Chapter 1, The Virtual Data Center, provides an introduction to the benefits of the virtual data center, VMware vSphere products, and the basic virtualization concepts. This chapter identifies the differences between a data center administrator and a data center architect. An overview of the VMware Certified Advanced Professional Data center Design (VCAP-DCD) and VMware Certified Design Architect (VCDX) certifications is also covered.
Chapter 2, The Discovery Process, explains how to identify stakeholders, conduct stakeholder interviews, and perform technical assessments to discover the business and technical goals of a virtualization project. This chapter covers how to use the following 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 a conceptual design.
Chapter 4, vSphere Management Design, describes the vCenter Server components and their dependencies. Recipes for determining which vCenter Server deployment options to use, the Windows server or virtual appliance to be used, and for determining the type of database to use based on the deployment size, are included.
Chapter 5, vSphere Storage Design, covers logical storage design. Recipes are included for calculating 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 the 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 for calculating the CPU and memory requirements to create a logical compute design. The 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 design factors by mapping the logical management, storage, network, and compute designs to hardware to create a physical vSphere design. The chapter also provides details on 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 data center. Recipes are provided for right-sizing virtual machine resources, enabling the ability to add virtual machine resources, and creating 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 the vSphere features available to provide security in the virtual data center. Recipes covering authentication, access controls, and security hardening, which must be incorporated into a data center design to secure the vSphere environment, are also included.
Chapter 11, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, covers options relating to backup, recovery, and continued operations in the event of system failure. This chapter covers how to create backups of vSphere configurations so they can be quickly restored. The protection of virtual machines using popular 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 for presenting a design to stakeholders and using the design documentation to implement the design.
