VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook - Second Edition

Book description

Over 75 practical recipes to confidently design an efficient virtual datacenter with VMware vSphere 6.x

About This Book

  • Get the first book on the market that helps you design a virtualized data center with VMware vSphere 6

  • Achieve enhanced compute, storage, network, and management capabilities for your virtual data center

  • Exciting and practical recipes help you to design a virtual data easily by leveraging the features of VMware vSphere 6

  • Who This Book Is For

    If you are an administrator or consultant interested in designing virtualized datacenter environments using VMware vSphere 6.x or previous versions of vSphere and the supporting components, this book is for you. It will help both new and experienced architects deliver professional VMware vSphere virtual datacenter designs.

    What You Will Learn

  • Identify key factors related to a vSphere design and apply them to every step of the design process

  • Mitigate security risks and meet compliance requirements in a vSphere design.

  • Create a vSphere conceptual design by identifying technical and business requirements

  • Determine the type of database to use based on the deployment size.

  • Design for performance, availability, recoverability, manageability, and security

  • Map the logical resource design into the physical vSphere design

  • Create professional vSphere design documentation to ensure a successful implementation of the vSphere design

  • Leverage the latest vSphere 6.x features to ensure manageability, performance, availability, and security in a virtual datacenter design

  • In Detail

    VMware is the industry leader in data center virtualization. The vSphere 6.x suite of products provides a robust and resilient platform to virtualize server and application workloads. With the release of 6.x a whole range of new features has come along such as ESXi Security enhancements, fault tolerance, high availability enhancements, and virtual volumes, thus simplifying the secure management of resources, the availability of applications, and performance enhancements of workloads deployed in the virtualized datacenter.

    This book provides recipes to create a virtual datacenter design using the features of vSphere 6.x by guiding you through the process of identifying the design factors and applying them to the logical and physical design process. You’ll follow steps that walk you through the design process from beginning to end, right from the discovery process to creating the conceptual design; calculating the resource requirements of the logical storage, compute, and network design; mapping the logical requirements to a physical design; security design; and finally creating the design documentation.

    The recipes in this book provide guidance on making design decisions to ensure the successful creation, and ultimately the successful implementation, of a VMware vSphere 6.x virtual data center design.

    Style and Approach

    The book follows a recipe-based approach that consists of practical recipes to effectively design a virtual data center.

    Table of contents

    1. VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook Second Edition
      1. Table of Contents
      2. VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook Second Edition
      3. Credits
      4. About the Author
      5. About the Reviewer
      6. www.PacktPub.com
        1. eBooks, discount offers, and more
          1. Why subscribe?
          2. Instant updates on new Packt books
      7. Preface
        1. What this book covers
        2. What you need for this book
        3. Who this book is for
        4. Sections
          1. Getting ready
          2. How to do it…
          3. How it works…
          4. There's more…
          5. See also
        5. Conventions
        6. Reader feedback
        7. Customer support
          1. Downloading the color images of this book
          2. Errata
          3. Piracy
          4. Questions
      8. 1. The Virtual Datacenter
        1. Introduction
          1. The hypervisor
          2. Virtual machines
          3. Virtual infrastructure management
          4. Understanding the benefits of virtualization
          5. Identifying when not to virtualize
        2. Becoming a virtual datacenter architect
          1. How to do it…
          2. There's more…
        3. Using a holistic approach to datacenter design
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        4. Passing the VMware VCAP6-DCV Design exam
          1. Getting ready
          2. How to do it…
          3. There's more…
        5. Identifying what's new in vSphere 6
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more…
        6. Planning a vSphere 6 upgrade
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      9. 2. The Discovery Process
        1. Introduction
        2. Identifying the design factors
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        3. Identifying stakeholders
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        4. Conducting stakeholder interviews
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        5. VMware Capacity Planner
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        6. Using Windows Performance Monitor
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        7. Conducting a VMware Optimization Assessment
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        8. Identifying dependencies
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      10. 3. The Design Factors
        1. Introduction
        2. Identifying design requirements
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more...
        3. Identifying design constraints
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more...
        4. Making design assumptions
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more...
        5. Identifying design risks
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        6. Creating the conceptual design
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
            1. Design requirements
            2. Design constraints
            3. Assumptions
          3. There's more...
      11. 4. vSphere Management Design
        1. Introduction
        2. Identifying vCenter components and dependencies
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        3. Selecting a vCenter deployment option
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        4. Determining vCenter resource requirements
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        5. Selecting a database for the vCenter deployment
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        6. Determining database interoperability
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more…
        7. Choosing a vCenter deployment topology
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        8. Designing for management availability
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        9. Designing a separate management cluster
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        10. Configuring vCenter Mail, SNMP, and Alarms
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        11. Using Enhanced Linked Mode
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        12. Using the VMware Product Interoperability Matrix
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more…
        13. Backing up the vCenter Server components
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works...
        14. Upgrading vCenter Server
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        15. Designing a vSphere Update Manager Deployment
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
      12. 5. vSphere Storage Design
        1. Introduction
        2. Identifying RAID levels
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more...
        3. Calculating the storage capacity requirements
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more...
        4. Determining the storage performance requirements
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more...
        5. Calculating the storage throughput
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        6. Storage connectivity options
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        7. Storage path selection plugins
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        8. Sizing datastores
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
          3. There's more...
        9. Designing for VMware VSAN
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        10. Using VMware Virtual Volumes
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        11. Incorporating storage policies into a design
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        12. NFS version 4.1 capabilities and limits
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      13. 6. vSphere Network Design
        1. Introduction
        2. Determining network bandwidth requirements
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        3. Standard or distributed virtual switches
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        4. Providing network availability
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works…
        5. Network resource management
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        6. Using private VLANs
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        7. IP storage network design considerations
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        8. Using jumbo frames
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        9. Creating custom TCP/IP stacks
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        10. Designing for VMkernel services
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        11. vMotion network design considerations
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        12. IPv6 in a vSphere Design
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      14. 7. vSphere Compute Design
        1. Introduction
        2. Calculating CPU resource requirements
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        3. Calculating memory resource requirements
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        4. Transparent Page Sharing
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        5. Scaling up or scaling out
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        6. Determining the vCPU-to-core ratio
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        7. Clustering compute resources
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works…
        8. Reserving HA resources to support failover
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        9. Using Distributed Resource Scheduling to balance cluster resources
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        10. Ensuring cluster vMotion compatibility
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        11. Using resource pools
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        12. Providing fault tolerance protection
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        13. Leveraging host flash
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      15. 8. vSphere Physical Design
        1. Introduction
        2. Using the VMware Hardware Compatibility List
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        3. Understanding the physical storage design
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        4. Understanding the physical network design
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        5. Creating the physical compute design
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        6. Creating a custom ESXi image
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        7. Best practices for ESXi host BIOS settings
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        8. Upgrading an ESXi host
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      16. 9. Virtual Machine Design
        1. Introduction
        2. Right-sizing virtual machines
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        3. Enabling CPU Hot Add and Memory Hot Plug
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        4. Using paravirtualized VM hardware
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        5. Creating virtual machine templates
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        6. Upgrading and installing VMware Tools
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        7. Upgrading VM virtual hardware
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        8. Using vApps to organize virtualized applications
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        9. Using VM affinity and anti-affinity rules
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        10. Using a VM to host affinity and anti-affinity rules
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        11. Converting physical servers with vCenter Converter Standalone
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      17. 10. vSphere Security Design
        1. Introduction
        2. Managing the Single Sign-On Password Policy
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works
        3. Managing Single Sign-On Identity Sources
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        4. Using Active Directory for ESXi host authentication
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        5. ESXi Firewall configuration
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        6. The ESXi Lockdown mode
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        7. Configuring role-based access control
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        8. Virtual network security
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        9. Using the VMware vSphere 6.0 Hardening Guide
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…

      18. 11. Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity
        1. Introduction
        2. Backing up ESXi host configurations
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        3. Configuring ESXi host logging
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        4. Backing up virtual distributed switch configurations
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        5. Deploying VMware Data Protection
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        6. Using VMware Data Protection to back up virtual machines
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
          3. There's more…
        7. Replicating virtual machines with vSphere Replication
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
        8. Protecting the virtual datacenter with Site Recovery Manager
          1. How to do it…
          2. How it works…
      19. 12. Design Documentation
        1. Introduction
        2. Creating the architecture design document
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        3. Writing an implementation plan
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        4. Developing an installation guide
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        5. Creating a validation test plan
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        6. Writing operational procedures
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        7. Presenting the design
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
        8. Implementing the design
          1. How to do it...
          2. How it works...
      20. Index

    Product information

    • Title: VMware vSphere 6.x Datacenter Design Cookbook - Second Edition
    • Author(s): Hersey Cartwright
    • Release date: June 2016
    • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
    • ISBN: 9781785283468