also be accounted for.

The storage solution must also meet the performance requirements of the virtualmachine, so that the I/Os per second, read/write pattern and bandwidth needs of theVM can be met. Again these are primarily driven by the performance needs of the virtualmachine's virtual disks but snapshots will add additional overhead while they are activeand that must be considered.

ESXi 5.5 hosts requires a boot device with a minimum of 1GB of storage and whenbooting from a local or SAN attached disk a 5.2GB disk is required for the boot and

scratch partitions. In auto-deploy scenarios the 4GB scratch partitions from multipleESXi hosts can be co-located on a single SAN LUN.

Consolidation allows for better utilization of the aggregate capacity and performance ofthe physical storage solution but capacity and performance analysis must map therequirements accurately to ensure that shared datastores deliver both the requiredspace and performance that is needed.





VM & Host Storage Requirements

Virtual Machine Contents A virtual machine usually resides in a single folder or subdirectory that is created by anESXi host. When a user creates a new virtual machine, virtual machine files areautomatically created on a datastore. Some of these, the .vmdk files and swap files forexample, can be moved to other locations if required for performance or othermanagement reasons.

vSphere storage design selection decisions are primarily driven by the capacity andperformance needs of the VMDK but it is important to understand the role of the otherVirtual Machine files.

The .vmx file is the virtual machine configuration file and is the primary configuration filethat stores settings chosen in the New Virtual Machine Wizard or virtual machinesettings editor. The .vmxf file contains additional configuration file for virtual machine.

The virtual disks for the VM are defined by the .vmdk files. Each .vmdk is a small ASCIItext file that stores information about a virtual machine's hard disk drive. Each .vmdk fileis paired with a much larger -flat.vmdk file that contains the actual virtual disk data. Thispair of disks is sometimes referred to as the base virtual disk and will appear in thevSphere datastore browser as a single entry representing both files.

The virtual machine's BIOS configuration is stored in the .nvram file.




VTSP 5.5

The .vmss file is the virtual machine suspending state file that stores the state of asuspended virtual machine while it is suspended.

Snapshot metadata is stored in the .vmsd file. This contains centralized informationabout all snapshots for the virtual machine. The individual snapshots will have one ormore .vmsn files that store the running state of a virtual machine at the time you take

the snapshot. These files are stored in the VM directory, with the .vmx file.

Snapshots also create .vmdk and xxxx-delta.vmdk files that contain the differencebetween the current disk state of the disk and the state of the disk that existed at thetime the snapshot was started. These files are stored in the same datastore anddirectory as the base virtual machine disks they are associated with.

Each running virtual machine will also have a .vswp file that is the virtual machine'sswap file for memory allocation.

The vmware-n.log files contain log data about the virtual machine that can be used introubleshooting when you encounter problems, these are always stored in the directorythat holds the configuration (.vmx) file of the virtual machine.





VMDK Types – Thick and Thin Provisioning

When provisioning virtual disks for VMs you have a number of choices in terms of thetype of VMDK.

Thick provisioned disks have the full capacity of the disk immediately allocated from theVMFS. Thin provisioned disks on the other hand allocate capacity as needed and willtypically only consume the disk space that is actively in use by the VM.

Initial provisioning of virtual disks is usually rapid; however the Eager-Zeroed thick diskformat actively clears all data on the reserved space to zero before reporting the disk asinitialized. For large disks this can be a slow process.

In most cases the choice of which type to use is entirely up to the administrator butEager-Zeroed thick disks must be used in some cases, for example all disks in VMsprotected by vSphere Fault Tolerance must use them.




VTSP 5.5

Thick ProvisioningWhen you create a virtual machine, a certain amount of storage space on a datastore isprovisioned, or allocated, to the virtual disk files.

By default, ESXi offers a traditional storage provisioning method. In this method, the

amount of storage the virtual machine will need for its entire lifecycle is estimated, afixed amount of storage space is provisioned to its virtual disk, and the entireprovisioned space is committed to the virtual disk during its creation. This type of virtualdisk that occupies the entire provisioned space is called a thick disk format.

A virtual disk in the thick format does not change its size unless it is modified by avSphere administrator. From the beginning, it occupies its entire space on the datastoreto which it is assigned. However, creating thick format virtual disks leads tounderutilization of datastore capacity because large amounts of storage space that arepre-allocated to individual virtual machines might remain unused and stranded since itcannot be used by any other virtual machine.

Thick virtual disks, which have all their space allocated at creation time, are furtherdivided into two types: eager zeroed and lazy zeroed.

The default allocation type for thick disks is lazy-zeroed. While all of the space isallocated at the time of creation, each block is zeroed only on first write. This results in ashorter creation time, but reduced performance the first time a block is written to.Subsequent writes, however, have the same performance as on eager-zeroed thickdisks. The Eager-Zeroed Thick type of disk has all space allocated and zeroed out at





the time of creation. This increases the time it takes to create the disk, but it results inthe best and most consistent performance, even on the first write to each block.




VTSP 5.5

Thin ProvisioningTo avoid over-allocating storage space and thus minimize stranded storage, vSpheresupports storage over-commitment in the form of thin provisioning.

When a disk is thin provisioned, the virtual machine thinks it has access to a large

amount of storage. However, the actual physical footprint is much smaller.Disks in thin format look just like disks in thick format in terms of logical size. However,the VMFS drivers manage the disks differently in terms of physical size. The VMFSdrivers allocate physical space for the thin-provisioned disks on first write and expandthe disk on demand, if and when the guest operating system needs it. This capabilityenables the vCenter Server administrator to allocate the total provisioned space fordisks on a datastore at a greater amount than the actual capacity of the datastore.

It is important to note that thin provisioned disks add overhead to virtual disk operationswhen the virtual disk needs to be extended, for example when data is written for the firsttime to a new area of the disk, this can lead to more variable performance with thin

provisioned disks than with thick provisioned disks, especially when compared to eager-zero thick provisioned disks and they may not be suitable for VMs with demanding diskperformance requirements.

If the VMFS volume is full and a thin disk needs to allocate more space for itself, thevirtual machine will be paused and vSphere prompts the vCenter Server administratorto provide more space on the underlying VMFS datastore. While the virtual machine issuspended, the integrity of the VM is maintained however this is still a very undesirablescenario and care must be taken to avoid this happening if possible.





vSphere provides alarms and reports that specifically track allocation versus currentusage of storage capacity so that the vCenter Server administrator can optimizeallocation of storage for the virtual environment and be alerted when there is any risk ofdatastores running out of sufficient capacity to cater for the dynamic spacerequirements of running machines with thin provisioned virtual disks.




VTSP 5.5

Space Efficient Sparse DisksWith the release of vSphere 5.1, VMware introduced a new virtual disk type, the space-efficient sparse virtual disk (SE sparse disk). One of its major features is the ability toreclaim previously used space within the guest OS. Another major feature of the SEsparse disk is the ability to set a granular virtual machine disk block allocation size

according to the requirements of the application. Some applications running inside avirtual machine work best with larger block allocations; some work best with smallerblocks. This was not tunable in the past.

The SE sparse disk implements a space reclaim feature to reclaim blocks that werepreviously used but now are unused on the guest OS. These are blocks that werepreviously written but currently are unaddressed in a file system/database due to filedeletions, temporary files, and so on. There are two steps involved in the spacereclamation feature: The first step is the wipe operation that frees up a contiguous areaof free space in the virtual machine disk (VMDK); the second step is the shrink, whichunmaps or truncates that area of free space to enable the physical storage to be

returned to the free pool.VMware View 5.1 and VMware Horizon View 5.x are the only products that use SpaceEfficient Sparse Disks.

Sparse disks are not currently supported when using the new 62TB disks introduced invSphere 5.5





vSphere Thin Provisioning at Array and Virtual Disk Level

In vSphere environments thin provisioning can be done at the array level and the virtualdisk level.

Thin provisioning at the array level is done by the storage administrator while at thevirtual disk level it is under the control of the vSphere Administrator.

In both cases, overall storage utilization can be significantly improved over thickprovisioning but an important difference is that if the storage array is unable to increasethe size of its thin provisioned disks because it has insufficient spare capacity, vSpheremay be unaware of the problem and this can lead to virtual machines crashing. Thisproblem is addressed by arrays that support the VMware vSphere Storage APIs - ArrayIntegration (VAAI) VM-Stun primitive that we will see in the next module.

When storage array level thin provisioning is used it is vital that alerting and monitoringat the array level is implemented to avoid scenarios where virtual machines are

impacted due to the array being unable to expand thin provisioned volumes as required.

Array level thin provisioning can allow administrators to take advantage of the benefitsof storage thin provisioning in terms of overall utilization without sacrificing performance.




VTSP 5.5

Planning for Swap Space, Snapshots and Thin Provisioning

Disk storage capacity is defined primarily by the storage capacity needs of the VirtualMachine Guest operating system's virtual disks, snapshots and swap files.

If you are not using thin provisioning, you will need to ensure that your storage solutionhas a total capacity that exceeds the combined size of the configured capacity for all ofthe VM disks. With thin-provisioned disks, you do not need as much physical capacitybut you will have to ensure you can support the amount of capacity actually in use, plusa buffer for expected growth in actual used space.

Most of the remaining virtual machine configuration files are relatively small and do notconsume any significant amounts of disk capacity. There are two other major classes ofVM files that can significantly affect overall storage capacity needs:

·If Virtual Machine VMX swap files are enabled these may require anywhere from ahundred megabytes to over 10GB per VM depending on VM configuration. While this

requirement is relatively small in most cases, if you have many VMs sharing adatastore, or if the VMs have lots of vRAM, vCPUs or both, this may need to beaccounted for.

·Snapshot capacity - this will vary depending on whether snapshots are used, howmuch disk activity the machines with active snapshots are performing and how long thesnapshots are kept active. Longer lived snapshots on busy systems can use a lot ofcapacity and additional capacity must be available in the datastore(s) to support them. Ifthe datastore free space is exhausted by a VM's snapshots that VM will be suspended





and other VMs on the same datastore may be impacted (e.g. it may be impossible tostart VMs due to the inability of the VMkernel to create a swap file on the datastore).

The guideline is to always leave between 10 and 20% of capacity free on datastores sothat these typical overheads can be accommodated without impacting productionsystems but when snapshots are in active use, care must be taken to monitor theconsumption of free space to ensure they do not negatively impact running VMs.




VTSP 5.5

Storage Considerations

You must keep a few points in mind while configuring datastores, selecting virtual disksand choosing the type of storage solution for a vSphere environment.

For VMFS volumes the best practice is to have just one VMFS volume per LUN. EachVMFS can be used for multiple virtual machines, as we have noted earlier, asconsolidation on shared datastores simplifies administration and management but therewill be scenarios where virtual machines, or even individual virtual disks, are bestserved by dedicating a specific datastore to them. These are usually driven byperformance considerations.

When virtual machines running on a datastore require more space, you can dynamicallyincrease the capacity of a VMFS datastore by extending the volume or by adding anextent. An extent is a partition on a storage device, or LUN. You can add up to 32 newextents of the same storage type to an existing VMFS datastore.

Test and production environments should be kept on separate VMFS volumes.RDMs can be used for virtual machines that are part of physical-to-virtual clusters orclusters that span ESXi hosts (cluster-across-boxes) or virtual machines that need towork directly with array features, such as array level snapshots.

You must keep iSCSI and NAS on separate and isolated IP networks for bestperformance.





The default limit for NFS mounts on ESXi is eight but this can be extended up to sixtyfour, if necessary.

When deploying ESXi 5.5 in environments that have older VMFS 2 file systems youhave to first upgrade VMFS 2 to VMFS 3 and then upgrade to VMFS 5 as ESXi 5.5does not support VMFS2.




VTSP 5.5

Space Utilization-Related Issues

vSphere Snapshots are implemented using Sparse disks with a Copy-On-Writemechanism that is used to fill in data in the sparse disk while the snapshot is in use.This technique is efficient in terms of performance and capacity but on very active disksit can result in snapshots eventually consuming just as much space as the original disk.

It is important to ensure that snapshots are not left running for extended periods of timeand storage alarms should be used to ensure that if snapshots are left running that analert will be raised if they are consuming too much datastore space.

When snapshots are used, as they will be to enable most virtual machine backupsolutions, then sufficient capacity must be allocated to accommodate them. While a 10-20% overall free space reserve on datastores serves as a good guideline that will allowshort term snapshots to be used safely, it is important to monitor and evaluate thecapacity they need and either adjust the datastore capacity or move VMs to a moreappropriate datastore if excessive consumption of free space is noticed.





Monitoring Space UtilizationvCenter Server administrators can monitor space utilization by setting up alarms thatsend a notification when a certain threshold is reached. They can also analyze reportsand charts that graphically represent statistical data for various devices and entities and

give real-time data on capacity utilization.When either thin-provisioned VMDKs or snapshots are being used it is criticallyimportant to ensure that datastore space utilization is actively monitored.




VTSP 5.5

Alarms Alarms are notifications that are set on events or conditions for an object. For example,the vCenter Server administrator can configure an alarm on disk usage percentage, tobe notified when the amount of disk space used by a datastore reaches a certain level.

The vSphere administrator can set alarms on all managed objects in the inventory.When an alarm is set on a parent entity, such as a cluster, all child entities inherit thealarm. Alarms cannot be changed or overridden at the child level.

Alarms should be used to generate notifications when specific disk utilization thresholdsare reached. By default vSphere will generate warnings when a datastore exceeds 75%capacity allocated, and an alert is raised when it exceeds 85%. These defaults can bechanged and should be selected to generate effective notifications to the administrators.For example if a datastore has thick provisioned VMDKs and snapshots will not be usedthen it may be safe to pre-allocate over 90% of this datastore and change the warningand alert levels accordingly. In contrast if a datastore contains very dynamic thinprovisioned VMDK's or contains VMs that will have a number of active snapshots

running then the default alarm levels might be more appropriate.





Raw Device Mapping

While most virtual machine disks are provisioned as VMDK files stored on VMFS orNFS datastores, the vSphere Raw Device Mapping virtual disk type provides a

mechanism for a virtual machine to have more direct access to LUNs on the physicalstorage subsystem. The RDM disk type is available only on block-based storage arrays.

An RDM is a mapping file stored on a VMFS volume, usually in the default virtualmachine directory, that acts as a proxy for the raw physical storage device. The RDMmapping file contains metadata for managing and redirecting the disk access to thephysical device.

The mapping file gives some of the advantages of direct access to a physical devicewhile keeping some advantages of a virtual disk in VMFS.

As a result, it merges the benefits of VMFS manageability with the raw device access.

There are various terms describing RDM, such as mapping a raw device into adatastore, mapping a system LUN, or a disk file to a physical disk volume.

You can use the vSphere Client to add raw LUNs to virtual machines.

You can also use vMotion to migrate virtual machines with RDMs as long as both thesource and target hosts have access to the raw LUN. Additional benefits of RDMinclude support for distributed file locking, permissions, and naming functions.

VMware recommends using VMFS datastores for most virtual disk storage.




VTSP 5.5

RDM Compatibility Modes

There are two compatibility modes available for RDMs, virtual and physical.

Virtual compatibility mode appears exactly as a VMFS virtual disk to a virtual machine. It

provides the benefits of VMFS, such as advanced file locking system for data protectionand snapshots. However, the real hardware characteristics of the storage disk arehidden from the virtual machine.

With RDMs in physical compatibility mode, the VMkernel passes all SCSI commandsdirectly to the device except for the Report LUNs command. Because of this, allcharacteristics of the underlying storage are exposed to the virtual machine. However,blocking Report LUNs prevents the virtual machine from discovering any other SCSIdevices except for the device mapped by the RDM file. This SCSI command capabilityis useful when the virtual machine is running SAN management agents or SCSI target-based software.

For RDMs in physical compatibility mode, you cannot convert RDMs to virtual disks andyou cannot perform operations such as Storage vMotion, migration, or cloning. Also,you can only relocate RDMs to VMFS5 datastores. VMFS 5 supports RDMs in physicalcompatibility mode that are more than 2TB disk size.

vSphere 5.5 introduces support for 62TB (virtual mode) RDMs.





Uses for RDMs

You might need to use raw LUNs with RDMs in situations when SAN snapshots or otherlayered applications run in a virtual machine. RDMs can be used in this way to enable

scalable backup off-loading systems by using features inherent to the SAN.You may also need to use RDMs in Microsoft Cluster Services (MSCS) clusteringscenarios that span physical hosts in virtual-to-virtual clusters and physical-to-virtualclusters. In this case, the cluster data and quorum disks should be configured as RDMrather than as files on a shared VMFS.

A separate LUN is required for each RDM used by a virtual machine.




VTSP 5.5

Functionality Supported Using Larger VMDK and vRDMS

vSphere 5.5 increases the maximum size of a virtual machine disk file (or VMDK) to anew limit of 62TB. The previous limit was 2TB minus 512 bytes.

62TB VMDKs are supported on VMFS5 and NFS.

There are no specific virtual hardware requirements; however ESXi 5.5 is required.

The maximum size of a virtual Raw Device Mapping (non-pass-thru) is also increasing,from 2TB minus 512 bytes to 62TB.

Support for 64TB physical (pass-thru) Raw Device Mappings was introduced in vSphere5.0.

Virtual machine snapshots also support this new size for delta disks that are createdwhen a snapshot is taken of the virtual machine.

This new size meets the scalability requirements of all application types running in

virtual machines.

VMDKs can be deployed up to 62TB, or already existing VMDKs which are 2TB can begrown offline.





VMDirectPath I/O

VMDirectPath I/O is a vSphere feature that allows an administrator to reserve specifichardware devices, such as Fibre Channel HBA's or Network Adapters, for use by a

specific Virtual Machine. With VMDirectPath IO the physical device is presented directlyto the VM Guest.

The Guest must fully support the hardware and will require drivers to be installed andfull configuration of the services associated with the device must be performed withinthe Guest OS.

This may be required for situations where the VM has to have complete control of thestorage hardware at the HBA level. In some cases the performance needs of the VMworkload may require this level of control and this can only be provided by usingVMDirectPath IO to reserve the required devices and present them directly to the VMGuest.

The main drawback is that any VM configured to use VMDirectPath IO is effectivelylocked into the host it is running on and cannot avail of vMotion, HA, FT, DRS or othercluster techniques where vSphere may need to move the virtual machine to anotherhost. VM Snapshots are also not supported as vSphere has no visibility to the directlymanaged storage.




VTSP 5.5

FC Storage Area NetworksFibre Channel SANs are a network storage solution that provides block based storage.

Fibre Channel stores virtual machine files remotely on an FC storage area network(SAN). FC SAN is a specialized high-speed network that connects your hosts to high-

performance storage devices.The network shown uses Fibre Channel protocol to transport SCSI traffic from virtualmachines to the FC SAN devices.

In this configuration, a host connects to a SAN fabric, which consists of Fibre Channelswitches and storage arrays, using a Fibre Channel adapter. LUNs from a storage arraybecome available to the host. You can access the LUNs and create datastores for yourstorage needs.

The datastores use the VMFS format.

Fibre Channel SAN deployments can be very complex to deploy and typically tend to bemore expensive than other protocol SANs. However, they are highly resilient and offerhigh performance.

You should configure storage redundancy in order to create availability, scalability andperformance. Accessing the same storage through different transport protocols, such asiSCSI and Fibre Channel, at the same time is not supported.

When you use ESXi with a SAN, certain restrictions apply. ESXi does not support FCconnected tape devices. ESXi supports a variety of SAN storage systems in differentconfigurations.





Generally, VMware tests ESXi with supported storage systems for basic connectivity,HBA failover, and so on. Not all storage devices are certified for all features andcapabilities of ESXi, and vendors might have specific positions of support with regard toESXi.

You should observe these tips for preventing problems with your SAN configuration:

• Place only one VMFS datastore on each LUN.• Do not change the path policy the system sets for you unless you understand the

implications of making such a change.• Document everything. Include information about zoning, access control, storage,

switch, server, FC HBA configuration and software, firmware versions, andstorage cable plan.

• Plan for failure.




VTSP 5.5

iSCSI Storage Area Networks

iSCSI SANs use Ethernet connections between computer systems, or host servers, andhigh performance storage subsystems.

The SAN components include iSCSI host bus adapters (HBAs) or Network InterfaceCards (NICs) in the host servers, switches and routers that transport the storage traffic,cables, storage processors (SPs), and storage disk systems.

iSCSI networks can also be complex to implement, however iSCSI solutions canleverage any form of IP network but in most cases they will be used on a highperformance Ethernet network. With the combination of iSCSI multi-pathing thatvSphere supports and 10Gb Ethernet networks iSCSI can deliver extremely highperformance.

When designing an iSCSI storage network you should create a dedicated network. Thisremoves the opportunity for contention with other traffic types, which can decrease

latency and increase performance. A VLAN is a viable method to segment traffic, aslong as the physical link is not over-subscribed, which can increase contention andlatency. You should also limit the number of switches that traffic needs to traverse. Thisreduces latency and complexity. You should also configure jumbo frames end-to-end toreduce protocol overhead and improve throughput.

You should observe these tips for avoiding problems with your SAN configuration:





• Place only one VMFS datastore on each LUN. Multiple VMFS datastores on oneLUN are not recommended.

• Do not change the path policy the system sets for you unless you understand theimplications of making such a change.

• Document everything; include information about configuration, access control,

storage, switch, server and iSCSI HBA configuration, software and firmwareversions, and storage cable plan.

• Plan for failure.




VTSP 5.5

Network Attached Storage - NAS

Like iSCSI SANS, NAS devices also provide storage across IP networks.

However unlike either FC or iSCSI SANS NAS devices present network shares to the

hosts that they are connected to and handle storage at the file level, while SANspresent raw storage at the block level.

For vSphere solutions this means that the NAS devices manage their own file systems,controlling access, authentication and file locking while SAN storage has to beformatted with VMFS. vSphere only supports NFS v3 NAS shares.

NAS solutions can deliver extremely high performance, high capacity resilient storagefor vSphere. NIC teaming should be used to provide resilience.

Multiple NICs connected to the IP-storage network via distributed vSwitches can also beconfigured with Load Based Teaming to provide scalable NFS load balancing.





VSA Enables Storage High Availability (HA)

A VSA cluster leverages the computing and local storage resources of several ESXihosts. The VSA is a cost effective solution that uses virtual appliances that use local

storage in ESXi hosts to provide a set of datastores that are accessible to all hostswithin the cluster without requiring a separate SAN or NAS.

An ESXi host that runs the VSA and participates in a VSA cluster is a VSA clustermember. VSA clusters can be configured with either two or three members.

A VSA cluster provides various benefits that include the following:

• Saving money - Less than half the cost of storage hardware alternatives• Easy installation - with just a few mouse clicks, even on existing virtualized

environments (brown-field installation)• Add more storage anytime - Add more disks without disruption as your storage

needs expand

• Get High Availability in a few clicks• Minimize application downtime - Migrate virtual machines from host to host, with

no service disruption• Eliminate any single point of failure - Provide resilient data protection that

eliminates any single point of failure within your IT environment• Manage multiple VSA clusters centrally - Run one or more VSA-enabled

customers from one vCenter Server for centralized management of distributedenvironments




VTSP 5.5

The VSA does have some setup limitations which you should consider beforeimplementing the VSA Cluster:

• VSA is not intended to be a High End, High Capacity Enterprise Storage ClusterSolution. It is targeted towards the Small to Medium business market.

• Across 3 hosts the maximum amount of useable storage that a VSA 5.5 cluster

can support is 36TB.• Decide on 2-member or 3-member VSA cluster. You cannot add another VSA

cluster member to a running VSA cluster. For example, you cannot extend a 2-member VSA cluster with another member.

• vCenter Server must be installed and running before you create the VSA cluster.• Consider the vSphere HA admission control reservations when determining the

number of virtual machines and the amount of resources that your clustersupports.

• The VSA cluster that includes ESXi version 5.0 hosts does not support memoryovercommitment for virtual machines. Because of this, you should reserve theconfigured memory of all non-VSA virtual machines that use VSA datastores so

that you do not overcommit memory.





VSA 5.5 Capacity

In VSA 5.5 the number of 3 TB disk drives that can be used by the VSA appliance perESXI host is 8. This provides a usable capacity of 18TB per host after RAID 6

overheads. Across a 3 node VSA 5.5 cluster this delivers an effective total usablecapacity of 27TB of resilient storage.

For disks with capacity of 2TB or less an ESXi 5.5 host can have up to 12 local disks orup to 16 disks in an expansion chassis. This supports up to 24TB of usable VMFS5Capacity per host and a total usable storage capacity of up to 36TB of resilient storageacross a 3 node VSA 5.5 cluster.




VTSP 5.5

Running vCenter on the VSA Cluster

Prior to vSphere 5.1 vCenter had to be installed somewhere else first before a VSAcluster could be deployed. Running the vCenter server from the VSA datastore was notsupported.

In VSA 5.1 and later, you can install a vCenter Server instance on a local datastore of aVSA cluster host.

The vCenter Server instance then can be used to install VSA by allocating a subset oflocal storage, excluding the amount allocated for vCenter Server (on all hosts) for VSA.

Running vCenter in the VSA Datastore is only supported when there are three hostnodes in the VSA 5.5 cluster. In this case it can initially be installed on a local datastoreand then migrated to the VSA datastore once that has been configured.





Drive Types

All vSphere storage solutions ultimately require physical storage hardware that is eitherinstalled locally in vSphere hosts or are managed by a remote SAN or NAS array.

These have traditionally been hard disk drives, precision mechanical devices that storedata on extremely rigid spinning metal or ceramic disks coated in magnetic materials.Hard disks use a variety of interfaces but most enterprise disks today use either Serial

Attached SCSI, SAS, Near-Line Serial Attached SCSI, NL-SAS or Serial ATA.




VTSP 5.5

Drive TypesSAS currently provides 6 Gigabit per second interface speeds which allows anindividual disk to transfer data at up to 600Megabytes / sec provided the disk cansupport that sort of transfer rate. SAS also supports a number of advanced queuing,error recovery and error reporting technologies that make it ideal for enterprise storage.SAS drives are available in 7.2k , 10k and 15k rpm speeds. These speeds determinethe effective performance limit that drives can sustain in continuous operation with 7.2kdrives delivering about 75 - 100 IO operations per second (IOPS) and 15K drivesgenerally delivering around at most 210 IOPS.

SAS drives are specifically manufactured and designed deliver high reliability. A keymetric for hard drive reliability is what is termed the Bit Error Rate, which indicates thevolume of data that can be read from the drive before a single bit error is experienced.For SAS drives this is typically 1 in 10^16. This number is sufficiently high to guaranteethat most drives will not experience an error during their supported lifetime. SAS drivesare also rated for relatively long Mean Time Between Failure of somewhere in the

region of 1.6 million hours, or about 180 years.





Drive Types NL-SAS

NL-SAS drives are similar to SAS drives in that they use the same interface but the underlyingdrive technology is not as robust. NL-SAS drives BER numbers are about 10 times lower than

SAS and the mean time between failure is about 25% lower. NL-SAS drives tend to be larger

capacity and use slower 7.2K or even 5.4K rpm speeds and are typically used where peak performance or ultimate reliability is not required. IO performance of NL-SAS disks tends to be

in the 50-100 IOPs range.




VTSP 5.5

Drive Types Solid State Drives

Solid State Drives are a relatively new technology that eliminates the mechanical disk in favor

of solid state Flash memory technology. They are extremely fast, with IOPs performancenumbers for single drives ranging from 5000 IOPs to over 750,000 or more for a single drive.

SSD’s are typically substantially smaller and much more expensive per Gigabyte than hard diskdrives.





Drive Types-SATA

SATA is an older interface that is primarily used in non server environments. It has few of thehigh end reliability and queuing features that are required for server storage and hard drives that

use SATA have been phased out of SAN and NAS solutions over the past few years. Performance

is somewhat slower than NL-SAS drives that are otherwise identical.




VTSP 5.5

Solid State Disks EnablementSolid state disks/devices (SSDs) are very resilient and provide faster access to data.

They also provide several advantages, particularly for workloads that require extremelyhigh IOPs.

SSD enablement in vSphere provides several benefits.

On ESXi 5.x, you can use VMFS datastores that are created on SSD storage devices toallocate space for ESXi host cache.

On ESXi 5.5 and later, you use local SSDs for such features as Flash Read Cache.

When used appropriately as part of a vSphere storage solution, the high I/O throughputachieved by SSDs can be used to help increase virtual machine consolidation ratiossignificantly.

ESXi 5.x allows guest operating systems to identify their virtual disks as virtual SSDswhich can help the guest operating system optimize its internal disk I/O for operation on

SSDs.This virtual SSD functionality is only supported on virtual hardware version 8, ESXi 5.xhosts, and VMFS5 file type or later.

An ESXi host can automatically distinguish SSDs from regular hard drives. Howeversome SSDs may not be automatically identified and ESXi will not make optimal use ofthem until they are identified.





You can use PSA SATP claim rules for tagging SSD devices manually that are notdetected automatically.

vSphere 5.5 introduces support for Hot-Pluggable PCIe SSD devices.

SSD drives can be added or removed from a running ESXi host. This reduces the

amount of downtime for virtual machines for administrators in the same way thattraditional hot plug SAS/SATA disks have done.

The hardware and BIOS of the server must support Hot-Plug PCIe.




VTSP 5.5

Storage Tradeoffs

There are many trade-offs involved in storage design. At a fundamental level there arebroad choices to be made in terms of the cost, features and complexity when selectingwhich storage solutions to include.

Direct attached storage and the VSA are low cost storage solutions that are relativelysimple to configure and maintain.

The principle drawbacks with them are the lack of support for most advanced featureswith DAS and the limited scale and performance capability of the VSA. As a result bothof these are primarily suited to small environments where cost is a principle driver andthe advanced cluster features are less compelling.

For the SAN and NAS solutions FC SANs are typically high cost with iSCSI and NASsolutions tending to be more prevalent at the lower end.

All three can support all advanced cluster based vSphere functionality and deliver very

high capacity, high performance with exceptional resilience. There are relatively fewtruly “entry level” FC solutions but both iSCSI and NFS solutions scale from theconsumer price level up, and there are a number of entry level iSCSI and NAS solutionsthat are on the HCL and supported.

FC tends to be dominant at the high end and in demanding environments whereperformance is critical but there are iSCSI and NAS solutions at the very high end too.





The choice on which is most suitable will often come down to a customer preference forhaving an Ethernet/IP-storage network over a dedicated FC network or whether specificdetailed OEM capabilities are better suited to the specific customer needs than thealternatives.




VTSP 5.5

Design Limits - Knowledge Check

There are important limits that may affect design decisions for virtual storage.

Match the correct values to the boxes to complete the description of these limits.





Virtual Storage Types - Knowledge Check

Complete the statements on virtual storage types.

Match the words with their correct positions in the sentences.




VTSP 5.5

Thick Provisioning - Knowledge Check

Thick-provisioned disks can be allocated as lazy-zero or eager-zero. Can you recall the

properties of each?





Usable Capacity - Knowledge Check




VTSP 5.5

Module Summary

This concludes module 1, vSphere vStorage Architecture.


• Explain the high level vSphere Storage Architecture.• Describe the capacity and performance requirements for Virtual Machine

Storage.• Describe the types of physical storage vSphere can utilize and explain the

features, benefits and limitations of each type.





Module 2: Advanced Features for Availability and Performance

This is module 2, Advanced Features for Availability and Performance.





VTSP 5.5

Module 2 Objectives


• Explain and demonstrate multipathing and the PSA architecture

• Explain Storage I/O Control• Compare the features of Datastore Clusters and Storage DRS with isolated

storage features• Describe Storage Hardware Acceleration (VAAI)• Compare VMware API for Storage Awareness (VASA) with plain storage• Explain Profile-Driven Storage





Pluggable Storage Architecture

The storage I/O path provides virtual machines with access to storage devices throughdevice emulation. This device emulation allows a virtual machine to access files on a

VMFS or NFS file system as if they were SCSI devices. The VMkernel provides storagevirtualization functions such as the scheduling of I/O requests from multiple virtualmachines and multipathing. In addition, VMkernel offers several Storage APIs thatenable storage partners to integrate and optimize their products for vSphere.

To understand the role this plays, it is useful to look at how I/O requests are handled bythe VMkernel. Virtual machine uses SCSI emulation which redirects the I/O requestsfrom the guest to the VMkernel. Depending on the type of virtual disk, this request maypass through a number of layers that handle translation through a VMDK disk format,snapshots, VMFS and NFS datastores and a SCSI disk emulation layer or it may behanded directly to a Raw Device Mapping. Regardless of the virtual disk type, the I/Orequest is then handled by the Logical Device I/O Scheduler which manages the I/O

requests from all virtual machines to and from physical devices. The I/O Schedulerpasses the requests to the Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) which manages thepath and failover policy for each physical storage device.

It is the PSA which controls the specific path of each I/O request.

http://localhost/var/www/apps/conversion/tmp/scratch_7/C5M2Sc3%20Pluggable%20Storage%20Architecture.mp4






VTSP 5.5

Processing I/O Requests

By default, ESXi‟s Pluggable Storage Architecture provides the VMware NativeMultipathing Plug-in or NMP.

NMP is an extensible module that manages sub-plug-ins.

There are two types of NMP sub-plug-ins, Storage Array Type Plug-ins or SATPs, andPath Selection Plug-ins or PSPs. SATPs and PSPs can be built-in and are provided byVMware.

They can also be provided by a third-party vendor.

When a virtual machine issues an I/O request to a storage device managed by theNMP, the NMP calls the PSP assigned to this storage device.

The PSP then selects an appropriate physical path for the I/O to be sent. The NMPreports the success or failure of the operation.

If the I/O operation is successful, the NMP reports its completion.

However, if the I/O operation reports an error, the NMP calls an appropriate SATP.

The SATP checks the error codes and, when appropriate, activates inactive paths. ThePSP is called to select a new path to send the I/O.

You need to understand how the PSA manages paths to your storage in order tocorrectly specify the hardware configuration of your hosts and to ensure that yourstorage network is configured optimally for performance and resilience.





Extending PSA

PSA is an open, modular framework that coordinates the simultaneous operation ofmultiple multipathing plug-ins or MPPs.

The PSA framework also supports the installation of third-party plug-ins that can replaceor supplement vStorage native components which we have just seen.

These plug-ins are developed by software or storage hardware vendors and integratewith the PSA.

They improve critical aspects of path management and add support for new pathselection policies and new arrays, currently unsupported by ESXi.

Third-party plug-ins are of three types: third-party SATPs, third-party PSPs, and third-party MPPs.

Third-party SATPs are generally developed by third-party hardware manufacturers, who

have expert knowledge of their storage devices.

These plug-ins are optimized to accommodate specific characteristics of the storagearrays and support the new array lines.

You need to install third-party SATPs when the behavior of your array does not matchthe behavior of any existing PSA SATP.

When installed, the third-party SATPs are coordinated by the NMP. They can besimultaneously used with the VMware SATPs.




VTSP 5.5

The second type of third-party plug-ins are third-party PSPs.

They provide more complex I/O load balancing algorithms. Generally, these plug-ins aredeveloped by third-party software companies and help you achieve higher throughputacross multiple paths.

When installed, the third-party PSPs are coordinated by the NMP.

They can run alongside, and be simultaneously used with the VMware PSPs.

The third type, third-party MPPs, can provide entirely new fault tolerance andperformance behavior.

They run in parallel with the VMware NMP. For certain specified arrays, they replace thebehavior of the NMP by taking control over the path failover and load-balancingoperations.

When the host boots up or performs a re-scan, the PSA discovers all physical paths tostorage devices available to the host.

Based on a set of claim rules defined in the /etc/VMware/esx.conf file, the PSAdetermines which multipathing module should claim the paths to a particular device andbecome responsible for managing the device.

For the paths managed by the NMP module, another set of rules is applied in order toselect SATPs and PSPs.

Using these rules, the NMP assigns an appropriate SATP to monitor physical paths andassociates a default PSP with these paths.





Knowledge Check - PSA

The PSA controls the specific path of each I/O request.

Match the terms with their correct positions in the sentence.




VTSP 5.5

Multipathing

To maintain a constant connection between an ESXi host and its storage, ESXisupports multipathing.

Multipathing is the technique of using more than one physical path for transferring databetween an ESXi host and an external storage device.

In case of a failure of any element in the SAN network, such as HBA, switch, or cable,ESXi can fail over to another physical path.

In addition to path failover, multipathing offers load balancing for redistributing I/O loadsbetween multiple paths, thus reducing or removing potential bottlenecks.





FC Multipathing

To support path switching with Fibre Channel or FC SAN, an ESXi host typically hastwo or more HBAs available, from which the storage array can be reached using one or

more switches. Alternatively, the setup should include one HBA and two storage processors or SPs sothat the HBA can use a different path to reach the disk array.

In the graphic shown, multiple paths connect each ESXi host with the storage device fora FC storage type.

In FC multipathing, if HBA1 or the link between HBA1 and the FC switch fails, HBA2takes over and provides the connection between the server and the switch. The processof one HBA taking over another is called HBA failover.

Similarly, if SP1 fails or the links between SP1 and the switches break, SP2 takes over

and provides the connection between the switch and the storage device.This process is called SP failover.

The multipathing capability of ESXi supports both HBA and SP failover.




VTSP 5.5

iSCSI Multipathing

Multipathing between a server and storage array provides the ability to load-balancebetween paths when all paths are present and to handle failures of a path at any pointbetween the server and the storage.

Multipathing is a de facto standard for most Fibre Channel SAN environments.

In most software iSCSI environments, multipathing is possible at the VMkernel networkadapter level, but not the default configuration.

In a VMware vSphere environment, the default iSCSI configuration for VMware ESXiservers creates only one path from the software iSCSI adapter (vmhba) to each iSCSItarget.

To enable failover at the path level and to load-balance I/O traffic between paths, theadministrator must configure port binding to create multiple paths between the softwareiSCSI adapters on ESXi servers and the storage array. Without port binding, all iSCSI

LUNs will be detected using a single path per target.

By default, ESXi will use only one vmdk NIC as egress port to connect to each target,and you will be unable to use path failover or to load-balance I/O between differentpaths to the iSCSI LUNs.

This is true even if you have configured network adapter teaming using more than oneuplink for the VMkernel port group used for iSCSI.





In the case of simple network adapter teaming, traffic will be redirected at the networklayer to the second network adapter during connectivity failure through the first networkcard, but failover at the path level will not be possible, nor will load balancing betweenmultiple paths.




VTSP 5.5

Storage I/O Resource Allocation

VMware vSphere provides mechanisms to dynamically allocate storage I/O resources,allowing critical workloads to maintain their performance even during peak load periodswhen there is contention for I/O resources. This allocation can be performed at the levelof the individual host or for an entire datastore.

The primary aim of Storage I/O Control (SIOC) is to prevent a single virtual machinefrom taking all of the I/O bandwidth to a shared datastore.

With SIOC disabled (the default), all hosts accessing a datastore get an equal portion ofthat datastores resources. In this example the low business priority virtual machinerunning a data mining application is sharing a datastore with two other importantbusiness VMs, but is hogging all of the datastore resources.

By enabling Storage I/O Control on the datastore, the Online Store and MicrosoftExchange Virtual Machines which have a higher business importance can now be

assigned a priority when contention arises on that datastore.Priority of Virtual Machines is established using the concept of Shares. The moreshares a VM has, the more bandwidth it gets to a datastore when contention arises.

Although we had a disk shares mechanism in the past, it was only respected by VMs onthe same ESX host so wasn't much use on shared storage which was accessed bymultiple ESX hosts.





Storage I/O Control enables the honoring of share values across all ESX hostsaccessing the same datastore.

Storage I/O Control is best used for avoiding contention and thus poor performance onshared storage.

It gives you a way of prioritizing which VMs are critical and which are not so critical froman I/O perspective.

• SIOC has several requirements and limitations.• Datastores that are Storage I/O Control-enabled must be managed by a single

vCenter Server system.• Storage I/O Control is supported on Fibre Channel-connected, iSCSI-connected,

and NFS-connected storage.• Raw Device Mapping (RDM) is not supported.• Storage I/O Control does not support datastores with multiple extents.• Check the VMware Storage/SAN compatibility guide at http://bit.ly/Xxtyh to verify

whether your automated tiered storage array has been certified to be compatible

with Storage I/O Control.

Storage I/O Control is enabled by default on Storage DRS-enabled datastore clusters.

When the average normalized datastore latency exceeds a set threshold, the datastoreis considered to be congested.

Storage I/O Control initializes to distribute the available storage resources to virtualmachines in proportion to their shares.

Configure shares on virtual disks, based on relative importance of the virtual machine. As a minimum SIOC requires an Enterprise Plus level license.




VTSP 5.5

Datastore Clusters A datastore cluster is a collection of datastores with shared resources and a sharedmanagement interface. Datastore clusters are to datastores what clusters are to hosts.When you create a datastore cluster, you can use vSphere Storage DRS to managestorage resources.

A datastore cluster enabled for Storage DRS is a collection of datastores workingtogether to balance Capacity and IOPs latency.

When you add a datastore to a datastore cluster, the datastore‟s resources become partof the datastore cluster's resources.

As with clusters of hosts, you use datastore clusters to aggregate storage resources,which enables you to support resource allocation policies at the datastore cluster level.

The following resource management capabilities are also available per datastorecluster:

• Space Utilization Load Balancing• I/O Latency Load Balancing• Anti-affinity Rules





Datastore Cluster Requirements

Datastores and hosts that are associated with a datastore cluster must meet certainrequirements to use datastore cluster features successfully.

Datastore clusters must contain similar or interchangeable datastores.

A datastore cluster can contain a mix of datastores with different sizes and I/Ocapacities, and can be from different arrays and vendors.

However, the following types of datastores cannot coexist in a datastore cluster.

NFS and VMFS datastores cannot be combined in the same datastore cluster.

Replicated datastores cannot be combined with non-replicated datastores in the sameStorage-DRS-enabled datastore cluster.

All hosts attached to the datastores in a datastore cluster must be ESXi 5.0 and later.

If datastores in the datastore cluster are connected to ESX/ESXi 4.x and earlier hosts,Storage DRS does not run.

Datastores shared across multiple data centers cannot be included in a datastorecluster.

As a best practice, do not include datastores that have hardware acceleration enabledin the same datastore cluster as datastores that do not have hardware accelerationenabled.




VTSP 5.5

Datastores in a datastore cluster must be homogeneous to guarantee hardwareacceleration-supported behavior.

A datastore cluster has certain vSphere Storage vMotion requirements.

The host must be running a version of ESXi that supports Storage vMotion. The hostmust have write access to both the source datastore and the destination datastore.

The host must have enough free memory resources to accommodate Storage vMotion.

The destination datastore must have sufficient disk space.

Finally, the destination datastore must not be in maintenance mode or enteringmaintenance mode.





Storage DRS

Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) allows you to manage the aggregated resources

of a datastore cluster.

When Storage DRS is enabled, it provides recommendations for virtual machine disk placement

and migration to balance space and I/O resources across the datastores in the datastore cluster.

Storage DRS provides the following functions:

Initial placement of virtual machines based on storage capacity and, optionally, on I/O latency.

Storage DRS provides initial placement and ongoing balancing recommendations to datastores ina Storage DRS-enabled datastore cluster.

Use of Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines based on storage capacity. The default

setting is to balance usage when a datastore becomes eighty percent full. Consider leaving moreavailable space if snapshots are used often or multiple snapshots are frequently used

Storage DRS provides for the use of Storage vMotion to migrate virtual machines based on I/O

latency.

When I/O latency on a datastore exceeds the threshold, Storage DRS generates recommendationsor performs Storage vMotion migrations to help alleviate high I/O load.

Use of fully automated, storage maintenance mode to clear a LUN of virtual machine files.

Storage DRS maintenance mode allows you to take a datastore out of use in order to service it.

Storage DRS also provides configuration in either manual or fully automated modes use ofaffinity and anti-affinity rules to govern virtual disk location.




VTSP 5.5

The automation level for a datastore cluster specifies whether or not placement and migration

recommendations from Storage DRS are applied automatically.

You can create Storage DRS anti-affinity rules to control which virtual disks should not be placed on the same datastore within a datastore cluster. By default, a virtual machine's virtual

disks are kept together on the same datastore.

For example, to improve the performance of an application by keeping the application disk on adatastore separate from the operating system disk

You can create a scheduled task to change Storage DRS settings for a datastore cluster so thatmigrations for fully automated datastore clusters are more likely to occur during off-peak hours.

Backing up virtual machines can add latency to a datastore.

You can schedule a task to disable Storage DRS behavior for the duration of the backup.

Always use Storage DRS when possible.

As a minimum Storage DRS requires an Enterprise Plus level license.





VAAI OverviewvStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) provide hardware acceleration functionality.

VAAI enables your host to offload specific virtual machine and storage managementoperations to compliant storage hardware.

With the storage hardware assistance, your host performs these operations faster andconsumes less CPU, memory, and storage fabric bandwidth.

VAAI uses the following Block Primitives:

• Atomic Test & Set (ATS), which is used during creation and locking of files on theVMFS volume, replacing SCSI reservations for metadata updates. NFS uses itsown locking mechanism, so does not use SCSI reservations.

• Clone Blocks/Full Copy/XCOPY is used to copy or migrate data within the samephysical array.

• Zero Blocks/Write Same is used to zero-out disk regions.In ESXi 5.x, support for NAS Hardware Acceleration is included with support forthese primitives.

• Full File Clone - Like the Full Copy VAAI primitive provided for block arrays, thisFull File Clone primitive enables virtual disks to be cloned by the NAS device.

• Native Snapshot Support - Allows creation of virtual machine snapshots to beoffloaded to the array.

• Extended Statistics - Enables visibility to space usage on NAS datastores and isuseful for Thin Provisioning.




VTSP 5.5

• Reserve Space - Enables creation of thick virtual disk files on NAS.Thin Provisioning in ESXi 5.x hosts introduced out of space conditions on SCSI LUNs.This induces a VM stun. NFS servers already provide this information which ispropagated up the stack.

Thin Provisioning in ESXi 5.x allows the ESXi host to tell the array when the space

previously occupied by a virtual machine (whether it is deleted or migrated to anotherdatastore) can be reclaimed on thin provisioned LUNs.

Block Delete in ESXi 5.x hosts allows for space to be reclaimed using the SCSI UNMAPfeature.

Dead space reclamation is not an issue on NAS arrays.

vSphere 5.5 introduces a new and simpler VAAI UNMAP/Reclaim command.

There are also two major enhancements in vSphere 5.5; the ability to specify thereclaim size in blocks rather than as a percentage value and dead space can now bereclaimed in increments rather than all at once.

Block primitives are enabled by default on ESXi hosts. NAS primitives require a NASplug-in from array vendors and the implementation of these primitives may vary soensure that you check with the NAS vendor. As a minimum VAAI requires an Enterpriselevel license.

Ultimately, the goal of VAAI is to help storage vendors provide hardware assistance tospeed up VMware I/O operations that are more efficiently accomplished in the storagehardware. Without the use of VAAI, cloning or migration of virtual machines by thevSphere VMkernel Data Mover involves software data movement.

In nearly all cases, hardware data movement will perform significantly better thansoftware data movement and It will consume fewer CPU cycles and less bandwidth on

the storage fabric.

As an example support for the ATS primitive allows a greater number of virtual disks ona single datastore which gives you more flexibility when choosing your storage design.





vSphere Storage APIs - Storage Awareness (VASA)

vSphere Storage APIs - Storage Awareness (VASA) is a set of APIs that permit arraysto integrate with vCenter for management functionality.

VASA allows a storage vendor to develop a software component (a vendor provider) forits storage arrays.

Storage vendor providers allow vCenter Server to retrieve information from storagearrays including topology, capabilities and status.

The vendor provider is third-party software, provided by the storage provider, that isinstalled on the storage array or management device.

The vCenter Server uses the vendor provider to retrieve the status, topology, andcapabilities of the storage array. Information from the vendor provider

is displayed in the VMware vSphere Client.

The vendor provider exposes three pieces of information to vCenter Server. Storagetopology lists information regarding the physical storage array elements.

Storage capabilities list the storage capabilities and the services that the storage arrayoffers, which can be used in Storage Profiles.

Storage state displays the health status of the storage array, including alarms andevents for configuration changes.




VTSP 5.5

Vendor providers provide a number of benefits.

The storage system information presented by the storage vendors is visible in vCenterServer.

This provides a complete "end-to-end" view of your infrastructure from the vCenterServer. The storage capabilities information presented by the storage providers appearas system-defined entries for Storage Profiles.

When you use the vendor provider functionality, certain requirements andconsiderations apply.

See the vSphere Compatibility guide athttp://partnerweb.vmware.com/comp_guide2/search.php or check with your storagevendor, who can provide you with information as to whether your storage supportsvendor providers.

The vendor provider cannot run on the same host as the vCenter Server. The vendorprovider must have bi-directional trust with the vSphere Storage Management Service,

via an SSL certificate exchange.Both block storage and file system storage devices can use vendor providers.

Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) does not support vendor providers.

A single vCenter Server can simultaneously connect to multiple different vendorproviders. It is possible to have a different vendor provider for each type of physicalstorage device available to your host.





Knowledge Check - Storage Vendor Providers

Storage Vendor Providers allow vCenter Server to retrieve information from storagearrays. Which three statements about Vendor Providers are correct?




VTSP 5.5

Profile-Driven Storage

Managing datastores and matching the SLA requirements of virtual machines with theappropriate datastore can be challenging and cumbersome tasks.

Profile-driven storage enables the creation of datastores that provide varying levels ofservice. Profile-driven storage can be used to do the following: Categorize datastoresbased on system-defined or user-defined levels of service.

The capabilities of the storage subsystem can be identified by using VMware Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA). Storage vendors can publish the capabilities oftheir storage to VMware vCenter Server, which can display the capabilities in the userinterface.

User-defined means storage capabilities can be identified by the user (for non-VASAsystems). For example, user-defined levels might be gold, silver and bronze.

Profile-Driven Storage will reduce the amount of manual administration required for

virtual machine placement while improving virtual machine SLA storage compliance.

Virtual machine storage profiles can be associated to virtual machines and periodicallychecked for compliance to ensure that the virtual machine is running on storage with thecorrect performance and availability characteristics.

Use compliance checks to ensure a virtual machine is always on appropriate storage.

Find non-compliant virtual machines and correct the error via Storage vMotion.





Profile-Driven Storage delivers these benefits by taking advantage of Full integrationwith VASA, enabling usage of storage characterization supplied by storage vendors. ItSupports NFS, iSCSI and Fibre Channel (FC) storage, and all storage arrays on theHCL.

It enables the vSphere administrator to tag storage based on customer- or business-specific descriptions.

Use storage characterizations and/or administrator-defined descriptions to create virtualmachine placement rules in the form of storage profiles, providing an easy means tocheck a virtual machine‟s compliance with these rules, ensuring a virtual machine is notdeployed or migrated to an incorrect type of storage without the administrator‟s beinginformed.

A limitation of Profile driven storage is that the administrator must explicitly understandthe virtual machines requirements when choosing the appropriate profile for a virtualmachine. If the administrator does not understand the requirements of the virtualmachine storage, the virtual machine may not be placed on the best tier of storage.

The administrator must decide which tier is the best fit for the virtual machine eventhough it can be running a range of disparate workloads not best suited for just one tier.

As a minimum, Profile-Driven Storage requires an Enterprise Plus level license.




VTSP 5.5

Knowledge Check - Storage I/O Control

See if you can recall Storage I/O Control license requirements.

Which statement correctly describes license requirements for Storage I/O Control?





Knowledge Check - Datastore Clusters

When creating datastore clusters, you need to be aware of certain restrictions and guidelines.

Which three statements are valid considerations for creating datastore clusters?




VTSP 5.5

Module SummaryThis concludes module 2, vSphere vStorage Advanced Features.


• Explain and demonstrate multipathing and the PSA architecture

• Explain Storage I/O Control• Compare the features of Datastore Clusters and Storage DRS with Isolated

storage features• Describe Storage Hardware Acceleration (VAAI)• Compare VMware API for Storage Awareness (VASA) with plain storage• Explain Profile Driven Storage

Now that you have completed this module, feel free to review it until you are ready tostart the next module.





Module 3: Determining Proper Storage Architecture

This is module 3, Determining Proper Storage Architecture.

This is the topic that will be covered in this module.




VTSP 5.5

Module Objectives

Using a sample customer, this module will help you to make design choices with regardto base VM capacity and performance needs; define requirements for snapshots,SDRS, template storage and planned growth rates; and explore utilization andperformance trade-offs with shared storage consolidation decisions.





Performance and Capacity Scenario

Carla is the owner of a growing business. She has approached your company to helpsize, scale and implement a suitable storage solution. Your initial consultation has

provided you with the following information about Carla and her business:Currently they have 10 virtual machines which will then rise to 50 Virtual Machines afterconsolidation. They all reside on 2X ESXi 5.1 Servers without any shared storage. Thebusiness is increasing so will need to accommodate additional workloads. Currently allvirtual machines reside on local storage.

They anticipate that the total server/storage needs will be 12TB. Capacity analysisindicates that they will require 10TB of capacity for file and general purpose storage.1.5TB for high performance databases. 500GB for a mission critical email system.

The large application and database servers will use 150 IOPS per virtual machine.

The small application servers will use 50 IOPS per virtual machine.




VTSP 5.5

Performance and Capacity ScenarioCarla has the following business requirements:

The business has good in-house Ethernet expertise, and wants to leverage this. Thebusiness requires an easy way to migrate from and provision new virtual machines. The

customer plans to implement a Microsoft Cluster in the near future.The business cannot afford to have any downtime.





Which Solution to OfferWhich solution is a best fit for your customer?

Select an answer and click Submit.




VTSP 5.5

Which Solution to OfferiSCSI-SAN: Given the customer's requirements this is the best fit. They can leveragetheir in-house expertise to implement the storage as well as rolling out a Microsoftcluster in the near future. The shared storage ability will allow them to use StoragevMotion the virtual machines from their Local Storage. iSCSI multipathing will ensurethat the design meets the high-availability configuration.

The iSCSI array should be sized with your immediate to mid-term scaling goals in mind.Think about availability, performance (IOPS, Mbps, Latency) and finally about capacity.

NFS is not the best match to the customer's requirements. If they are planning toimplement a Microsoft Cluster, block-based storage as provided by FC and iSCSI willallow them to support more cluster configurations.

FC-SAN is not the best match for the customer's requirements as they have goodinternal Ethernet experience and wish to capitalize on it. The NAS and iSCSI optionsboth allow the customer to use ethernet for their storage networking while an FC SAN

will not.





Snapshots, SDRS, Templates Scenario

Carla is happy with the choice of an iSCSI array. The business wants to further optimizestorage utilization on the array.

The business wants to optimize the way virtual disks configured on the storage arrayuse the maximum amount of capacity.

The business wants to quickly deploy virtual machines from existing virtual machines toscale up to meet demand.

They want to be able to use Test and Dev machines and rollback from any changeseasily as well as use their 3rd Party Backup Solution.

The business wants to optimize the initial placement of running virtual machines and I/Oload to be based on the available storage capacity of datastores.




VTSP 5.5

Which Solution to Offer

Carla needs to be sure she's making the right choices. Can you match the solutions to her

queries?





Which Solution to OfferThin Provisioned - ESXi supports thin provisioning for virtual disks. With the disk-levelthin provisioning feature, you can create virtual disks in a thin format. For a thin virtualdisk, ESXi provisions the entire space required for the disk's current and future

activities, for example 40GB. However, the thin disk uses only as much storage spaceas the disk needs for its initial operations. In this example, the thin-provisioned diskoccupies only 20GB of storage. As the disk requires more space, it can grow into itsentire 40GB provisioned space.

Templates - The customer can create a template to create a master image of a virtualmachine from which you can deploy many virtual machines.

Snapshots -A snapshot is a reproduction of the virtual machine just as it was when youtook the snapshot. The snapshot includes the state of the data on all virtual machinedisks and the virtual machine power state (on, off, or suspended). This will fulfill thecustomers test, dev. and backup requirements.

Storage DRS - Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) allows you to managethe aggregated resources of a datastore cluster. When Storage DRS is enabled, itprovides recommendations for virtual machine disk placement and migration to balancespace and I/O resources across the datastores in the datastore cluster. Considerconfiguring Storage DRS to balance datastore utilization at 80 percent. Leave 10-20percent additional capacity available to accommodate snapshots, swap files, and logfiles.




VTSP 5.5

Which Solution to Offer

Carla has a few questions regarding some of the advanced features.




Which Solution to Offer1. Which set of APIs permit arrays to integrate with vCenter for management

functionality?vSphere Storage APIs - Storage Awareness (VASA) is a set of APIs that permit

student study guide - vtsp 5.5.docx

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