Student Study Guide - VTSP 5.5.docx

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Student Study Guide – VTSP 5.5

VMware

Technical Solutions Professional

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VTSP 5.5 - Student Study Guide

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

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

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vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 Architecture ... 55

Licensing Requirements for vSphere features ... 57

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

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

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

Configuration Maximums for vCenter ... 116

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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

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

Module Objectives ... 141 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

Course 3 ... 163

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

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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 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

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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 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

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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 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

Module 1: vSphere vStorage Architecture ... 355

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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

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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

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Course 1

Module 1: vSphere Overview

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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 vSphere Virtual Infrastructure.

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

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

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vSphere Overview

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

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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 Cloud Infrastructure Solution

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

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VMware Vision

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

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.

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VMware Vision

At VMware, our goal is to help businesses and governments move beyond “IT as a Cost Center” to a more business-centric “IT as a Service” model. This new model of IT

creates improved approaches at each critical layer of a modern IT architecture: Infrastructure, Applications, and End-User Access.

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vSphere 5.5 Architecture

Now, let's look at vSphere 5.5 Architecture components and services, and how these components 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 and

transforms the rigid, inflexible infrastructure into a simple and unified manageable set of elements in the virtualized environment.

Logically, vSphere 5.5 comprises three layers: virtualization, management, and interface 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.

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

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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. With vSphere 5.5, you can manage IT resources like a shared utility and dynamically provision 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 high

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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 x86 computing 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 for and runs the virtual machines.

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

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

datacenter.

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

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Introduction to vSOM

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

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. vCenter

Operations Manager delivers more value to customers through operational insight into the virtual environment for monitoring and performance, as well as optimized capacity management.

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vSphere with Operations Manager Overview

In today‟s complex environments, operations management personnel need

management 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,

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vSphere with Operations Manager Overview

A classic reactive approach - to monitor, isolate, and remediate based on issues - no longer meets today‟s needs.

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

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organizations need to reduce cost and complexity.

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

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organizations need to reduce cost and complexity.

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

By using its patented analytics engine, vCenter Operations Manager gives the

operations administrator the ability to combine all these metrics into a single view in the easy-to-use vCenter Operations Manager dashboard. With the help of this accelerated information, administrators can use Smart Alerts to reduce the number of fault alerts.

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VMware‟s approach to management helps administrators to become more proactive, instead of reactive to issues. Administrators can identify many potential issues ahead of time 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.

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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, such as multiple providers, infrastructure tiers, and so on. All of these moving parts can impact performance.

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

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

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vCenter Operations Manager: Quick Facts

A process of permanently monitoring and analyzing data collection helps to identify performance problems, support automated root cause analysis, and delivers information for capacity and efficiency optimizations.

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vCenter Operations Manager: Quick Facts

There are other vendor solutions, but vCenter Operations Manager stands apart. vCenter Operations Manager differs from other vendor solutions through patented performance analytics.

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

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

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vCenter Operations Manager 5.7: vApp Architecture

The vCenter Operations Manager vApp consists of two virtual machines. Both of these virtual 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, topology and 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 data and 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, through the WebApps of the UI virtual machine.

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

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

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

The Full Profile allows for 5 million metrics to be collected and the Balanced Profile allows 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 vCenter Server versions.

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

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vCenter Operations Manager 5.7: High Level Architecture

The vCenter Operations Manager vApp collects data from many different sources such as VMware vCenter Server, VMware vCenter Configuration Manager, or VMware vCloud Director.

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

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

Enterprise editions.

vCenter Operations Manager also features an Admin UI to perform administrative tasks. As discussed previously, the monitored resources and collected metrics require certain computing resources. These should be taken into account when deploying the vApp. vCenter Operations Manager is designed as an enterprise solution, so planning and preparing your environment is critical to successful deployment.

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Learn More: vSOM Training

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

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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 Cloud Infrastructure Solution

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

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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.

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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 and identifying the key value propositions of each one.

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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 automated resource management and high availability for virtual machines.

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

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vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Storage vMotion

Storage vMotion enables live migration of a virtual machine's storage to a new datastore with no downtime. Extending the vMotion technology to storage helps the vSphere administrator to leverage storage tiering, perform tuning and balancing, and control capacity with no application downtime.

Storage vMotion copies disk blocks between source and destination and replaces the need 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 of the disk blocks from the source to the destination is performed. I/O mirroring ensures that any newly changed blocks in the source are mirrored at the destination. There is also a block-level bitmap that identifies hot and cold blocks of the disk, or whether the data in a given block is already mirrored in the destination disk.

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vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere High Availability

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

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

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

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vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere High Availability

vSphere App HA is a plug-in to the vSphere Web Client. This plug-in allows you to define high availability for the applications that are running on the virtual machines in your environment, reducing application downtime.

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vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Fault Tolerance

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

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

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

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vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere DRS

Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) helps you manage a cluster of physical hosts as a 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 to immediately take advantage of the new resources because it distributes the running virtual machines.

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vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere Storage DRS

Storage DRS (SDRS) aggregates storage resources of several datastores in to a single datastore cluster to simplify storage management at scale with vSphere Storage DRS. During virtual machine provisioning Storage DRS provides intelligent virtual machine placement based on the IO load and available storage capacity of the datastores. Storage DRS performs ongoing load balancing between datastores to ensure space and I/O bottlenecks are avoided as per pre-defined rules that reflect business needs and changing priorities.

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vSphere Distributed Services – vSphere DPM

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

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

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

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vSphere Replication

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

vSphere Replication reduces bandwidth needs, eliminates storage lock-in, and allows you 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 objectives compared with manual full system copies of virtual machines.

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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 driver or 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 addresses and 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 it checks 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 switch configuration spans many hosts.

Physical Ethernet adapters connected to physical switches provide an uplink for vSwitches.

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vSphere Networking – vSphere Standard Switches

vSphere Standard Switches allow virtual machines on the same vSphere host to communicate with each other using the same protocols used with physical switches. The virtual switch emulates a traditional physical Ethernet network switch to the extent that it forwards frames at the data link layer.

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vSphere Networking – vSphere Distributed Switches

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

centralized interface.

VDS provides simplified virtual machine network configuration, enhanced network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities and support for advanced vSphere networking features.

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Network I/O Control: An Overview

Network I/O control enables the convergence of diverse workloads on a single

networking pipe. It provides control to the administrator to ensure predictable network performance when multiple traffic types are flowing in the same pipe.

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

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vSphere Storage Architecture

The VMware vSphere Storage Architecture consists of layers of abstraction that hide and manage the complexity and differences among physical storage subsystems. To the applications and guest operating systems inside each virtual machine, the storage subsystem appears as a virtual SCSI controller connected to one or more virtual SCSI disks.

These controllers are the only types of SCSI controllers that a virtual machine can see and 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, direct attached 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 raw device mapping (RDM). RDM provides a mechanism for a virtual machine to have direct access to a LUN on the physical storage subsystem (Fibre Channel or iSCSI only). vSphere Storage Architecture is discussed in Course 5.

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Virtual Machine File System

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

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

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

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Virtual Disks

When you create a virtual machine, a certain amount of storage space on a datastore is provisioned, 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) are logical representations of their allocation from the larger VMFS volume, which is made up 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 a dashed oval.

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Storage I/O Control

vSphere Storage I/O Control (SIOC) is used to provide I/O prioritization of virtual machines running on a group of VMware vSphere hosts that have access to a shared storage 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 a cluster 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 the available I/O resources to virtual machines according to your rules, improving service levels for critical applications and allowing you to virtualize more types of workloads, including I/O-intensive applications.

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vSphere Hypervisor 5.5 Architecture

VMkernel is a POSIX-like OS developed by VMware and provides certain functionalities similar 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 multiple virtual machines and provides core functionalities such as resource scheduling, I/O stacks and device drivers.

The key component of each ESXi host is a process called VMM. One VMM runs in the VMkernel 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 the virtual machine. The VMkernel sets the system state so that the VMM runs directly on the hardware.

The devices of a virtual machine are a collection of virtual hardware that includes the devices 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 the system compliance with x86 standards from the motherboard up.

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

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

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

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Licensing Requirements for vSphere features

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

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Module Summary

This concludes module 2, vSphere Infrastructure and Hypervisor Components. Now that you have completed this module, you should be able to:

 Identify the key features of vSphere 5.5 describing the key capabilities and identifying the key value propositions of each one.

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Module 3: Mapping vSphere Capabilities to Solutions

Mapping vSphere Capabilities to Solutions

Welcome to Module 3, Mapping vSphere Capabilities to Solutions. These are the topics that will be covered in this module.

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Module Overview

By the time you have completed this module, you will be able to select vSphere

components to meet solution requirements by identifying the capabilities and benefits of each solution component in order to present its value proposition.

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

You will be asked to select vSphere components to meet solution requirements by identifying the capabilities and benefits of each solution component in order to present its value proposition.

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OPEX Savings Scenario

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

They have a highly variable server workload that peaks during the 3 - 8pm period on weekdays and all day (9am to 6pm) on Saturdays but outside of those periods server loads 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 that have to achieve four nines service uptime.

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

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OPEX Savings Scenario What is the correct answer?

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OPEX Savings Scenario

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Shared Access Optimization Scenario

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

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

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

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Shared Access Optimization Scenario What is the correct answer?

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

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Shared Access Optimization Scenario

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Migrating to 10Gb Ethernet Scenario

Bulldog Clothing have decided to upgrade their existing vSphere cluster hardware with newer 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 of dedicated individual network uplinks to specific services.

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

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Migrating to 10Gb Ethernet Scenario

Which advanced vSphere feature does Bulldog Clothing need to meet their requirements?

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Migrating to 10Gb Ethernet Scenario

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Data Recovery (DR) Scenario

Alleyn & Associates are an accountancy firm with a number of small satellite offices with 20-30 staff each, and a centralized head office where IT support and the core

infrastructure are located.

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

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

A recent flooding incident resulted in significant downtime in one satellite office as they do 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 storage solutions they use makes the cost of this prohibitive.

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Data Recovery Scenario

Which advanced vSphere feature do Alleyn & Associates need to meet their requirements?

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Data Recovery Scenario

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Business Critical Systems Scenario

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

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

They want to move from a physical infrastructure to virtual in order to improve hardware maintainability, but this will require them to abandon their current high availability

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Business Critical Systems Scenario

Which advanced vSphere feature do Catskills Shipping need to meet their requirements?

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Business Critical Systems Scenario

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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 Infrastructure Solution,

·Describe the physical and virtual topologies of a vSphere 5.5 Data Center and explain the relationship between the physical components and the vSphere Virtual

Infrastructure,

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

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

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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.

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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 solution configuration

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

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

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Module 1: vCenter Overview - Features and Topology

Module 1: vCenter Overview - Features and Topology

This is module 1 Overview Features and Topology. These are the topics that will be covered in this module.

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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 that are only available via the Web Client.

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What is VMware vCenter?

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

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

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

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

These operations include configuring new ESXi hosts, configuring storage, network, and the 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 and monitoring, reporting, and alerting on performance characteristics of guest operating systems, virtual machines and the underlying hosts.

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

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

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vCenter Installable and vCenter Appliance

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

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

It is deployed as an OVF Template.

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

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

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

Previous versions of the vCenter Server appliance were limited, when using the embedded 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 100 ESXi Hosts and 3000 virtual machines.

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The vCenter Server Appliance uses a vPostgres database, while the vCenter Server Installable uses a Microsoft SQL Express database, which is limited to small scale deployments 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 the vCenter Server Installable version can be used with either a Microsoft SQL or Oracle database.

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 on the 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 vCenter Server.

The vSphere Web Client and Single Sign-On are installed as part of the vCenter Server 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 are

separate installations for the vCenter Server Installable. They cannot be installed in the vCenter Server Appliance.

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

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

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vCenter's Components and Connectivity

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

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 to other services and infrastructure. We will now describe each of the key parts and the role that they play in vCenter.

2. vCenter Server is heavily dependent on the database that is used to store configuration 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 or servers. It is critically important that databases are sized and prepared before installing vCenter Server.

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

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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 of authentication services that enable VMware solutions to trust each other.

Single Sign-On allows VMware solutions to utilize multiple directory services and is no longer limited to Microsoft Active Directory.

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

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

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

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

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

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

6. Core Services are the basic management services for a virtual Data Center. These include virtual machine provisioning; statistics and logging; host and virtual machine configuration; alarms and event management; and task scheduling.

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

These solutions include VMware DRS, VMware HA, and VMware vMotion. Distributed services 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-cycle operations of virtual machines and other parts of the virtual infrastructure (such as Data

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

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

The vSphere Web Client can be installed on the vCenter server along with other vCenter 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 sources such 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 to manage 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 Client Server. All of these services rely heavily on DNS.

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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 vCenter Server is required to centrally manage virtual machines and their hosts and to enable all VMware vSphere features.

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vCenter License Versions

All products and feature licenses are encapsulated in 25-character license keys that you can manage and monitor from vCenter Server. Each vCenter Server instance requires one license key.

VMware vCenter Server is available in the following packages:

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

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

VMware vCenter Server Standard is the highly scalable management server that

provides rapid provisioning, monitoring, orchestration and control of all virtual machines in 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, monitoring and configuring virtualized environments.

• The database server stores persistent configuration data and performance information.

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

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

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

authentication.

• vCenter Orchestrator streamlines and automates key IT processes.

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

Advanced features such as Distributed vSwitches also require that the individual host licenses for the hypervisors in the cluster are at the appropriate level. For example a vSphere Enterprise Plus license will be required for all hosts if distributed vSwitches need to be supported.

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vSphere Client User Interface Options

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

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

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

It features a new enhanced usability experience with added support for OS X. In

vSphere 5.5, all of the new vSphere features are only available when using the vSphere Web Client interface.

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

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

The vSphere Web Client supports almost all of the functionality included in the

Windows-based vSphere Desktop Client, such as inventory display and virtual machine deployment and configuration.

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

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

A single vCenter Server system or ESXi host can support multiple simultaneously connected 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 and

communicates directly with vCenter Server and Microsoft Active Directory.

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

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vCenter Infrastructure Management Features Overview

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

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Resource Maps

vSphere administrators can use resource maps to monitor proper connectivity which is vital for migration operations, such as VMware vSphere vMotion or vSphere Storage vMotion.

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

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

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

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

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Orchestrator

Orchestrator or vCO is an automation and orchestration platform that provides a library of 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 VMware virtual environment. Orchestrator is included with vCenter.

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

Do you need to add the VM to active directory? Do you need to update the change management Database, customize the guest OS or notify the VM owner or other teams that the virtual machine is ready?

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

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

These plug-ins provide hundreds of out-of-the-box workflows to help you both accelerate and dramatically reduce the cost of delivering IT services across your organization.

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

You need to understand the clients current IT workflow automation capabilities and if they 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 difference between automation and orchestration.

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

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

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

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

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

Orchestrator provides several benefits.

It helps vSphere administrators ensure consistency and standardization and achieve overall 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 also enables vSphere administrators to react faster to unplanned issues in VMware Data Center.

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