Mastering VMware vSphere 6. Marshall Nick

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СКАЧАТЬ vSphere suite. VMware ESXi forms the foundation of the vSphere product suite, but some features require the presence of vCenter Server. Features like vMotion, Storage vMotion, vSphere DRS, vSphere HA, vSphere FT, SIOC, and NIOC require ESXi as well as vCenter Server.

      Master It Name three features that are supported only when using vCenter Server along with ESXi.

      Master It Name two features that are supported without vCenter Server but with a licensed installation of ESXi.

      Understand how vSphere differs from other virtualization products. VMware vSphere’s hypervisor, ESXi, uses a Type 1 bare-metal hypervisor that handles I/O directly within the hypervisor. This means that a host operating system, like Windows or Linux, is not required in order for ESXi to function. Although other virtualization solutions are listed as “Type 1 bare-metal hypervisors,” most other Type 1 hypervisors on the market today require the presence of a “parent partition” or “dom0” through which all VM I/O must travel.

      Master It One of the administrators on your team asked whether he should install Windows Server on the new servers you purchased for ESXi. What should you tell him, and why?

      Chapter 2

      Planning and Installing VMware ESXi

      Now that you’ve taken a close look at VMware vSphere and its suite of applications in Chapter 1, “Introducing VMware vSphere 6,” it’s easy to see that VMware ESXi is the foundation of vSphere.

      Although the act of installation can be relatively simple, understanding the deployment and configuration options requires planning to ensure a successful, VMware-supported implementation.

      In this chapter, you will learn to

      Understand ESXi compatibility requirements

      Plan an ESXi deployment

      Deploy ESXi

      Perform postinstallation configuration of ESXi

      Install the vSphere Desktop Client

      Planning a VMware vSphere Deployment

      Deploying VMware vSphere is more than just virtualizing servers. Storage, networking, and security in a vSphere deployment are equally as significant as they are with the physical servers. As a result, the process of planning the vSphere deployment becomes even more important. Without appropriate planning, you run the risk of configuration problems, instability, incompatibilities, and diminished financial impact.

      To plan a vSphere deployment, you must answer a number of questions (please note that this list is far from comprehensive):

      • What types of servers will I use for the underlying physical hardware?

      • What kinds of storage will I use, and how will I connect that storage to my servers?

      • How will the networking be configured?

      In some cases, the answers to these questions will determine the answers to other questions. After you have answered these questions, you can then move on to more difficult issues. These issues center on how the vSphere deployment will impact your staff, your business processes, and your operational procedures. Although still important, you won’t answer those sorts of questions here; instead, we’ll just focus on the technical issues.

      vsphere Design is a Topic all its own

      The first section of this chapter barely scratches the surface of what is involved in planning and designing a vSphere deployment. The topic of vSphere design warranted its own book: VMware vSphere Design, Second Edition (Sybex, 2013). If you are interested in a more detailed discussion of design decisions and design impacts, or you are studying for the certification “VMware Advanced Professional – Data Center Design,” that’s the book for you.

      The next few sections discuss the three major questions outlined earlier for planning your vSphere deployment: compute platform, storage, and network.

      Choosing a Server Platform

      The first major decision when planning to deploy vSphere is choosing a hardware, or “compute,” platform. Compared to traditional operating systems like Windows or Linux, ESXi has more stringent hardware restrictions. ESXi won’t necessarily support every storage controller or every network adapter chipset available on the market. When we talk about Virtual SAN (VSAN) in Chapter 6, “Creating and Configuring Storage Devices,” you will find this especially true. Although these hardware restrictions limit the options for deploying a supported virtual infrastructure, they also ensure that the hardware has been tested and will work as expected with ESXi. Not every vendor or white-box configuration can play host to ESXi, but the list of supported hardware platforms is large, and hardware vendors continue to test newer models when they are released.

      You can check for hardware compatibility using the searchable Compatibility Guide available on VMware’s website at www.vmware.com/resources/compatibility/. A quick search returns dozens of systems from major vendors such as Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, IBM, and Dell. For example, as of this writing, searching the guide for HP or Dell both returned over 200 individual results, including blades and traditional rack-mount servers supported across several different versions of vSphere 5.0 to 6.0. Within the major vendors like HP, Dell, Cisco, and IBM, you should easily find a tested and supported platform to run ESXi, especially their newer models of hardware. When you expand the list to include other vendors, you can choose from a substantial base of compatible servers supported by vSphere.

      The Right Server for the Job

      Selecting the appropriate server is undoubtedly the first step in ensuring a successful vSphere deployment. In addition, it is the only way to ensure that VMware will provide the necessary support. Remember the discussion from Chapter 1, though – a bigger server isn’t necessarily a better server!

      Finding a supported server is only the first step. It’s also important to find the right server – the server that strikes the correct balance of capacity, scalability, availability, and affordability. Do you use larger servers, such as servers that support four or more CPU sockets and over 512 GB of RAM? Or would smaller servers, such as servers that support dual physical CPUs and 256 GB of RAM, be a better choice? There is a point of diminishing returns when it comes to adding more physical CPUs and more RAM to a server. Once you pass that point, the servers get more expensive to acquire and support, but the number of VMs the servers can host doesn’t increase enough to offset the increase in cost. Depending on the purpose of the servers you are selecting, you may find that the acceptable levels of risk are lower than the maximum achievable consolidation ratio with some servers. The challenge, therefore, is finding server models that provide enough expansion for growth and then fitting them with the right amount of resources to meet your needs.

Fortunately, a deeper look into the server models available from a specific vendor, such as HP, reveals server models of all types and sizes (see Figure 2.1), including the following:

      • Half-height C-class blades, such as the BL460c and BL465c

      • Full-height C-class blades, such as the BL685c

      • Dual-socket 1U servers, such as the DL360

      • Dual-socket 2U servers, such as the DL380 and the DL385

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