Every year, datacenter managers must deliver more services faster, with greater flexibility. They must efficiently handle soaring amounts of data, and unprecedented levels of complexity. And they must do all this with lower budgets and fewer resources. Datacenter virtualization with VMware’s vSphere® 5 is the best way to achieve these goals and to accelerate your transition to cloud services. VMware vSphere® 5: Building a Virtual Datacenter brings together all the practical knowledge you need to evaluate, plan, implement, and manage vSphere 5 in your datacenter environment.
Top datacenter virtualization consultants Eric Maillé and René-François Mennecier begin by introducing vSphere 5 from the viewpoint of the datacenter manager and professional. They present essential definitions, advantages, and functions; review vSphere 5’s architecture; and introduce core components such as vCenter Server and ESXi 5.0.
Next, Maillé and Mennecier turn to implementation, presenting detailed examples, schemas, and best practices drawn from their extensive experience. They share practical insights into budgeting, scheduling, and planning; choosing the right architecture; and integrating vSphere with existing datacenter elements, including servers, storage, clusters, network infrastructure, and business continuity plans. They conclude with a start-to-finish case study: a datacenter virtualization project designed to support specific business objectives.
Coverage includes
• Assessing the potential benefits of datacenter virtualization in your environment
• Organizing and managing a smooth migration to the virtualized datacenter
• Anticipating specific challenges and risks associated with datacenter virtualization
• Making tradeoffs to optimize stability, elasticity, scalability, and cost
• Choosing the best installation/configuration options for your environment
• Effectively linking vSphere 5 virtualization to existing datacenter elements
• Driving more value from vSphere 5’s powerful new datacenter features
• Providing storage to efficiently support your hosted VMs, now and in the future
• Managing limited memory and other server constraints
• Leveraging new options for service continuity and high availability
• Using backup architecture as a lever to reduce costs
Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments xvi
Foreword xviii
Preface xx
1 From Server Virtualization to Cloud Computing 1
Virtualization: The Heart of IT Transformation 1
Server Virtualization 2
Server Virtualization Adoption Factors 2
Specifications for a Virtualized Environment 4
Benefits of Virtualization 6
Phases of Virtualization 8
Phase 1: IT Rationalization 9
Phase 2: Critical Applications 10
Phase 3: Automation 13
Virtualization Ecosystem 15
Server Virtualization 15
Desktop Virtualization 16
The Future Looks Bright 20
2 The Evolution of vSphere 5 and Its Architectural Components 21
VMware Overview 21
VMware Portfolio 21
VMware Evolution 22
vSphere 5 Licenses 27
vSphere 5 Versions 27
Licensing Model 29
vCenter Server 5.0 Licenses 30
What’s New in vSphere 5? 31
Existing Features 33
Software Sold Separately 36
vCenter Site Recovery Manager 5 36
vCenter Converter 36
vCenter Operations Management Suite 36
vSphere 5 Technical Architecture 39
vCenter Server 5 40
ESXi 5 Hypervisor 46
Security 53
vShield Zones 53
Components to Monitor 54
An Evolved Solution 55
3 Storage in vSphere 5 57
Storage Representation 57
Available Storage Architectures 58
Local Storage 60
Centralized Storage 60
Storage Networks 62
IP Storage Network 62
Fibre Channel Network 66
Which Protocol Is Best for You? 68
VMFS 69
VMFS-5 Specifications 70
Upgrading VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 70
Signature of VMFS Datastores 71
Rescanning the Datastore 74
Alignment 74
Increasing Volume 75
Can a Single Large 64-TB Volume Be Created to Host All VMs? 76
Best Practices for VMFS Configuration 76
Virtual Disk 77
VMDKs 77
Disk Types 78
Raw Device Mapping 81
OVF Format 83
The Datastore 84
Storage vMotion 85
When to Use Storage vMotion 86
How Storage vMotion Works 86
Storage DRS 87
Datastore Load Balancing 88
Affinity Rules 89
Profile-Driven Storage 90
Storage I/O Control 90
vSphere Storage Appliance 92
VMware Storage APIs 93
vStorage API for Array Integration 93
vSphere Storage API: Storage Awareness 95
Multipathing 95
Pluggable Storage Architecture 96
Modes 97
Disk Technology Considerations 98
Supported Disk Types 98
RAID 99
Storage Pools 100
Automatic Disk Tiering 100
Performance 100
Additional Recommendations 101
Device Drivers 101
Storage Is the Foundation 102
4 Servers and Network 103
ESXi Servers 103
Memory Management 103
The Processor 110
Moving VMs with VMotion 120
Distributed Resource Scheduler 124
vSphere Distributed Power Management 129
Network 129
vSphere Standard Switch 131
vSphere Distributed Switch 141
Virtual Network Cards 145
Cisco NEXUS 1000V 145
Provisioning and Good Practices 147
Applications in a Virtualized Environment 148
Oracle and SQL Databases 148
Exchange 150
SAP 150
Active Directory 150
Microsoft Cluster Service in a vSphere 5 Environment 151
Transforming the Datacenter 152
5 High Availability and Disaster Recovery Plan 153
General Comments 153
Recovery Point Objective/Recovery Time Objective 153
Information Availability 154
Infrastructure Protection 156
Local Availability 157
SPOF Removal 157
High Availability 159
What Is a Cluster? 159
vSphere HA 160
vSphere Fault Tolerance 172
Business Continuity 174
Failover Causes 175
DRP Issues in Physical Environments 175
vSphere 5 Leverage for the DRP 176
Replication 176
Site Recovery Manager 5 180
Stretched Cluster 188
6 Backups in vSphere 5 193
Backups: An Overview 193
What Is a Backup? 193
Backup Objectives 194
Business Impact 194
Traditional Backup Method 194
Backup Issues in Virtual Environments 195
Backup Methods in Virtual Environments 196
Brief History of VMware Consolidated Backup 196
Methods in vSphere 5 197
Snapshots 199
Array Snapshots Versus vSphere Snapshots 199
Advantages of VM Snapshots 200
Application Consistency 202
Volume Shadow Copy Service 203
Pre-Freeze and Post-Thaw Scripts 205
Troubleshooting Virtual Environments 206
Changed Block Tracking 206
De-Duplication 208
LAN-Free Backups 209
Backup Process Through VADP APIs 209
Data Recovery 2.0 210
Backups Are Important, But Restores Are Critical 211
7 Implementing vSphere 5 213
Sizing 213
The Different Installation Modes 214
Pre-Installation 215
Checklist 215
Prerequisites 216
Preparing the Server 220
Installation 220
ESXi 5 Server 220
vCenter Server 5 Installation 225
Upgrading to vSphere 5 226
The Different Connection Methods 229
Direct Console User Interface 230
vSphere Client 231
vSphere Web Client 232
Scripting Tools 233
vCenter Configuration 233
Licenses 235
General Settings 235
Hosts and Clusters 236
Datacenter Creation 237
Managing Permissions 237
Storage and Network 239
P2V Conversion 239
Efficient Management of the Virtual Environment 241
Monitoring the Host Server 241
Alarms and Maps 242
Resource Sharing 242
Resource Pools 249
Consolidation Rate 250
Performance in vCenter Server 251
Clones and Templates 254
vApp 254
Best Practices 254
Well-Planned Architecture Is the Key 255
8 Managing a Virtualization Project 257
Context 257
Objectives 258
Criteria to Choose a Solution 259
Project Stages 259
Planning 260
Discovery 260
Analysis 270
Design 272
Implementation 276
Implementation of SRM5 278
Management 280
Summary and Conclusion 281
A Compelling Story 283
Common Acronymns 285
TOC, 9780321832214, 7/26/12
About the Author :
Eric Maillé is Pre-Sales Consultant at EMC (after successful experiences at IBM, NEC Computers, and HP). Eric works on virtualization infrastructure and cloud computing projects upstream. He helps corporate enterprises make the best technological decisions based on their business requirements. Eric draws from his expertise to explain the transformations that VMware vSphere® 5 implies and the challenges that need to be addressed to ensure the proper architecture is selected and that its components are optimized. Eric has been honored with VMware vExpert 2011 and 2012 award, and he is an author of a previous book on VMware vSphere® 4: Mise en place d’une infrastructure virtuelle (in French and Spanish). He is certified a VCP (VMware Certified Professional), Cloud Architect (EMC), and co-founder of a site dedicated to virtualization technologies (www.virt-now.com).
René-François Mennecier works as a Cloud Architect Senior Consultant at EMC. René-François first specialized in disaster recovery plans and service continuity. Then, his experience at Dell allowed him to gain expertise in virtualization, including rationalization, consolidation, and datacenter-relocation challenges. At EMC, he is now in charge of strategic transformation and private cloud IT projects for enterprise accounts. He is a certified VCP VMware and EMC Cloud Architect and was awarded the title vExpert 2012.
