EMC VSPEX SOLUTION FOR INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE WITH VMWARE VCLOUD SUITE

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EMC VSPEX SOLUTION FOR INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE WITH VMWARE VCLOUD SUITE

EMC VSPEX

Abstract

This Design and Implementation Guide describes how to design virtualized VMware vCloud Suite resources on EMC^® VSPEX^® Private Cloud solutions. It also illustrates how to size vCloud Suite components using VSPEX guidelines, allocate resources following best practices, and use all the benefits that VSPEX offers.

January 2014

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Published January 2014

EMC believes the information in this publication is accurate as of its publication date.

The information is subject to change without notice.

The information in this publication is provided as is. EMC Corporation makes no representations or warranties of any kind with respect to the information in this publication, and specifically disclaims implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. Use, copying, and distribution of any EMC software described in this publication requires an applicable software license.

EMC², EMC, and the EMC logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of EMC Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

For the most up-to-date listing of EMC product names, see EMC Corporation Trademarks on EMC.com.

EMC VSPEX Solution for Infrastructure as a Service with VMware vCloud Suite Design and Implementation Guide

Part Number H12432

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Chapter 1 Introduction

This chapter presents the following topics:

Introduction ... 10

Purpose of this guide ... 11

Business value ... 11

Scope ... 12

Audience ... 12

Terminology ... 12

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Introduction

EMC has joined forces with the industry-leading providers of IT infrastructure to create a complete virtualization solution that accelerates deployment of cloud

infrastructure. Built with the best available technologies, VSPEX enables faster deployment, more simplicity, greater choice, higher efficiency, and lower risk.

Validation by EMC ensures predictable performance and enables customers to select technology that uses their existing IT infrastructure while eliminating planning, sizing, and configuration burdens. VSPEX provides a proven infrastructure for customers who want to gain the simplicity that is characteristic of truly converged infrastructures and have more choice in individual solution components.

This EMC^® VSPEX^® cloud management solution is designed to enable customers to implement an on-site “Infrastructure as a Service” (IaaS) offering for their internal users. This solution is designed and implemented on a VSPEX proven infrastructure and hence uses the same hardware and software resources as defined in the VSPEX proven infrastructure collateral. Along with the software mentioned in the EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Proven

Infrastructure Guide, this solution also uses additional cloud management software to enable delivery of IT as a service. As more organizations attempt the

transformation from the traditional “IT-as-a-cost-center” model to a more mature model of acting as a “service broker,” IaaS is the area where most customers focus their initial efforts.

This EMC VSPEX solution for IaaS deploys the best of EMC and VMware products and services to empower our customers to accelerate the implementation and adoption of private cloud while still enabling customer choice for the compute and networking infrastructure within the data center. In this solution, EMC is catering to those

organizations that are looking for ways to further leverage their existing infrastructure investments and expand their use to cloud computing solutions.

EMC recommends reading related documents before proceeding.

VSPEX Proven Infrastructure Solution

Refer to this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document: EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Proven Infrastructure Guide. vCloud Suite

Refer to the VMware vCloud Suite website for details about vCloud Suite.

Overview

Essential reading

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Purpose of this guide

The purpose of this document is to demonstrate how to implement an IaaS environment on an existing VSPEX Private Cloud solution using management and orchestration tools from VMware. This document provides an introduction to the VMware vCloud Suite and EMC VSPEX solutions, and specifically demonstrates integrations that exist in a VSPEX Private Cloud solution. Use this document as a reference to begin the planning and design process for your management and

orchestration deployment, and to set the stage for successful implementation efforts.

Be aware that this particular design represents one of many possible ways to deploy an IaaS platform on a VSPEX Private Cloud environment. We chose this design because of the level of maturity of the toolsets and the ability to meet the use case requirements within a reasonable amount of time, maximizing the use of out-of-box capabilities.

Focusing on IaaS, this document defines the key elements needed to create an operational service offering, explains the processes required to implement the infrastructure and software stacks, and provides step-by-step directions to fulfill the primary requirements of a private cloud. This solution document focuses on the implementation of the vCloud Suite, and defines the core infrastructure requirements that must be met, such as storage, network, compute, and vSphere configurations, before you can layer on the private cloud components.

This document includes the most common use cases for implementing an IaaS- focused private cloud and provides direction and enablement content for foundational capabilities and requirements.

Business value

Business applications are moving into consolidated compute, network, and storage environments. EMC VSPEX solutions reduce the complexity of configuring every component of a traditional manual model. VSPEX solutions unify administration and self-service while maintaining security and process separation. This solution guide addresses the following business needs:

 Automated provisioning through self-service portal

 Automated monitoring

 Multitenancy

 Resource elasticity

 Metering and chargeback

 Performance monitoring

 Storage resource management and analytics

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Scope

The guide assumes that the reader is familiar with VSPEX private cloud solutions and that a VSPEX private cloud architecture already exists in the customer environment.

This guide describes the high-level steps required to deploy vCloud Suite on a VSPEX private cloud with VMware vSphere and EMC VNX, and it provides guidance for using vCloud Suite components to simplify and efficiently manage the VSPEX private cloud.

Audience

This document is targeted at partners, technical architects, and cloud solution engineers with a background in EMC and VMware solutions who are considering an IT-as-a-Service transformation and want to align the daily operational tasks of management and monitoring the private cloud with the skill sets required to ensure success. You should have an understanding of VMware vCloud and vSphere

solutions, and be familiar with the EMC VNX storage platform solutions that you are planning to use as the enabling platforms hosting the IaaS offering.

You should also have a clear understanding of the provisioning and operational processes that are implemented within your own environments and recognize your end users’ general requirements for an IaaS solution. These requirements should include areas such as security, compliance, monitoring, management, data protection, and disaster recovery. Having these competencies will ensure a more relevant connection between the capabilities provided by this solution and the operational requirements of your organization that will ultimately bring additional business value.

Terminology

Table 1 lists terminology used in this guide.

Table 1. Terminology

Term Definition

FAST™ VP Fully Automated Storage Tiering for Virtual Pools

PaaS Platform as a Service

VAAI VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration

VASA VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness VSI Virtual Storage Integrator

VXLAN Virtual Extensible LAN

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Chapter 2 Solution Overview

Overview ... 14 Key components ... 14

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Overview

This EMC VSPEX solution for IaaS built on top of a VSPEX private cloud architecture enables customers to build a scalable multitenant platform for complete

management and orchestration. This private cloud solution provides on-demand access and control of applications, servers, storage, and security while maximizing asset utilization. This solution uses vCloud Suite as the cloud management software and VSPEX private clouds as the physical infrastructure. This solution runs on the VMware vSphere virtualization layer backed by highly available EMC VNX^® family storage components. The compute and network components, which are defined by the VSPEX partners, are designed to be redundant and are sufficiently powerful to handle the processing and data needs of the virtual machine environment.

This chapter introduces the components of vCloud Suite that enable management and orchestration in a VSPEX private cloud environment.

Key components

This section presents the key components used in this solution to enable complete management of a VSPEX stack through vCloud Suite. This section also explains integration points for EMC and vCloud Suite components that simplify the management and orchestration tasks.

EMC VNX

VMware vSphere

EMC VSI EMC PowerPath VE

VMware vCenter

VAAI VASA

vCenter Operations

VMware vCAC

EMC Storage Analytics vCloud Networking and Security

Figure 1. Key components of the EMC VSPEX solution for IaaS with VMware

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VMware vCloud Suite is an integrated solution for building and managing a complete cloud infrastructure that meets IT’s most critical needs. vCloud Suite fulfills the promise of the software-defined datacenter by pooling industry-standard hardware and running each layer of the datacenter as a software-defined service. It creates pools of servers, storage, and networking with dynamically configurable security, availability, and management services that can meet the needs of all applications.

The built-in self-service portal and catalog, policy-based infrastructure and

application provisioning, and automated operations management help to complete the picture.

VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere transforms the physical resources of a computer by virtualizing the CPU, RAM, hard disk, and network controller. This transformation creates fully functional virtual machines that run isolated and encapsulated operating systems and applications like physical computers.

VMware vCenter

VMwarevCenter is a centralized management platform for the VMware Virtual Infrastructure. This platform provides administrators with a single interface for all aspects of monitoring, managing, and maintaining the virtual infrastructure, and can be accessed from multiple devices.

VMware vCenter also manages some advanced features of the VMware virtual

infrastructure such as VMware vSphere High-Availability and DRS, along with vMotion and Update Manager.

vCenter Orchestrator

VMware vCenter Orchestrator is an IT process automation engine that helps automate your cloud and integrate the VMware vCloud Suite with the rest of your management systems. Orchestrator saves time, removes manual errors, reduces operating

expenses, and simplifies IT management. Orchestrator allows administrators and architects to develop complex automation tasks within the workflow designer, then quickly access and launch workflows directly from within the vSphere Client or by using various triggering mechanisms.

vCloud Automation Center

vCloud Automation Center enables customized, self-service provisioning and lifecycle management of cloud services that comply with established business policies. It provides a secure portal where authorized administrators, developers, or business users can request new IT services and manage existing computer resources from predefined user-specific menus.

vCenter Operations Manager

VMware vCenter Operations Manager is the key component of the vCenter Operations Management Suite. It provides a new, simplified approach to the operations

management of vSphere’s physical and cloud infrastructure. Using patented, self- learning analytics and an open, extensible platform, vCenter Operations Manager provides you with operations dashboards to gain deep insights and visibility into the health, risk, and efficiency of your infrastructure, providing performance management VMware vCloud

Suite

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vCloud Networking and Security

VMware vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) is the leading software-defined networking and security solution. It enhances operational efficiency, unlocks agility, and provides the extensibility to rapidly respond to business needs. It provides a broad range of services in a single solution, including virtual firewall, VPN, load balancing and Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) extended networks.

The EMC VNX storage system is a powerful, trusted, and smart storage array platform that provides a high level of performance, availability, and intelligence in

organizations within the business.

VSPEX private cloud customers can leverage the advanced storage tiering features and efficiencies of the VNX storage array to deliver multiple storage service levels to their various organizations, accelerating and simplifying their as-a-service offerings in their private cloud environment.

Virtual Provisioning

EMC Virtual Provisioning™ can reduce cost, improve capacity utilization, and simplify storage management. Users can present a large amount of capacity to a host and then consume space only as needed from a shared pool, reducing initial over- allocation of storage capacity. Virtual Provisioning can reduce labor costs by simplifying data layout and reducing the steps required to accommodate capacity growth.

Fully Automated Storage Tiering

EMC Fully Automated Storage Provisioning for Virtual Pools (FAST™ VP) for VNX optimizes efficiency across all drive types in the array to improve system performance while reducing cost. FAST VP dynamically allocates workloads based on the

configured service level and nondisruptively moves workloads across drive types, optimizing overall system performance. FAST VP moves the most active parts of the workload to high-performance flash disks and the least frequently accessed data to lower-cost drives, leveraging the best performance and cost characteristics of the different drive types.

Unisphere

EMC Unisphere^® is an intuitive management interface that allows IT managers to dramatically reduce the time required to provision, manage, and monitor storage assets. Unisphere delivers the simplification, flexibility, and automation that accelerate the transformation to the private cloud.

EMC provides tight integration points for vCloud suite which simplify management and provisioning of storage. vCloud Suite also provides the capability to monitor the health and performance of storage resources on the VNX array from within.

EMC Virtual Storage Integrator

EMC Virtual Storage Integrator (VSI) is the free vCenter plug-in provided by EMC that extends the vCenter UI to add additional EMC-specific capabilities. EMC VSI provides multiple feature sets including Storage Viewer (SV), Path Management, and Unified EMC VNX

EMC Integration for vCloud Suite

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Storage Management. Unified Storage Management simplifies the provisioning of VNX virtual pooled storage for the private cloud.

VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

EMC VNX supports VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), which offloads virtual machine storage operations to the array to optimize server performance. In the VMware environments, the following VAAI components are supported:

VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)

VASA allows VMware administrators to view and classify, from a single location VNX drive types in a more sophisticated way, using the storage vendors VASA provider to interrogate the storage and classify it in terms of its attributes and underlying technology. This can range from basic disk type to the RAID level, automated tiering capabilities, and replication status.

EMC Storage Analytics

EMC Storage Analytics can be used as a plug-in with VMware’s vCenter Operations Manager to provide a powerful management tool for VMware and storage

administrators to access real-time intelligent analytics for their VNX platform. Obtain detailed statistics via customizable dashboards, heat maps, and alerts while also accessing topology mapping in a VMware environment.

This solution is built on top of a VSPEX configuration and assumes that the required hardware is installed and set up within the business according to the configuration guidelines in this VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document: EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Proven Infrastructure Guide.

Table 2 lists the software requirements for this solution.

Table 2. Solution software

Software Configuration Notes

VMware vCloud Automation Center (vCAC)

5.2.3 VMware vCloud Automation Center

VMware vSphere ESXi 5.5 Build 1106514 Server hypervisor

VMware vCenter Server 5.5 Build 1312299 vSphere Management Server VMware vCenter Operations

Manager (vCOps)

5.7.1 VMware vCenter Operations Management

vCloud Networking and Security

5.1 Networking and security for vCloud site

Microsoft SQL Server o 2012 Enterprise Edition Database server for vCenter, vCAC

Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, 2012 R2 Operating system for the server environment

EMC VSI 5.6 EMC storage plug-in for VMware vSphere Client

EMC Storage Analytics 2.0 EMC Storage Analytics Adapter

Hardware list

Software list

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Software Configuration Notes

EMC VNX OE for file o 8.1 Operating environment for file EMC VNX OE for block o OE Release 33 Operating environment for block EMC PowerPath Virtual

Edition 5.8 Multipathing and load balancing for block

access.

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Chapter 3 Solution Design

Overview ... 20 Solution architecture ... 20 Storage design ... 21

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Overview

It is important to understand the roles of the various solution components that are used to enable management and orchestration of the VSPEX Private Cloud. This section explains the design and layout of this cloud management solution that was implemented on a VSPEX private cloud architecture to deliver infrastructure as a service. The functions served by the different components along with their use cases in this solution are discussed in this section.

Solution architecture

This section describes the environment and supporting infrastructure for this EMC VSPEX solution for IaaS.

Figure 2. Logical architecture: VSPEX solution for IaaS with vCloud Suite High-level solution

architecture

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The management infrastructure for this private cloud solution is critical to the availability of its supporting components. This solution has two management layers which separate the virtual infrastructure into two tiers of resource management:

 Management cluster

 Production resource clusters Management cluster

The management cluster hosts all virtual machines used for managing the cloud infrastructure. This cluster supports the components responsible for functions such as the user portal and automated provisioning, monitoring, networking, security, and metering.

All server and virtual machine components within the management cluster are managed by a separate, higher level vCenter Server instance. This instance can be located in the management cluster, but for highest possible availability, should be located on a separate set of infrastructure servers.

The management cluster is supported by three VMware vSphere ESXi servers, configured in a vSphere cluster using VMware vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and VMware vSphere High Availability (HA). This vSphere cluster uses server, network and storage resources of its own, separate from the production resource clusters. Fibre Channel connectivity between the management cluster and the VNX array is not a mandatory requirement; iSCSI or NFS connectivity can also be used to provide storage to the management cluster if preferred. All storage is RAID protected and all ESXi servers run EMC PowerPath^®/VE for automatic path

management and load balancing.

Production resource clusters

The production resource clusters host all systems used by different organizations to support the business needs of the enterprise customer. These resource clusters are managed by a second vCenter Server instance located in the management cluster, which serves as the vSphere endpoint for vCloud Automation Center (vCAC).

Add server, network, and storage resources to the existing cluster, and change resource reservations at the vCAC layer to make the additional resources available for consumption. Extend existing storage resources automatically using EMC VSI. All storage configured to support the production resource clusters is RAID protected and all ESXi servers run EMC PowerPath^®/VE for automatic path management and load balancing.

Sizing considerations for the production resource clusters will vary across enterprise customers. Base the sizing considerations on the expected workload for each organization.

Storage design

The VNX storage array provides many features that allow provisioning of IaaS. Since this solution is built on top of a VSPEX Private Cloud, it uses the same storage configuration as mentioned in the VSPEX Private Cloud proven infrastructure

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document. As a result, this solution uses a single storage service level as the base storage configuration to support up to 1000 reference virtual machines.

For more information on reference virtual machines refer to:

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Proven Infrastructure Guide

Additional storage service levels can be created within a VNX array to achieve

different levels of performance and most effectively align resources with performance requirements. Refer to Appendix A for more information on creating additional

storage service levels.

Note: The two additional storage service level examples in Appendix A fall outside of the guidelines in the underlying Private Cloud Proven Infrastructure. If a specific number of reference virtual machines will be supported, use only the storage configuration mentioned in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure document. If virtual machines are deployed on other storage service level examples provided in Appendix A then the number of reference virtual machines supported may be lower.

As validated in the VSPEX Proven Infrastructure, this solution uses EMC’s FAST VP technology which enables storage tiering within the storage service level. Storage tiering is the assignment of data to different types (tiers) of storage media to reduce total storage cost. FAST VP makes automatic storage tiering possible on VNX storage arrays. FAST VP operates by periodically relocating the most active data to the highest performance storage tier, while relocating less active data to the lower performing storage tiers, as appropriate, when new data is promoted.

FAST VP uses intelligent algorithms to continuously analyze devices at the sub-LUN level. This enables it to identify and relocate the specific parts of a LUN that are most active and would benefit from being moved to higher-performing storage such as enterprise flash drives. It also identifies the least active parts of a LUN and relocates that data to higher-capacity, more cost-effective storage. Performance measurement and user-defined policies determine data movement between tiers. FAST VP moves the data automatically and non-disruptively.

The VSPEX Private Cloud uses two disk types within the storage pool with each providing a different tier of performance and capacity, as shown in Figure 3.

VNX storage tiering and FAST VP

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Figure 3. EMC VNX sub-LUN tiering of production LUN data across two disk types

Figure 4 shows how the storage pool and LUNs are mapped to different enterprises within the business.

Production clouds are organizational clouds for virtual machines with maximum performance requirements.

Test/Development clouds are clouds are organization clouds for virtual machines with medium performance requirements.

Archive/Low Cost clouds are organizational clouds for virtual machines with least performance requirements.

Storage mapping

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Finance-ESXi

Mfg-ESXi

Prod-2 LUNs

Production Clouds

VM01 VM02 VM03

Test/Development Clouds

VM01 VM02 VM03

Archive/Low Cost Cloud

VM01 VM02 VM03

Storage Service Level

Organization Mappings for Storage

Service Levels _{EMC VNX}

Flash Drives

SAS Drives

Figure 4. Organization mappings for storage service levels

vCloud Suite design

The combination of standardization, workflow automation, and self-service gives businesses the agility they need to offer IT as a service on virtual infrastructures at reduced cost. The Management and Orchestration Workflow Automation solution combines the converged infrastructure of VSPEX with service catalog and process automation capabilities of vCloud Suite that enable IT organizations to deliver services rapidly, efficiently, and cost-effectively.

vCloud Suite components possess attributes which collectively are necessary for successful management and orchestration of a Private Cloud. These components along with EMC VNX and EMC integration software for vCloud Suite enable provisioning of Infrastructure as a service on a VSPEX Private Cloud.

VMware vSphere is the leading server virtualization platform in the industry. VMware vSphere provides flexibility and cost savings to end users by consolidating large inefficient server farms into nimble reliable cloud infrastructures. The core

components of VMware vSphere are the vSphere Hypervisor and the vCenter Server.

Use case vCenter Server

This solution uses VMware vCenter for system management. Physical servers in this solution are clustered to provide high availability. This solution uses two vCenter Servers. The first vCenter server manages the management cluster. The second vCenter Server manages the production cluster which is used as an endpoint for consumable resources in vCloud automation center.

VMware vSphere

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This solution takes advantage of VMware Storage API for Array Integration to offload virtual machine storage operations to the storage array. It uses VMware Storage API for storage awareness which provides a single management interface to view VNX drive types.

vCenter uses the EMC VSI plug-in that provides features like Storage Viewer, Path Management and Unified Storage Management. Unified Storage Management simplifies provisioning of VNX pooled storage through vCenter for various organizations within the business.

EMC VSI

Because VSI is modular in design, administrators can add, remove and update features independently providing a flexible customized user experience. Features available for VSI include Storage Viewer, Path Management, Symmetrix storage replication adaptor (SRA), Unified Storage Management, AppSync Management, and EMC RecoverPoint Management.

The three features used in this solution are:

 Storage Viewer feature extends the VMware vSphere Client to facilitate the discovery and identification of VNX storage devices that have been provisioned to ESXi hosts and virtual machines. Storage Viewer presents the underlying storage details to the vSphere administrator by merging the data of several different storage mapping tools into a few seamless VMware vSphere Client views.

 Path Management feature for VMware Native Multipathing and EMC PowerPath/VE provides a mechanism for changing the multipath policy for groups of LUNs based on storage class and virtualization objects.

 Unified Storage Management feature provides array-based storage

management and provisioning for VMAX, VNX, VNXe, CLARiiON, Celerra arrays.

This feature also allows for virtual machine decompression, compression, cloning and extending datastore capacity.

VMware vSphere Storage DRS

To prevent hot spots and over- or under-utilized datastores, VMware vSphere Storage DRS provides smart virtual machine placement and load-balancing mechanisms based on I/O and space capacity. Datastore clusters form the basis of Storage DRS.

As with a cluster of ESXi hosts, a datastore cluster is used to aggregate storage resources, enabling smart and rapid placement of the virtual disk files of a virtual machine and load balancing of existing workloads.

This solution for the VSPEX Private Cloud aligns storage with datastore clusters. All storage devices within a datastore cluster must have consistent size and performance characteristics. Storage assigned to an organization in VMware vCAC consists of devices which have been aggregated to a single unit of consumption—a single datastore cluster—in vSphere. Though vCAC v5.2 is unaware of Storage DRS (SDRS) operations, all SDRS movements of virtual machine files are contained within a single datastore cluster, and all LUNS within each datastore cluster in this solution are available to only one tenant; therefore the scope of virtual machine file movement is contained within the tenant’s resources.

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In the example shown in Figure 5 for the Manufacturing organization, all of the storage devices are aggregated into a single datastore cluster. Depending on the choice of service level when a blueprint in vCAC is provisioned, each cluster presents a single target for the provisioning of virtual machines in vCAC blueprints.

Figure 5. Storage DRS - Aligning datastore clusters with storage service levels

VMware vCloud Automation Center (vCAC) enables you to rapidly deploy and provision business-relevant cloud services across your private cloud and physical infrastructure. Acting as a service governor, it provides a cross-cloud storefront for IaaS and platform as a service (PaaS) deployments. It empowers organizations to enforce business and IT policies throughout the service life cycle, helping them to transform virtualized environments into software-defined cloud datacenters.

Use case

vCAC provides the ability to carve a shared infrastructure up into logical units and logical capacities that can be handed over to different business units. It does this with machine blueprints. Cloud users can choose from a self-service catalog of custom defined blueprints, each containing specific resources appropriate to different applications or business units.

vCAC is designed to leverage physical components such as those that comprise the VSPEX proven Infrastructure. It supports the differing requirements of an enterprise’s many business units and integrates with a wide variety of existing IT systems and best practices. Through the workflow designer, vCAC can easily invoke vCenter Orchestrator workflows to extend lifecycle state transitions and machine command menus, resulting in entire processes being automated without requiring any manual cycles from IT teams.

A number of user roles and responsibilities are defined and used in the structure of vCAC. The administration of users and compute resources in vCAC is managed through the vCAC console, which is the administrative portal. The relevant groups are summarized below:

Cloud administrator

The cloud administrator configures resource endpoints and enterprise groups, where enterprise group administrators and their respective compute resources are defined.

vCloud Automation Center

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Enterprise groups

Enterprise groups contain enterprise administrators that manage their respective cloud resources, as defined by the cloud administrator. Enterprise administrators are responsible for configuring and creating provisioning groups for individual

departments as well as resource reservations and customizations for network, storage, compute and cost profiles. Approval groups and policies are also defined by the enterprise administrator.

Provisioning groups

The users in these provisioning groups are the users and consumers of the infrastructure provided to them by their enterprise administrator. The enterprise administrator assigns compute, storage and network resources and makes them available to the provisioning group manager.

VMware vCenter Operations Manager provides an integrated approach to

performance, capacity, and configuration management. This solution uses analytics to provide the intelligence and visibility required to proactively ensure service levels in virtual and cloud environments.

vCenter Operations Manager provides pre-built and configurable dashboards for real- time performance, capacity and configuration management.

Figure 6. Architecture overview of vCOps vApp including EMC Storage Analytics vCenter

Operations Manager

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As shown in Figure 6, vCenter Operations Manager is distributed as a vApp which you can import and deploy to vSphere. This vCenter Operations Manager vApp is located in the Management Cluster of this Enterprise private cloud solution and consists of two virtual machines:

 UI virtual machine

 Analytics virtual machine UI virtual machine

The UI virtual machine allows you to access the results of the analytics in the form of badges and scores using the web-based application for the vSphere UI virtual machines.

vCenter Operations Manager Administration Portal

The vCenter Operations Manager Administration Portal provides a user interface for vCenter Operations Manager vApp maintenance and management tasks.

Analytics virtual machine

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

Capacity Collector

The Capacity Collector collects metrics and computes derived metrics.

Use case

Performance data is abstracted to health, risk, and efficiency measures that allow IT to identify potential performance problems with less effort. Capacity analytics identify over-provisioned resources so they can be right-sized for more efficient use of

virtualized resources. "What If" scenarios eliminate the need for spreadsheets, scripts, and rules of thumb.

Integrating vCenter Operations with the EMC Storage Analytics Suite enables full end- to-end visibility of the entire infrastructure from virtual machine to LUN and every point in between. This enables IT administrators to quickly visualize the health of the EMC arrays (both block and file) using a simple Performance-at-a-glance tab.

EMC Storage Analytics (ESA) links VMware vCenter Operations for storage with the EMC Adapters for VNX^®. The vCenter Operations Manager displays performance and capacity metrics from EMC storage systems with data that the adapter provides by:

 Connecting to and collecting data from block and file systems.

 Converting the data into a format that vCenter Operations can process.

 Passing the data to the vCenter Operations collector.

vCloud Networking and Security enables the creation of VXLANs which enable creation of layer 2 logical networks without the help of VLANs. VXLANs, network services like NAT, and a DHCP-application-level firewall along with data security, help in segregating tenant traffic and providing multitenancy.

vCloud Networking and Security

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Use case

Through vCAC, vCloud networking and security is specified as a vSphere endpoint.

This enables vCAC to discover network resources like load balancers, network paths, and security groups. These network paths can be added to reservations while load balancers and security groups can be added to blueprints.

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Design considerations and best practices

Follow the design considerations and best practices in this section to efficiently deliver IaaS to different organizations and to simplify management for system and cloud administrators.

Because this solution is built on top of the VSPEX private cloud solution for vSphere, the core network design considerations are the same as those detailed in the

following Proven Infrastructure document:

EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Proven Infrastructure Guide

Because a self-service-based private cloud environment has separate tiers and levels of users, certain network practices should be deployed to simplify management. This solution uses VMware vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) to simplify virtual machine network configuration. For more information on VDS refer to the VMware website.

VXLAN-based networking through vCNS

 Create a VMware vSphere distributed switch (VDS) within the datacenter datacenter for clusters belonging to each enterprise. Add the uplink ports meant for virtual machine traffic to the VDS.

 Configure the clusters and VDS for VXLAN networking.

 Create virtual wires for each Production, Test and Development, and Archive production group.

VLAN-based networking

 Create a VMware vSphere distributed switch (VDS) within the datacenter for clusters belonging to each enterprise. Add the uplink ports meant for virtual machine traffic to the VDS

 Create a separate Distributed Virtual (DV) port group for each Production, Test and Development, and Archive provisioning group deployed within the business. Each DV port group should have a dedicated VLAN.

Note: If multiple NICs are available, use the fastest network adapters for Production

provisioning groups and the slower adapters for Archive provisioning groups. Configure the settings for a DV port group so that it uses only specific network adapters for traffic.

Because this solution is built on top of the VSPEX private cloud solution for vSphere the storage design for the production-level storage is the same as detailed in that solution. Appendix A of this document details the design for two additional storage levels—the Test and Development storage level and the Archive storage level. The two additional storage levels mentioned in Appendix A are only provided as examples.

VSPEX recommends using only the storage layout described in the VSPEX Private Cloud solution for vSphere. The use of additional storage tiers may impact the

potential number of reference virtual machines supported by the Private Cloud Proven Infrastructure.

Network design

Storage design

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Storage layout examples

The Production, TestDev, and Archive provisioning groups of each enterprise use the storage configuration as outlined in the EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Proven Infrastructure Guide.

 Since the three clouds will be supporting different performance profiles, EMC FAST VP technology would automatically tier the data within the storage pool to achieve optimal performance.

 To simplify storage management and to achieve separation of resources for each provisioning group, EMC recommends dedicating a particular LUN (or group of LUNs in a storage cluster) to a particular provisioning group only and not having different provisioning groups using the same LUN (or group of LUNs) for storage.

Virtualization design

For virtualization design considerations, refer to EMC VSPEX Private Cloud VMware vSphere 5.5 for up to 1,000 Virtual Machines Proven Infrastructure Guide.

To simplify management and efficiently utilize resources, follow these practices:

 Create separate host clusters for each enterprise group (manufacturing, finance, accounting, and so on).

 Create separate reservations for each provisioning group within the enterprise.

Note: You can create additional host groups under the parent host group if separation of Production, Test and Development, and Archive clouds is desirable.

 Dedicate a particular LUN to a specific provisioning group only.

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Chapter 4 Solution Implementation

Overview ... 34 Installing and configuring vCloud Management cluster ... 34 Deploying vCloud Networking and Security... 47 Deploying vCAC ... 48 Deploying vCenter Operations Manager ... 50

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Overview

This chapter introduces the steps and processes involved in deploying the solution.

Table 3 lists the main stages in the solution deployment process along with links to the relevant information and procedures.

Table 3. Deployment process stages and procedures Stage Description

1 Install and configure vCloud Management Cluster

2 Deploy vCAC

3 Deploy vCloud Networking and Security 4 Deploy vCenter Operations Manager 5 Deploy vCenter Orchestrator

Installing and configuring vCloud Management cluster

Complete these tasks to install and configure a vCloud Management server:

1. Install the ESXi 5.5 hypervisor on the physical servers being deployed for the solution. Refer to the vSphere Installation and Setup Guide for more detail. 2. Configure ESXi networking including NIC trunking, VMkernel ports, and virtual

machine port groups and Jumbo Frames. Refer to the vSphere Networking document for more detail.

3. Install and configure PowerPath/VE to manage multipathing for VNX LUNs (block only). Refer to PowerPath/VE for VMware vSphere Installation and Administration Guide for more detail (block storage only).

4. Connect the VMware datastores to the ESXi hosts deployed for the solution.

Refer to the vSphere Storage Guide for more detail.

Complete these tasks to set up and configure a Microsoft SQL Server database for the solution:

1. Create two virtual machines to host SQL Server for the Management and Production vCenter instances separately. Verify the virtual server meets the hardware and software requirements based on the resource sizing guide in Chapter 6. Refer to the Microsoft Developer Network webpage for more detail.

Note: EMC recommends using SQL Server clusters for high availability.

2. Install Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 on the virtual machine created to host SQL Server. Refer to the Microsoft TechNet webpage for more detail.

3. Install SQL Server on the virtual machine designated for that purpose. Refer to the Microsoft TechNet webpage for more detail.

Setting up and configuring SQL Server database

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4. Create the database required for the vCenter server on the appropriate datastore. Refer to Preparing vCenter Server Databases for more detail.

5. Create the database required for Update Manager on the appropriate datastore. Refer to Preparing the Update Manager Database for more detail.

Complete these tasks to deploy management and production resource cluster vCenter Servers:

1. Create two virtual machines to be used for management and production resource cluster vCenter Server. Refer to the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide for details.

2. Install Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard Edition on the two vCenter host virtual machines.

3. Install VMware Tools, enable hardware acceleration, and allow remote

console access on the two vCenter host virtual machines. Refer to the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide for details.

4. Create the 64-bit vCenter and 32-bit vCenter Update Manager ODBC connections on the two vCenter host virtual machines. Refer to vSphere Installation and Setup and Installing and Administering VMware vSphere Update Manager for details.

5. Install vCenter Server software on the two vCenter host virtual machines.

Refer to vSphere Installation and Setup for details.

Complete these tasks to prepare and configure a vCenter management cluster:

1. Create a virtual datacenter for the management cluster. For details, refer to vCenter Server and Host Management.

2. Type the vSphere license keys in the vCenter licensing menu. For details, refer to vSphere Installation and Setup.

3. Connect management vCenter to management cluster ESXi hosts. For details, refer to vCenter Server and Host Management.

4. Create a management cluster and move the ESXi hosts into it. For details, refer to vSphere Resource Management.

5. Perform ESXi host discovery from the Unisphere console. For details, refer to Using EMC VNX Storage with VMware vSphere–TechBook.

This section provides guidance on integrating EMC VNX with VMware vSphere through VSI plug-in, VAAI and VASA.

EMC VSI for VMware

Refer to the VSI plug-in documentation for installing VSI.

 EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Unified Storage Management Product Guide

 EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Storage Viewer Product Guide

 EMC VSI for VMware vSphere: Path Management Deploying

management and production resource cluster vCenter servers

Preparing a management cluster

EMC integration

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Once VSI has been installed on the client machine, find the EMC VSI icon in vSphere located under vSphere Client -> Solutions and Applications, as shown in Figure 7.

Figure 7. EMC VSI installed and available under Solutions and Applications

Verify that all newly installed VSI features were installed and enabled by checking feature manager. In our solution we installed Path Manager, Storage Viewer, and Unified Storage Management as shown in Figure 8.

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Figure 8. EMC VSI Feature Manager

As part of the VSI installation, Solutions Enabler 7.6 is installed. Also, for VSI to obtain and present PowerPath/VE multipath details for the underlying storage, install the PowerPath Remote Tools for Windows package. VSI currently supports PowerPath Remote Tools version 5.7.b173, or later.

Configure Solutions Enabler

Configure Solutions Enabler by adding the hostname or IP address of the Solutions Enabler API server.

Note: If you do not specify remote API server it will default to ‘localhost’.

Discover VNX array

To discover the VNX arrays, add the IP address of each storage processor and the login credentials and click discover new VNX system as shown in Figure 9.

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Figure 9. EMC VSI: VNX Array Discovery

Once the storage arrays have been discovered, the vSphere admin can get a more granular view of existing datastores. Select a host and select the EMC VSI tab, then highlight the desired datastore as shown in Figure 10 and Figure 11.

Figure 10. EMC VSI : Block storage details and properties

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Figure 11. EMC VSI : File storage details and properties

Unified Access Control Utility Overview

EMC Unified Access Control provides a means to restrict vSphere administrators from provisioning storage on specific storage pools within a given array. By providing this control, storage administrators can build designated storage pools dedicated for vSphere administrators to provision storage as needed. Alternatively, the storage administrator can allow provisioning to all current and future pools.

VSI Path Management

Before using Path Management, be sure that RTOOLS is installed on the host running VSI and that the host has appropriate licenses.

To manage paths through VSI:

1. Right-click the desired vSphere cluster, and select EMC > Set Multipathing Policy, as shown in Figure 12.

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Figure 12. Set multipathing policy

2. Select the device type and desired policy from Select Multipathing Policy as shown in Figure 13.

Figure 13. Select NMP and PowerPath/VE multipathing policies for VNX devices

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VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI)

To verify that VAAI is working correctly, from the Configuration tab, under Hardware ->

Storage, find the column in the datastores view labeled Hardware Acceleration as shown in Figure 14. This column indicates the support status for the device or

datastore. There are three possible values that can populate this column: Supported, Not Supported, or Unknown.

More detailed information on VMware VAAI with EMC VNX can be found in the

VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration with EMC VNX series for SAN White Paper.

Figure 14. Viewing VAAI support in the vSphere Client for VNX storage VMware vSphere Storage APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA)

VASA is commonly used to enable profile driven storage where a virtual machine is attached to a storage capability and is then matched and placed on a suitable datastore of the same capability profile. This solution uses VASA functionality to organize datastores of identical attributes and capabilities and place them in datastore clusters, configured for each business organization, where they can take advantage of Storage DRS to maximize capacity utilization.

Configuring VASA Storage Provider on VNX

The VASA provider for VNX is available by default, with no additional user configuration required.

1. Set up storage profiles on the vCenter server by starting VMware vSphere Profile Driven Storage Service in Windows Services as shown in Figure 15.

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Figure 15. Start Profile Driven Storage service on vCenter server

2. Once the agent is running, move the VM Storage profiles to the vSphere Client by selecting Home -> Management -> VM Storage Providers, as shown in Figure 16.

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Figure 16. VM Storage Profiles in vSphere Client

3. Click Add, as highlighted in Figure 17, and enter the relevant details for the VNX storage array, including:

 Array name and administrative login details

 URL of the provider service on VNX, for example, https://<ipAddress>/vasa/Services/vasaService

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Figure 17. Add VNX Provider details

4. Once the details are accepted and the array is successfully added, the array is displayed in the vendor provider list, as shown in Figure 18.

Figure 18. New EMC VNX vendor provider added – VNX5600

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5. Specific VNX provider details and status are displayed under Vendor Provider Details, which can also be manually synchronized from this section.

6. View the complete list of storage capabilities which the VASA provider presents to the Storage Profiles service in vCenter by selecting Home->

Management->VM Storage Profiles and click Manage Storage Capabilities, as shown in Figure 19. This list is initially shows all system-defined storage capabilities which, depending on the storage type being presented, are automatically detected by VASA and displayed in vSphere as part of datastore details.

Figure 19. Storage capabilities presented to vCenter by VNX Provider

You can manually enter customized storage capabilities to more accurately reflect or represent a service or configuration that is not system-defined, as highlighted in the example in Figure 20. To add a user-defined storage capability, click Add within Manage Storage Capabilities, as shown in Figure 20.

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Figure 20. Add user-defined storage capability for VNX storage

This user-defined storage capability can be assigned to single or multiple datastores.

For this solution, it is assigned to all members of a datastore cluster, as shown in Figure 21.

Figure 21. Assign user-defined storage capability to datastore cluster

In the vSphere Client, you can view the system-defined and user-defined storage capabilities for each member of this datastore cluster, as shown in Figure 22, where the user-defined storage capabilities have been fully expanded into view.

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Figure 22. System and user-defined storage capabilities displayed in vSphere

Deploying vCloud Networking and Security

In the private cloud, the VMware vCloud Networking and Security (vCNS) feature can provide firewall, VPN (Virtual Private network), Load Balancer, VXLAN, NAT (Network Address Translation), HA (High Availability), Data Security, Endpoint, and vCloud Ecosystem Framework.

Complete these tasks to deploy vCloud Networking and Security. More detail for performing each task is provided in the VMware vCloud Networking and Security Documentation.

Note: vCNS documentation and UI still use the vShield product name.

1. Install and configure vShield Manager. Deploy the OVF template downloaded from the VMware website and configure.

2. Configure the network settings of the vShield Manager. Assign the IP address, gateway, and DNS to the vShield Manager through the CLI (command line interface).

3. Log in to the vShield Manager User Console. Open a web browser and navigate to the IP address just assigned to the vShield Manager.

4. Set up vShield Manager. Specify settings for vCenter Server, DNS and NTP server, and Lookup server details.

5. Install the vShield license through vSphere Client.

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Deploying vCAC

Complete the tasks described in this section to deploy the vCAC components.

VMware recommends that you deploy a dedicated server running Microsoft SQL Server to host the vCAC database. Create the database server by following these steps:

1. Prepare one vCAC authorization store. Choose one type of vCAC authorization store (SQL-based, Active Directory-based, or file-based) and create it. For more information, refer to the vCAC 5.2 Installation Guide.

2. Install Microsoft .Net Framework 4.5 in the database server.

3. Install and run the vCAC Prerequisite Checker for Database components.

4. Create the vCAC database by using the vCAC wizard.

Install the vCAC web server by following these steps:

1. Create a virtual machine to be used for the vCAC web server. For more information, refer to the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide.

2. Install the vCAC web server guest operating system, on the vCAC web server virtual machine. Refer to the vCloud Automation Center Support Matrix.

3. Update the virtual machine by installing VMware Tools, enabling hardware acceleration, and allowing remote console access. For more information, refer to the vSphere Virtual Machine Administration Guide.

4. Install Microsoft .Net Framework 4.5.

5. Install the IIS Server Role with role services as specified in Installing IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2,

6. Install and run the vCAC Prerequisite Checker for web components. For more information, refer to the vCAC 5.2 Installation Guide.

7. Install vCAC web components. Install and configure the administration website, reports website, and the model manager.

Set up the vCAC server Manager Service by following these steps:

1. Create a virtual machine to be used for the vCAC server Manager Service.

2. Install Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, which is the vCAC server guest operating system, on the vCAC server virtual machine.

3. Update the virtual machine by installing VMware Tools, enabling hardware acceleration, and allowing remote console access.

4. Install Microsoft .Net Framework 4.5.

5. Install the IIS Server Role with role services as specified in Installing IIS 7 on Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2008 R2.

6. Install and run the vCAC Prerequisite Checker for Manager Service and DEM Worker and Orchestrator Service components.

Database server

vCAC web server

vCAC server Manager Service

EMC VSPEX SOLUTION FOR INFRASTRUCTURE AS A SERVICE WITH VMWARE VCLOUD SUITE