What this book covers

Chapter 1, The Virtual Datacenter, provides an introduction to the benefits of the virtual datacenter, VMware vSphere products, and basic virtualization concepts. This chapter identifies the differences between a datacenter administrator and a datacenter architect. An overview of the VMware Certified Advanced Professional Datacenter Design (VCAP-DCD) certification is also covered.

Chapter 2, The Discovery Process, explains how to identify stakeholders, conduct stakeholder interviews, and perform technical assessments in order to discover the business and technical goals of a virtualization project. This chapter covers how to use tools, VMware Capacity Planner, Windows Performance Monitor, and vRealize Operations Manager to collect resource information during the discovery process.

Chapter 3, The Design Factors, explains how to identify and document the design requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks. This chapter details how to use the design factors to create the conceptual design.

Chapter 4, vSphere Management Design, describes the vCenter Server components and their dependencies. This chapter contains recipes to determine the vCenter Server deployment option, the Windows server or virtual appliance that you need to use, and determine the type of database that you need to use, based on the deployment size.

Chapter 5, vSphere Storage Design, covers logical storage design. Recipes are included to calculate the storage capacity and performance requirements for the logical storage design. This chapter covers the details of selecting the correct RAID level and storage connectivity to support a design. Recipes for VSAN and VVOLs are provided in this chapter.

Chapter 6, vSphere Network Design, provides details on logical network design. This chapter explains how to calculate bandwidth requirements to support a vSphere design. Details on selecting a virtual switch topology, designing for network availability, and the network requirements to support vMotion and IP connected storage are also covered.

Chapter 7, vSphere Compute Design, provides recipes to calculate the CPU and memory requirements to create the logical compute design. This chapter also covers cluster design considerations for High Availability (HA) and the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

Chapter 8, vSphere Physical Design, explains how to satisfy the design factors by mapping the logical management, storage, network, and compute designs to hardware to create the physical vSphere design. The chapter also provides details of creating a custom installation ISO to install ESXi and the best practices for host BIOS configurations.

Chapter 9, Virtual Machine Design, looks at the design of virtual machines and application workloads running in the virtual datacenter. Recipes are provided to right-size virtual machine resources, enable the ability to add virtual machine resources, and create virtual machine templates. This chapter details the use of affinity and anti-affinity rules to improve application efficiency and availability. Converting or migrating physical servers to virtual machines is also covered in this chapter.

Chapter 10, vSphere Security Design, provides an overview of vSphere features available to provide security in the virtual datacenter. Recipes covering authentication, access controls, and security hardening that must be incorporated into the datacenter design to secure the vSphere environment.

Chapter 11, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, covers options for backup, recovery, and continued operations in the event of system failure. This chapter covers how to create backups of vSphere configurations so that they can be quickly restored. The protection of virtual machines using VMware products for backup and replication is also covered in this chapter.

Chapter 12, Design Documentation, covers documenting a vSphere design. Documentation includes the Architecture Design Document, the Implementation Plan, the Installation Guide, the Validation and Test Plan, and the Operational Procedures. This chapter also provides tips to present the design to stakeholders and using the design documentation to implement the design.