VSVC4995

Examining vSphere Design Through

a Design Scenario
Forbes Guthrie, vReference
Scott Lowe, VMware

#VSVC4995

Presenters: Scott Lowe

VCDX #39, vExpert
Mastering VMware vSphere 4 & Mastering
VMware vSphere 5
Co-author, VMware vSphere Design (1st &
2nd Editions), Mastering VMware
vSphere 5.5
Blogger, http://blog.scottlowe.org
Available on Twitter at
@scott_lowe
Speaker at VMware-related
events worldwide

Presenters: Forbes Guthrie

VMware vSphere Design 1st & 2nd Edition
Contributing author, Mastering VMware
vSphere 5 & 5.5
Blogger, http://www.vreference.com
vExpert
Available on Twitter at @forbesguthrie

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Agenda

Review key design concepts

Examine the design process
Outline a scenario
Extract design factors
Focus on a few design areas
Discuss the impact of our decisions

Review key design concepts

You must view the design
holistically (intimately
interconnected and
interdependent), not as a
collection of parts
Tying everything together
are the functional
requirements
Decisions are driven by
functional requirements as
well as assumptions and
constraints

Review key design concepts (contd)

Constraints and assumptions = non-functional
requirements or qualities
Constraints

Assumptions

Restrictions (or limitations) placed

on you which affect the design

Expectations that you cant

confirm, so you explicitly exclude
them

Examples:
Must use their existing SAN
Servers you recommend must
come from vendor X

Examples:
Sufficient IP addresses are
available
Windows licenses for vCenter
Update Manager are covered
by companys agreement

Review key design concepts (contd)

A vSphere design can be measured or
evaluated according to five key dimensions:

Availability
Manageability
Performance
Recoverability
Security

Every design decision has an impact and

should be justifiable

Examine the design process

Stages come from Zachman EA taxonomy:
- de facto standard for classifying EA artifacts
1. Contextual

Scope (Planner/Strategist)

2. Conceptual

Requirements (Owner)

3. Logical

System model (Designer)

4. Physical

Specifications (Builders)

5. Detailed

Configuration (Implementer)

6. Functional

Operation (User)

Examine the design process (contd)

Logical versus physical is an essential
part of the design process

The logical design defines the

attributes required and their
relationships (the how)

The physical design considers

the constraints and states the
reality of the solutionnot
always physical equipment, at
least tangible specifics (the
what)

Outline a scenario
You have just been appointed as the new infrastructure
architect of eRaw-mv, a distributor/reseller of digital
images and videos.
This is not a greenfield deployment, but you have buy-in
from the CIO to make changes and modernize the
infrastructure (but without much budget).
The CIO enthusiastically hired an external consultancy
company to virtualize his base servers about 4 years
ago, but nothing has really changed since then it is
running vSphere 4.0

Outline a scenario: company

eRaw-mv has around 450
employees.
Headquarters are in San
Francisco with 3 satellite
offices:
o Engineering offices in
Salt Lake City & Denver
o A sales office in LA
The CIO recently signed a 3
year co-lo agreement with
plans to use this for DR.

Outline a scenario: workloads

eRaw-mv has 120 VMs and 9 non-virtualized servers in the
headquarters (HQ).
The CIO is keen to fully virtualize all his servers, but there
has been concerns about tier 1 performance.
Existing non-virtualized tier 1 servers are vCenter,
Exchange, MS SQL cluster (for internal apps), and Oracle
DB on Linux (backend for mission critical customer portal)
Application and infrastructure performance stats have been
gathered
Each remote office has 5-10 VMs. They lack
standardization, but are running well and the CIO sees this
as low-priority task.

Outline a scenario: hardware

The eRaw-mv HQ has 1 year-old rack servers with
sufficient capacity for current growth on existing VMs.
The head office SAN is a FC traditional array with no real
caching or tiering options.
The CIO doesnt trust SAN performance for his tier 1
apps. Tier 1 non-virtualized servers each use several
trays of DAS.
The servers in the remote offices are out of warranty.
They rely on DAS, and partly because of this the ESX
hosts have never been patched.

Outline a scenario: next steps?

This is just a bare bones scenario
What additional steps might be needed in real
world?
o
o
o
o
o

Collate more information current state analysis

Meet with technical teams
Check colo agreement
Site visits
Identify stakeholders

Audience feedback: what else?

Extract design factors: requirements

Virtualize remaining servers
DR design and implementation
Deal with out of warranty servers in remote
offices
Modernize the infrastructure
Audience feedback: what other requirements?

Extract design factors: constraints

DR site is fixed (facilities, WAN, services)

DR will be done internally (no DRaaS)
Traditional FC SAN for existing VMs
CAPEX budget for 2013/2014 is very limited
WAN links cannot be upgraded

Audience feedback: what other constraints?

Extract design factors: assumptions

There are no performance issues with the
existing setup (servers/storage).
No server/storage capacity exists for new
workloads in HQ
The neworking hardware will profide sufficient
ports, redundancy and there are no bottlenecks
Audience feedback: what other assumptions?

Extract design factors: risks

Bandwidth may be insufficient for DR RPOs
WAN bandwidth during failover event to DR

Existing FC SAN isnt good enough for tier 1

apps
Very old version of vSphere
No ESXi security patches applied to remote
office servers
Audience feedback: what other risks?

Focus on a few requirements

Lets group this by the 3 main requirements:
o Virtualize tier 1 servers
o Disaster recovery (DR)
o Remote office/branch office (RO/BO)

Well follow this general framework:

o Conceptual what do we want to do
o Logical design options > Physical design

Focus on requirements: Tier 1 apps

P2V or rebuild?

Use of VM
reservations/shares

DRS rules

Fault Tolerance

vApps

New hosts or re-use

existing?

vSphere licensing
impacts

vFlash to improve
existing SAN?

Re-use existing tier 1

DAS

Second SAN

Cluster design

Alarms/monitoring

Focus on requirements: RO/BO

Standardized VM
builds

Standardized
hardware

Centralized or
distributed workloads

App delivery
methodologies

Feasible to extend
warranty?

HCL

Enhanced vMotion
(better use of DAS)

Engineering/Sales
differences-similarities

Focus on requirements: DR
Which VMs
need DR?

RPO/RTO

Rate of change vs.

WAN capacity

Active DR site vs.

passive DR site

Re-use older RO/BO

servers in DR?

DR capacity
requirements

Replication
techniques

Licensing

Linked mode?

Base infrastructure
required (tier 0)

SSO design impacts

Summary
Must view the design holistically
The design is driven by both functional &
non-functional requirements (constraints)
Consider the design principles (AMPRS)
Follow Conceptual > Logical > Physical
process
Understand design decision impacts and
justify choices

Plug for books

VMware vSphere
Design, 2nd Edition

Mastering VMware
vSphere 5.5

Questions?

THANK YOU

VSVC4995
Examining vSphere Design Through
a Design Scenario
Forbes Guthrie, vReference
Scott Lowe, VMware

#VSVC4995