Wiley Mastering VMware vSphere 5
Contents
1. Chapter 1 Introducing VMware vSphere 5 Now in its fifth generation VMware vSphere 5 builds on previous generations of VMware s enterprise grade virtualization products vSphere 5 extends fine grained resource allocation controls to more types of resources enabling VMware administrators to have even greater con trol over how resources are allocated to and used by virtual workloads With dynamic resource controls high availability unprecedented fault tolerance features distributed resource manage ment and backup tools included as part of the suite IT administrators have all the tools they need to run an enterprise environment ranging from a few servers up to thousands of servers In this chapter you will learn to Identify the role of each product in the vSphere product suite Recognize the interaction and dependencies between the products in the vSphere suite Understand how vSphere differs from other virtualization products Exploring VMware vSphere 5 The VMware vSphere product suite is a comprehensive collection of products and features that together provide a full array of enterprise virtualization functionality The vSphere product suite includes the following products and features VMware ESXi VMware vCenter Server vSphere Update Manager VMware vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client VMware vShield Zones VMware vCenter Orchestrator vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multi Processing vSphere vMotion and Storage vMotion2. Edition Enterprise Acceleration Kit The Enterprise Acceleration Kit includes one license of vCen ter Server Standard and licenses for vSphere Enterprise Edition Enteprise Plus Acceleration Kit This kit includes both licenses for vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition and a single license for vCenter Server Standard While the Essentials Kits are bundled and treated as a single unit the Acceleration Kits merely offer customers an easier way to purchase the necessary licenses in one step Now that you have an idea of how VMware licenses vSphere I ll review why an organization might choose to use vSphere and what benefits that organization could see as a result Why Choose vSphere Much has been said and written about the total cost of ownership TCO and return on invest ment ROI for virtualization projects involving VMware virtualization solutions Rather than rehashing that material here I ll instead focus briefly on why an organization should choose VMware vSphere as their virtualization platform ONLINE TCO CALCULATOR VMware offers a web based TCO calculator that helps you calculate the TCO and ROI for a vir tualization project using VMware virtualization solutions This calculator is available online at www vmware com go calculator You ve already read about the various features that VMware vSphere offers To help you understand how these features can benefit your organization I ll apply them to the fictional XYZ Corpo
3. Windows based installation of vCenter Server as well as the prepackaged vCenter Server virtual appliance Refer to Table 1 1 for more informa tion on where vSphere Update Manager is described in this book VMWARE VSPHERE CLIENT AND VSPHERE WEB CLIENT vCenter Server provides a centralized management framework for VMware ESXi hosts but it s the vSphere Client where vSphere administrators will spend most of their time The vSphere Client is a Windows based application that allows you to manage ESXi hosts either directly or through an instance of vCenter Server You can install the vSphere Client by browsing to the URL of an ESXi host or vCenter Server and selecting the appropriate installation link although keep in mind that Internet access might be required in order to download the client in some instances The vSphere Client provides a rich graphical user interface GUI for all day to day management tasks and for the advanced configuration of a virtual infrastructure While you can connect the vSphere Client either directly to an ESXi host or to an instance of vCenter Server the full set of management capabilities are only available when connecting the vSphere Client to vCenter Server With the release of vSphere 5 VMware also adds a robust new vSphere Web Client as well The vSphere Web Client provides a dynamic web based user interface for managing a virtual infrastructure and enables vSphere administrators to manage their infrastructure
4. another available server and vSphere FT will automatically create a new secondary VM Again this ensures protection for the primary VM at all times vSphere FT can work in conjunction with vMotion but in vSphere 4 0 it could not work with DRS DRS had to be manually disabled on VMs that were protected with vSphere FT In vSphere 5 FT is now integrated with vSphere DRS although this feature does require Enhanced vMotion Compatibility EVC VSPHERE STORAGE APIs FOR DATA PROTECTION AND VMWARE DATA RECOVERY One of the most critical aspects to any network not just a virtualized infrastructure is a solid backup strategy as defined by a company s disaster recovery and business continuity plan To help address the needs of organizations for backup VMware vSphere 5 has two key compo nents the vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection VADP and VMware Data Recovery VDR VADP is a set of application programming interfaces APIs that backup vendors leverage in order to provide enhanced backup functionality of virtualized environments VADP enables func tionality like file level backup and restore support for incremental differential and full image backups native integration with backup software and support for multiple storage protocols On its own though VADP is just a set of interfaces like a framework for making backups pos sible You can t actually back up VMs with VADP You ll need a VADP enabled backup application There are a g
5. same extensive set of virtualization functionality as VMware ESX without the Service Console is that the core of the virtualization functionality wasn t and still isn t found in the Service Console It s the VMkernel that is the foundation of the virtualization process It s the VMkernel that manages the VMs access to the underlying physical hardware by providing CPU scheduling memory management and virtual switch data processing Figure 1 1 shows the structure of VMware ESXi I mentioned earlier that VMware ESXi 5 is enhanced over earlier releases One such area of enhancement is in the limits of what the hypervisor is capable of supporting Table 1 2 shows the configuration maximums for the last few versions of VMware ESX ESXi These are just some of the configuration maximums Where appropriate future chapters will include additional values for VMware ESXi maximums for network interface cards NICs stor age VMs and so forth Given that VMware ESXi is the foundation of virtualization within the vSphere product suite you ll see content for VMware ESXi throughout the book Table 1 1 earlier in this section tells you where you can find more information about specific features of VMware ESXi elsewhere in the book EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE5 5 Table 1 2 VMware ESXi Maximums VMWARE ESXI VMWARE ESX VMWARE ESX 3 5 COMPONENT 5 MAXIMUM ESX14 0 MAXIMUM MAXIMUM Number of virt
6. to VMFS storage vSphere 5 extends that functionality to NFS datastores The same goes for Network I O Control but for network traffic on the physical NICs As the widespread adoption of 10 Gigabit Ethernet continues Network I O Control provides VMware administrators a way to more reliably ensure that network bandwidth is properly allocated to VMs based on priority and limits PROFILE DRIVEN STORAGE With profile driven storage a new feature found in vSphere 5 vSphere administrators are able to use storage capabilities and VM storage profiles to ensure that VMs are residing on storage that is able to provide the necessary levels of capacity performance availability and redun dancy Profile driven storage is built on two key components Storage capabilities leveraging vSphere s storage awareness APIs VMstorage profiles Storage capabilities are either provided by the storage array itself if the array is capable of using vSphere s storage awareness APIs and or defined by a vSphere administrator These stor age capabilities represent various attributes of the storage solution VM storage profiles define the storage requirements for a VM and its virtual disks You create VM storage profiles by selecting the storage capabilities that must be present in order for the VM EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 13 to run Datastores that have all the capabilities defined in the VM storage profile are compliant with the VM storage profile and
7. upgrade it s a simple rollback to the snapshot for recovery Chapter 9 discusses snapshots Scenario 3 XYZ Corporation is impressed with the IT team and vSphere s functionality and is now interested in expanding their use of virtualization In order to do so however a hardware upgrade is needed on the servers currently running ESXi The business is worried about the downtime that will be necessary to perform the hardware upgrades The IT team uses vMotion to move VMs off one host at a time upgrading each host in turn without incur ring any downtime to the company s end users Chapter 12 discusses vMotion in more depth Scenario4 After the great success it has had virtualizing its infrastructure with vSphere XYZ Corporation now finds itself in need of a new larger shared storage array vSphere s support for Fibre Channel iSCSI and NFS gives XYZ room to choose the most cost effective storage solution available and the IT team uses Storage vMotion to migrate the VMs without any downtime Chapter 12 discusses Storage vMotion These scenarios begin to provide some idea of the benefits that organizations see when virtu alizing with an enterprise class virtualization solution like VMware vSphere WHAT DOI VIRTUALIZE WITH VMWARE VSPHERE Virtualization by its very nature means that you are going to take multiple operating systems such as Microsoft Windows Linux Solaris or Novell NetWare and run them on a single physical server
8. web server 4 CHAPTER 1 FIGURE 1 1 The VMkernel is the i Ty A I hy A A I a y foundation of the M B d Mi B9 d 4 virtualization functionality found in VMware ESXi MELT INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 TYPE 1 AND TYPE 2 HYPERVISORS Hypervisors are generally grouped into two classes type 1 hypervisors and type 2 hypervisors Type 1hypervisors run directly on the system hardware and thus are often referred to as bare metal hyper visors Type 2 hypervisors require a host operating system and the host operating system provides 1 0 device support and memory management VMware ESXiis a type 1 bare metal hypervisor In earlier versions of vSphere VMware ESX was also considered a type 1 bare metal hypervisor Other type 1 bare metal hypervisors include Microsoft Hyper V and products based on the open source Xen hypervisor like Citrix XenServer and Oracle VM VMware ESXi on the other hand is the next generation of the VMware virtualization foun dation Unlike VMware ESX ESXi installs and runs without the Linux based Service Console This gives ESXi an ultralight footprint of approximately 70 MB Despite the lack of the Service Console ESXi provides all the same virtualization features that VMware ESX supported in ear lier versions Of course ESXi 5 has been enhanced from earlier versions to support even more functionality as you ll see in this chapter and in future chapters The key reason that VMware ESXi is able to support the
9. CPUs per VM 8 8 8 8 32 High x X x X Availability Data Recovery X X X X vMotion X X X X Virtual Serial X X Port Concentrator Hot Add X X vShield Zones X X EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE5 19 TABLE 1 3 Overview of VMware vSphere product editions CONTINUED ESSENTIALS ENTERPRISE ESSENTIALS PLUS STANDARD ENTERPRISE PLus Fault X X Tolerance Storage APIs X X for Array Integration Multipathing Storage X X vMotion Distributed X X Resource Scheduler and Distributed Power Management Distributed X Switch 1 0 Controls X Networkand Storage Host Profiles X Auto Deploy X Policy Driven X Storage Storage DRS X Source VMware vSphere 5 0 Licensing Pricing and Packaging white paper published by VMware available at www vmware com It s important to note that all editions of VMware vSphere 5 include support for thin provisioning vSphere Update Manager and the vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection I did not include them in Table 1 3 because these features are supported in all editions Because prices change and vary depending on partner region and other factors I have not included any pricing information here On all editions of vSphere VMware requires at least one year of Support and Subscription SnS The only exception is the Essential Kits as I ll explain in a moment In addition to the different editions described above VMware also offers some bundles referred to as kits VMware offers both Essentials Kits a
10. VMs upon physical host failure This need to restart a VM in the event of a physical host failure means that some downtime gener ally less than three minutes is incurred vSphere FT goes even further and eliminates any downtime in the event of a physical host failure Using vLockstep technology that is based on VMware s earlier record and replay functionality vSphere FT maintains a mirrored secondary VM on a separate physical host that is kept in lockstep with the primary VM Everything that occurs on the primary protected VM also occurs simultaneously on the secondary mirrored VM so that if the physical host on which the primary VM is running fails the secondary VM can immediately step in and take over without any loss of connectivity vSphere FT will also automatically re create the secondary mirrored VM on another host if the physical host on which the secondary VM is running fails as illustrated in Figure 1 4 This ensures protection for the primary VM at all times EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 FIGURE 1 4 f vSphere FT A My provides protection d M m against host failures ae N ott with no downtime F 0 f F experienced by the A A w A VMs a l hu nd ay E st Logging connection 4 ESXi host In the event of multiple host failures say the hosts running both the primary and second ary VMs failed vSphere HA will reboot the primary VM on
11. While VMware vSphere offers broad support for virtualizing a wide range of oper ating systems it would be almost impossible for me to discuss how virtualization impacts all the different versions of all the different operating systems that vSphere supports Because the majority of organizations that adopt vSphere are primarily virtualizing Microsoft Windows that operating system will receive the majority of attention when it comes to describ ing procedures that must occur within a virtualized operating system You will also see coverage of tasks for a virtualized installation of Linux as well but the majority of the coverage will be for Microsoft Windows If you are primarily virtualizing something other than Microsoft Windows VMware provides more in depth information on all the operating systems it supports and how vSphere interacts with those operating systems on its website at www vmware com 22 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 The Bottom Line Identify the role of each product in the vSphere product suite The VMware vSphere product suite contains VMware ESXi and vCenter Server ESXi provides the base virtualiza tion functionality and enables features like Virtual SMP vCenter Server provides manage ment for ESXi and enables functionality like VMotion Storage vMotion vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler DRS vSphere High Availability HA and vSphere Fault Tolerance FT Storage I O Control SIOC and Network I O Co
12. al sizing limits do apply vCenter Orchestrator is only included in the Standard edition of vCenter Server In addition to the three editions of vCenter Server VMware also offers three editions of VMware vSphere vSphere Standard Edition vSphere Enterprise Edition vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition NO MORE VSPHERE ADVANCED If you were familiar with the editions of VMware vSphere 4 you 1l note that the Advanced Edition no longer exists in vSphere 5 Users who purchased Advanced Edition are entitled to use the Enterprise Edition in vSphere 5 These three editions are differentiated by two things the features each edition supports and the vRAM entitlement Before I get to the features supported by each edition I d like to first discuss vRAM entitlements Starting with vSphere 5 0 VMware now uses vRAM entitlements as a part of the licensing scheme Prior to vSphere 5 VMware s licensing was per processor but included restrictions on the number of physical cores and the amount of the physical RAM in the server For example the Enterprise Edition of VMware vSphere 4 limited users to 6 cores per CPU socket and a maximum of 256GB of RAM in the server The idea of limits on physical CPU cores and physical RAM goes away in vSphere 5 Servers licensed with VMware vSphere 5 can have as many cores per CPU socket and as much physical memory installed as the user would like The licensing is still per processor but instead of using CPU core or
13. ans that bigger more powerful servers might not be better servers for virtualization projects These larger servers in general are signifi cantly more expensive than smaller servers and using a greater number of smaller servers often referred to as scaling out may provide greater flexibility than a smaller number of larger servers often referred to as scaling up The new vRAM licensing model for vSphere 5 discussed in the Licensing VMware vSphere section would also affect this decision The key thing to remember is that a bigger server isn t necessarily a better server VSPHERE STORAGE DRS vSphere Storage DRS a major new feature of VMware vSphere 5 takes the idea of vSphere DRS and applies it to storage Just as vSphere DRS helps to balance CPU and memory utilization across a 12 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 cluster of ESXi hosts Storage DRS helps balance storage capacity and storage performance across a cluster of datastores using mechanisms that echo those used by vSphere DRS I described vSphere DRS s feature called intelligent placement which automates the placement of new VMs based on resource usage within an ESXi cluster In the same fashion Storage DRS has an intelligent placement function that automates the placement of VM vir tual disks based on storage utilization Storage DRS does this through the use of datastore clusters When you create a new VM you simply point it to a datastore cl
14. ct VMs with multiple virtual processors vSphere Virtual SMP is not the licensing product that allows ESXi to be installed on servers with multiple processors it is the technology that allows the use of multiple processors inside a VM Figure 1 2 identifies the differences between multiple processors in the ESXi host system and multiple virtual processors With vSphere Virtual SMP applications that require and can actually use multiple CPUs can be run in VMs configured with multiple virtual CPUs This allows organizations to virtualize even more applications without negatively impacting performance or being unable to meet service level agreements SLAs vSphere 5 expands this functionality by also allowing users to specify multiple virtual cores per virtual CPU Using this feature a user could provision a dual socket VM with two cores per socket for a total of four virtual cores This gives users tremendous flexibility in carving up CPU processing power among the VMs EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE5 9 FIGURE 1 2 Virtual SMP vSphere Virtual J SMP allows VMs oo w AIAI g virtual CPU a Aa aA NN VMkernel VSPHERE VMOTION AND VSPHERE STORAGE VMOTION If you have read anything about VMware you have most likely read about the extremely useful feature called vMotion vSphere vMotion also known as live migration is a feature of ESXi and vCenter Server that allows an administrator t
15. ction based antivirus solution that third party antivirus vendors can leverage for more efficient antivirus protection Because these products aren t part of the VMware vSphere suite don t discuss them in great detail in this book VMWARE VCENTER ORCHESTRATOR VMware vCenter Orchestrator is a workflow automation engine that is automatically installed with every instance of vCenter Server Using vCenter Orchestrator vSphere administrators can build automated workflows for a wide variety of tasks available within vCenter Server The automated workflows you build using vCenter Orchestrator range from simple to complex VMware also makes vCenter Orchestrator plug ins to extend the functionality to include manip ulating Microsoft Active Directory Cisco s Unified Computing System UCS and VMware vCloud Director This makes vCenter Orchestrator a powerful tool to use in building automated workflows in the virtualized data center Now that I ve discussed the specific products in the VMware vSphere product suite I d like to take a closer look at some of the significant features Examining the Features in VMware vSphere In this section I ll take a closer look at some of the features that are available in the vSphere product suite I ll start with Virtual SMP VSPHERE VIRTUAL SYMMETRIC MULTI PROCESSING The vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multi Processing vSMP or Virtual SMP product allows vir tual infrastructure administrators to constru
16. e a virtual infrastructure in a centralized fashion To help provide scalability vCenter Server leverages a backend database Microsoft SQL Server and Oracle are both supported among others that stores all the data about the hosts and VMs In previous versions of VMware vSphere vCenter Server was a Windows only applica tion Version 5 of vSphere still offers this Windows based installation of vCenter Server However in this version VMware adds a prebuilt vCenter Server appliance a virtual appli ance in fact something you ll learn about in Chapter 10 Using Templates and vApps that is based on Linux The delivery of a Linux based vCenter Server is a deliverable that VMware has been discussing for quite some time and it s nice to see it finally arrive in vSphere 5 6 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 In addition to vCenter Server s configuration and management capabilities which include features such as VM templates VM customization rapid provisioning and deployment of VMs role based access controls and fine grained resource allocation controls vCenter Server provides the tools for the more advanced features of vSphere vMotion vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler vSphere High Availability and vSphere Fault Tolerance All of these fea tures are described briefly in this chapter and in more detail in later chapters In addition to vSphere vMotion vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler vSphere High Availabili
17. e the presence of a parent partition or dom0 through which all VM I O must travel Master It One of the administrators on your team asked whether he should install Windows Server on the new servers you purchased for ESXi What should you tell him and why
18. ere Fault Tolerance Chapter 7 vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection Chapter 7 VMware Data Recovery Chapter 7 First I look at the actual products that make up the VMware vSphere product suite and then I examine the major features Let s start with the products in the suite in particular let s start with VMware ESXi Examining the Products in the vSphere Suite In this section I ll describe and review the products found in the vSphere product suite VMware ESX1 The core of the vSphere product suite is the hypervisor which is the virtualization layer that serves as the foundation for the rest of the product line In vSphere 5 the hypervisor comes in the form of VMware ESXi This is a significant difference from earlier versions of the VMware vSphere product suite In earlier versions of VMware vSphere the hypervisor was available in two forms VMware ESX and VMware ESXi Although both products shared the same core virtualization engine supported the same set of virtualization features leveraged the same licenses and were both considered bare metal installations there were still notable architectural differences In VMware ESX VMware used a Linux derived Service Console to provide an interactive envi ronment through which users could interact with the hypervisor The Linux based Service Console also included services found in traditional operating systems such as a firewall Simple Network Management Protocol SNMP agents and a
19. g physical hardware to serve a common goal is the same the technology configuration and feature sets are quite different between VMware ESXi clusters and Windows Server clusters AGGREGATE CAPACITY AND SINGLE HOST CAPACITY Although l say that a DRS cluster is an implicit aggregation of CPU and memory capacity it s impor tant to keep in mind that a VM is limited to using the CPU and RAM of a single physical host at any given time If you have two ESXi servers with 32 GB of RAM each in a DRS cluster the cluster will correctly report 64 GB of aggregate RAM available but any given VM will not be able to use more than approximately 32 GB of RAM at atime EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE5 11 An ESXi cluster is an implicit aggregation of the CPU power and memory of all hosts involved in the cluster After two or more hosts have been assigned to a cluster they work in unison to provide CPU and memory to the VMs assigned to the cluster The goal of DRS is twofold Atstartup DRS attempts to place each VM on the host that is best suited to run that VM at that time While a VM is running DRS seeks to provide that VM with the required hardware resources while minimizing the amount of contention for those resources in an effort to maintain balanced utilization levels The first part of DRS is often referred to as intelligent placement DRS can automate the place ment of each VM as it is powered on within a cluster placing it on the host in the c
20. ible I ve tried to note differences between 4 x and 5 For detailed information on VMware vSphere 4 0 refer to Mastering VMware vSphere 4 also published by Sybex To help simplify navigation and to help you find information on the breadth of products and fea tures in the vSphere product suite I ve prepared Table 1 1 which contains cross references to where you can find more information about that particular product or feature elsewhere in the book Table 1 1 Product and feature cross references VMWARE VSPHERE PRODUCT OR FEATURE MORE INFORMATION FOUND IN THIS CHAPTER VMware ESXi Installation Chapter 2 Networking Chapter 5 Storage Chapter 6 VMware vCenter Server Installation Chapter 3 Networking Chapter 5 Storage Chapter 6 Security Chapter 8 vSphere Update Manager Chapter 4 vSphere Client and vSphere Web Client Installation Chapter 2 Usage Chapters 3 14 VMware vShield Zones Chapter 8 EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 TABLE 1 1 Product and feature cross references CONTINUED VMWARE VSPHERE PRODUCT OR FEATURE MORE INFORMATION FOUND IN THIS CHAPTER VMware vCenter Orchestrator Chapter 14 vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multi Processing Chapter 9 vSphere vMotion and Storage vMotion Chapter 12 vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler Chapter 12 vSphere Storage DRS Chapter 12 Storage 1 0 Control and Network1 O Control Chapter 11 Profile Driven Storage Chapter 6 vSphere High Availability Chapter 7 vSph
21. ive vSphere Storage vMotion directly addresses these situations By providing the ability to move the storage for a running VM between datastores Storage vMotion enables administrators to address all of these situations without downtime This feature ensures that outgrowing datastores or moving to anew SAN does not force an outage for the affected VMs and provides administra tors with yet another tool to increase their flexibility in responding to changing business needs VSPHERE DISTRIBUTED RESOURCE SCHEDULER vMotion is a manual operation meaning that an administrator must initiate the VMotion opera tion What if VMware vSphere could perform vMotion operations automatically That is the basic idea behind vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler DRS If you think that VMotion sounds exciting your anticipation will only grow after learning about DRS DRS simply put leverages vMotion to provide automatic distribution of resource utilization across multiple ESXi hosts that are configured in a cluster Given the prevalence of Microsoft Windows Server in today s datacenters the use of the term cluster often draws IT professionals into thoughts of Microsoft Windows Server clusters Windows Server clusters are often active passive or active active passive clusters However ESXi clusters are fundamentally different operating in an active active mode to aggregate and combine resources into a shared pool Although the underlying concept of aggregatin
22. luster that it deems to be best suited to run that VM at that moment DRS isn t limited to operating only at VM startup though DRS also manages the VM s loca tion while it is running For example let s say three servers have been configured in an ESXi cluster with DRS enabled When one of those servers begins to experience a high contention for CPU utilization DRS detects that the cluster is imbalanced in its resource usage and uses an internal algorithm to determine which VM s should be moved in order to create the least imbal anced cluster For every VM DRS will simulate a migration to each host and the results will be compared The migrations that create the least imbalanced cluster will be recommended or automatically performed depending upon DRS s configuration DRS performs these on the fly migrations without any downtime or loss of network con nectivity to the VMs by leveraging vMotion the live migration functionality I described earlier This makes DRS extremely powerful because it allows clusters of ESXi hosts to dynamically rebalance their resource utilization based on the changing demands of the VMs running on that cluster FEWER BIGGER SERVERS OR MORE SMALLER SERVERS Remember from Table 1 2 that VMware ESXi supports servers with up to 160 CPU cores 64 CPU cores in vSphere 4 0 and up to 2 TB of RAM With vSphere DRS though you can combine multiple smaller servers for the purpose of managing aggregate capacity This me
23. memory limits VMware has introduced the concept of vRAM entitlements vRAM is the term used to describe the amount of RAM configured for a VM For example a VM configured to use 8 GB of RAM is configured for 8 GB of vRAM You ll see more on how to configure VMs and memory assigned to VMs in Chapter 9 In vSphere 5 each edition has an associated vRAM entitlement a soft limit on the amount of VRAM configured for your VMs associated with the license Here are the VRAM entitlements for the different editions vSphere Standard Edition VRAM entitlement of 32 GB vSphere Enterprise Edition VRAM entitlement of 64 GB vSphere Enterprise Plus Edition vRAM entitlement of 96 GB 18 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 These vRAM entitlements are per license of vSphere 5 and vSphere 5 continues to be licensed on a per processor basis So a physical server with two physical CPUs would need two licenses and there is no limit on the number of cores or the amount of RAM that can be physically installed in the server If you were to license that server with two licenses of vSphere Enterprise Plus you would have a VRAM entitlement of 192 GB This means that you can have up to 192 GB of VRAM allocated to running VMs The vRAM entitlement only applies to powered on VMs If you were to license the server with Standard Edition you would have a vRAM entitlement of 64 GB and you could have up to 64 GB of vVRAM allocated to running VMs on that
24. ntrol NetIOC provide granular resource controls for VMs The vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection VADP provide a backup framework that allows for the integration of third party backup solutions into a vSphere implementation Master It Which products are licensed features within the VMware vSphere suite Master It Which two features of VMware ESXi and VMware vCenter Server together aim to reduce or eliminate downtime due to unplanned hardware failures Recognize the interaction and dependencies between the products in the vSphere suite VMware ESXi forms the foundation of the vSphere product suite but some features require the presence of vCenter Server Features like VMotion Storage VMotion vSphere DRS vSphere HA vSphere FT SIOC and NetIOC require both ESXi as well as vCenter Server Master It Name three features that are supported only when using vCenter Server along with ESXi Master It Name two features that are supported without vCenter Server but with a li censed installation of ESXi Understand how vSphere differs from other virtualization products VMware vSphere s hypervisor ESXi uses a type 1 bare metal hypervisor that handles I O directly within the hypervisor This means that a host operating system like Windows or Linux is not required in order for ESXi to function Although other virtualization solutions are listed as type 1 bare metal hypervisors most other type 1 hypervisors on the market today requir
25. o move a running VM from one physical host to another physical host without having to power off the VM This migration between two physical hosts occurs with no downtime and with no loss of network connectivity to the VM The ability to manually move a running VM between physical hosts on an as needed basis is a powerful feature that has a number of use cases in today s datacenters Suppose a physical machine has experienced a non fatal hardware failure and needs to be repaired Administrators can easily initiate a series of VMotion operations to remove all VMs from an ESXi host that is to undergo scheduled maintenance After the maintenance is complete and the server is brought back online administrators can utilize VMotion to return the VMs to the original server Alternately consider a situation in which you are migrating from one set of physical serv ers to a new set of physical servers Assuming that the details have been addressed and I ll discuss the details around vMotion in Chapter 12 Balancing Resource Utilization you can use vMotion to move the VMs from the old servers to the newer servers making quick work of a server migration with no interruption of service Even in normal day to day operations VMotion can be used when multiple VMs on the same host are in contention for the same resource which ultimately is causing poor performance across all the VMs vMotion can solve the problem by allowing an administrator to migrate an
26. omplete rewrite of the underlying architecture for vSphere HA this entirely new architecture known as Fault Domain Manager FDM eliminates many of the constraints found in earlier versions of VMware vSphere By default vSphere HA does not provide failover in the event of a guest OS failure although you can configure vSphere HA to monitor VMs and restart them automatically if they fail to respond to an internal heartbeat This feature is called VM Failure Monitoring and it uses a combination of internal heartbeats and I O activity to attempt to detect if the guest OS inside a VM has stopped functioning If the guest OS has stopped functioning the VM can be restarted automatically With vSphere HA it s important to understand that there will be an interruption of service If a physical host fails vSphere HA restarts the VM and during that period of time while the VM is restarting the applications or services provided by that VM are unavailable For users who need even higher levels of availability than can be provided using vSphere HA vSphere Fault Tolerance FT which is described in the next section can help VSPHERE FAULT TOLERANCE For users who require even greater levels of high availability than vSphere HA can provide VMware vSphere has a feature known as vSphere Fault Tolerance FT As I described in the previous section vSphere HA protects against unplanned physical server failure by providing a way to automatically restart
27. phere FT or Storage vMotion may also find that Microsoft Hyper V or Citrix XenServer is a better fit for their needs As you can see VMware vSphere offers some pretty powerful features that will change the way you view the resources in your datacenter The latest release of vSphere version 5 expands existing features and adds powerful new features like Storage I O Control Some of these fea tures though might not be applicable to all organizations which is why VMware has crafted a flexible licensing scheme for organizations of all sizes LICENSING VMware VSPHERE With the introduction of VMware vSphere 4 VMware introduced new licensing tiers and bun dles that were intended to provide a good fit for every market segment VMware has refined this licensing arrangement with the release of VMware vSphere 5 In this section I ll explain how the various features that I ve discussed so far fit into vSphere s licensing model EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 17 You ve already seen how VMware packages and licenses VMware vCenter Server but here s a quick review VMware vCenter Server for Essentials kits which is bundled with the vSphere Essentials kits more on the kits in just a moment VMware vCenter Server Foundation supports the management of up to three vSphere hosts VMware vCenter Server Standard which includes all functionality and does not have a preset limit on the number of vSphere hosts it can manage although norm
28. ration I ll walk through several different scenarios and look at how vSphere helps in these scenarios WHY CHOOSE VSPHERE 21 Scenario1 XYZ Corporation s IT team has been asked by senior management to rapidly provision six new servers to support a new business initiative In the past this meant order ing hardware waiting on the hardware to arrive racking and cabling the equipment once it arrived installing the operating system and patching it with the latest updates and then installing the application The time frame for all these steps ranged anywhere from a few days to a few months and was typically a couple of weeks Now with VMware vSphere in place the IT team can use vCenter Server s templates functionality to build a VM install the operat ing system and apply the latest updates and then rapidly clone or copy this VM to create additional VMs Now their provisioning time is down to hours likely even minutes Chapter 10 discusses this functionality in detail Scenario2 Empowered by the IT team s ability to quickly respond to the needs of this new business initiative XYZ Corporation is moving ahead with deploying updated versions of a line of business application However the business leaders are a bit concerned about upgrading the current version Using the snapshot functionality present in ESXi and vCenter Server the IT team can take a point in time picture of the VM so that if something goes wrong during the
29. represent possible locations where the VM could be stored This functionality gives vSphere administrators much greater control over the placement of VMs on shared storage and helps ensure that the appropriate functionality for each VM is indeed being provided by the underlying storage Refer to Table 1 1 to find out which chapter discusses profile driven storage in more detail VSPHERE HIGH AVAILABILITY In many cases high availability HA or the lack of high availability is the key argument used against virtualization The most common form of this argument more or less sounds like this Before virtualization the failure of a physical server affected only one application or workload After virtualization the failure of a physical server will affect many more applications or work loads running on that server at the same time We can t put all our eggs in one basket VMware addresses this concern with another feature present in ESXi clusters called vSphere HA Once again by nature of the naming conventions clusters high availability many tra ditional Windows administrators will have preconceived notions about this feature Those notions however are incorrect in that vSphere HA does not function like a high availability configuration in Windows The vSphere HA feature provides an automated process for restart ing VMs that were running on an ESXi host at a time of complete server failure Figure 1 3 depicts the VM migration that occ
30. rowing number of third party backup applications that are designed to work with VADP and VMware also offers its own backup tool VMware Data Recovery VDR VDR leverages VADP to provide a full backup solution for smaller VMware vSphere environments 15 16 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 D Real World Scenario VMWARE VSPHERE COMPARED TO HYPER V AND XENSERVER It s not really possible to compare some virtualization solutions to other virtualization solutions because they are fundamentally different in approach and purpose Such is the case with VMware ESXi and some of the other virtualization solutions on the market To make accurate comparisons between vSphere and other virtualization solutions you must include only type 1 bare metal virtualization solutions This would include ESXi of course and Microsoft Hyper V and Citrix XenServer It would not include products such as VMware Server or Microsoft Virtual Server both of which are type 2 hosted virtualization products Even within the type 1 hypervisors there are architectural differences that make direct comparisons difficult For example both Microsoft Hyper V and Citrix XenServer route all the VM 1 0 through the parent partition or domo This typically provides greater hardware compatibility with a wider range of products In the case of Hyper V for example as soon as Windows Server 2008 the general purpose operating system running in the paren
31. s well as Acceleration Kits Essentials Kits are all in one solutions for small environments up to three vSphere hosts with two CPUs each and a 32 GB vRAM entitlement To support three hosts with two CPUs 20 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 each the Essentials Kits come with 6 licenses and a total pooled VRAM entitlement of 192 GB All these limits are product enforced There are three Essentials Kits available VMware vSphere Essentials VMware vSphere Essentials Plus VMware vSphere Essentials for Retail and Branch Offices You can t buy these kits on a per CPU basis these are bundled solutions for three servers vSphere Essentials includes one year of subscription support is optional and available on a per incident basis Like other editions vSphere Essentials Plus requires at least one year of SnS this must be purchased separately and is not included in the bundle The Retail and Branch Offices RBO kits are differentiated from the normal Essentials and Essentials Plus kits only by the licensing guidelines These kits are licensed per site 10 sites mini mum with a maximum of three hosts per site and customers can add additional sites as required VMware also has Acceleration Kits which combine the different components of the vSphere product suite together There are three Acceleration Kits Standard Acceleration Kit This kit includes one license of vCenter Server Standard plus licenses for vSphere Standard
32. server Further VRAM entitlements can be pooled across all the hosts being managed by vCenter Server So if you had five dual socket hosts you d need ten vSphere 5 licenses one each for the ten CPUs across the five dual socket hosts Depending on which edition you used you would have a pooled vRAM entitlement for the entire pool of servers of 320 GB for Standard Edition 640 GB for Enterprise Edition or 960 GB for Enterprise Plus Edition VRAM entitlements that aren t being used by one server can be used on another server as long as the total across the entire pool falls below the limit This gives administrators greater flexibility in managing VRAM entitlements The basic idea behind vRAM entitlements is to help organizations move closer to usage based cost and chargeback models that are more typical of cloud computing environments and Infrastructure as a Service IaaS models Let s now summarize the features that are supported for each edition of VMware vSphere 5 along with the associated VRAM entitlements for each edition This information is presented in Table 1 3 TABLE 1 3 Overview of VMware vSphere product editions ESSENTIALS ENTERPRISE ESSENTIALS PLUS STANDARD ENTERPRISE PLus vCenter Server vCenter vCenter vCenter vCenter Server vCenter Server compatibility Server for Server for Server Foundationand Foundation and Essentials Essentials Foundation Standard Standard and Standard vRAM 32 GB 32GB 32GB 64GB 96 GB Entitlement v
33. t partition supports a particular type of hardware then Hyper V supports it also Hyper V piggybacks on Windows hardware drivers and the I O stack The same can be said for XenServer although its domo runs Linux and not Windows VMware ESXi on the other hand handles 1 0 within the hypervisor itself This typically provides greater throughput and lower overhead at the expense of slightly more limited hardware compat ibility In order to add more hardware support or updated drivers the hypervisor must be updated because the 1 0 stack and device drivers are in the hypervisor This architectural difference is fundamental Nowhere is this architectural difference more greatly demonstrated than in ESXi which has a small footprint yet provides a full featured virtualiza tion solution Both Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper V require a full installation of a general purpose operating system Windows Server 2008 for Hyper V Linux for XenServer in the parent partition domo in order to operate Inthe end each of the virtualization products has its own set of advantages and disadvantages and large organizations may end up using multiple products For example VMware vSphere might be best suited in the large corporate datacenter while Microsoft Hyper V or Citrix XenServer might be acceptable for test development or branch office deployment Organizations that don t require VMware vSphere s advanced features like vSphere DRS vS
34. the Linux based vCenter Server virtual appliance Because of vCenter Server s central role in a VMware vSphere deployment Ill touch on vCenter Server in almost every chapter throughout the rest of the book Refer to Table 1 1 previously in this chapter for specific cross references vCenter Server is available in three packages vCenter Server Essentials is integrated into the vSphere Essentials kits for small office deployment vCenter Server Standard provides all the functionality of vCenter Server including provi sioning management monitoring and automation vCenter Server Foundation is like vCenter Server Standard but is limited to managing three ESXi hosts and does not include vCenter Orchestrator or support for linked mode operation You can find more information on licensing and product editions for VMware vSphere in the section Licensing VMware vSphere EXPLORING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 VSPHERE UPDATE MANAGER vSphere Update Manager is a plug in for vCenter Server that helps users keep their ESXi hosts and select VMs patched with the latest updates vSphere Update Manager provides the follow ing functionality Scans to identify systems that are not compliant with the latest updates User defined rules for identifying out of date systems Automated installation of patches for ESXi hosts Fullintegration with other vSphere features like Distributed Resource Scheduler vSphere Update Manager works with both the
35. ty and vSphere Fault Tolerance using vCenter Server to manage ESXi hosts enables a number of other features Enhanced vMotion Compatibility EVC which leverages hardware functionality from Intel and AMD to enable greater CPU compatibility between servers grouped into vSphere DRS clusters Host profiles which allow administrators to bring greater consistency to host configura tions across larger environments and to identify missing or incorrect configurations Storage I O Control which provides cluster wide quality of service QoS controls so that administrators can ensure that critical applications receive sufficient I O resources even during times of congestion vSphere Distributed Switches which provide the foundation for cluster wide networking settings and third party virtual switches Network I O Control which allows administrators to flexibly partition physical NIC band width for different types of traffic vSphere Storage DRS which enables VMware vSphere to dynamically migrate storage resources to meet demand much in the same way that DRS balances CPU and memory utilization vCenter Server plays a central role in any sizable VMware vSphere implementation In Chapter 3 Installing and Configuring vCenter Server I discuss planning and installing vCenter Server as well as look at ways to ensure its availability Chapter 3 will also examine the differences between the Windows based version of vCenter Server and
36. ual CPUs 2048 512 128 per host Number of cores per host 160 64 32 Number of logical CPUs 160 r 2 hyperthreading enabled 4 Number of virtual CPU 2 20 i dto 251 umber of virtua s 5 increased to 25in B Ginc easedto 20 inUpdate3 per core Update 1 128 GB increased to 256 GBin Amount of RAM per host 2TB 1TB Update 3 PM ONLY TALKING VMWARE ESX1 5 HERE Throughout this book I ll refer only to ESXi It s true that some of the information present in this book could apply to earlier versions of the product and thus could potentially apply to VMware ESX as well as VMware ESXi However I will refer only to ESXi throughout this book and the informa tion presented will have been tested only with VMware ESXi 5 VMWARE VCENTER SERVER Stop for a moment to think about your current network Does it include Active Directory There is a good chance it does Now imagine your network without Active Directory without the ease of a centralized management database without the single sign on capabilities and without the simplicity of groups That is what managing VMware ESXi hosts would be like without using VMware vCenter Server Not a very pleasant thought is it Now calm yourself down take a deep breath and know that vCenter Server like Active Directory is meant to provide a central ized management utility for all ESXi hosts and their respective VMs vCenter Server allows IT administrators to deploy manage monitor automate and secur
37. urs when an ESXi host that is part of an HA enabled cluster experiences failure FIGURE 1 3 a The vSphere HA A by feature will restart d Mi B any VMs that were egos previously running p wi P P on an ESXi host that A A _ A experiences server hu 4 failure E st ESXi host The vSphere HA feature unlike DRS does not use the vMotion technology as a means of migrating servers to another host vMotion is applicable only for planned migrations where both the source and destination ESXi host are running and functioning properly In a vSphere HA failover situation there is no anticipation of failure it is not a planned outage and therefore there is no time to perform a vMotion operation vSphere HA is intended to address unplanned downtime because of the failure of a physical ESXi host 14 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 VSPHERE HA IMPROVEMENTS IN VSPHERE 5 vSphere HA has received a couple of notable improvements since vSphere 4 0 First the scalabil ity of vSphere HA has been significantly improved you can now run up to 512 VMs per host up from 100 in earlier versions and 3 000 VMs per cluster up from 1 280 in earlier versions Second vSphere HA now integrates more closely with vSphere DRS s intelligent placement functionality giving vSphere HA greater ability to restart VMs in the event of a host failure The third and perhaps most significant improvement is the c
38. uster and Storage DRS automatically places the VM s virtual disks on an appropriate datastore within that datastore cluster Likewise just as vSphere DRS uses vMotion to balance resource utilization dynamically Storage DRS uses Storage vMotion to rebalance storage utilization Because Storage vMotion operations are typically much more resource intensive than vMotion operations vSphere pro vides extensive controls over the thresholds timing and other guidelines that will trigger a Storage DRS automatic migration via Storage vMotion STORAGE 1 O CONTROL AND NETWORK I O CONTROL VMware vSphere has always had extensive controls for modifying or controlling the allocation of CPU and memory resources to VMs What vSphere didn t have prior to the release of vSphere 4 1 was a way to apply these same sort of extensive controls to storage I O and network I O Storage I O Control and Network I O Control address that shortcoming Storage I O Control allows vSphere administrators to assign relative priority to storage I O as well as assign storage I O limits to VMs These settings are enforced cluster wide when an ESXi host detects storage congestion through an increase of latency beyond a user configured threshold it will apply the settings configured for that VM The result is that VMware adminis trators can ensure that the VMs that need priority access to storage resources get the resources they need In vSphere 4 1 Storage I O Control applied only
39. vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler vSphere Storage DRS gt gt gt gt gt Storage I O Control and Network I O Control 2 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 Profile Driven Storage vSphere High Availability vSphere Fault Tolerance vSphere Storage APIs for Data Protection and VMware Data Recovery Rather than waiting to introduce these products and features in their own chapters TIl intro duce each product or feature in the following sections This will allow me to explain how each product or feature affects the design installation and configuration of your virtual infrastruc ture After I cover the features and products in the vSphere suite you ll have a better grasp of how each of them fits into the design and the big picture of virtualization Certain products outside the vSphere product suite extend the vSphere product line with new functionality Examples of these additional products include VMware View VMware vCloud Director VMware vCloud Request Manager VMware vCenter AppSpeed and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager just to name a few Because of the size and scope of these products and because they are developed and released on a schedule separate from VMware vSphere they are not covered in this book As of the writing of this book VMware vSphere 5 is the latest release of the VMware vSphere product family This book covers functionality found in version 5 Where poss
40. without first needing to install the full vSphere Client on a system However the vSphere Web Client in its current form only provides a subset of the functionality available to the full vSphere Client Because the vSphere Web Client currently only provides a subset of the functionality I focus primarily on how to use the vSphere Client throughout this book Tasks in the vSphere Web Client should be similar VMWARE VSHIELD ZONES VMware vSphere offers some compelling virtual networking functionality and vShield Zones builds on vSphere s virtual networking functionality to add virtual firewall functionality vShield Zones allows vSphere administrators to see and manage the network traffic flows occurring on the virtual network switches You can apply network security policies across entire groups of machines ensuring that these policies are maintained properly even though VMs may move from host to host using vSphere vMotion and vSphere DRS 7 8 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 OTHER MEMBERS OF THE VSHIELD FAMILY vShield Zones is not the only member of the vShield family of products VMware also offers vShield App a guest level firewall that operates at a virtual NIC level and enforces access control policies even between VMs inthe same port group vShield Edge which provides network edge security and gateway services such as DHCP NAT site to site VPN and load balancing and vShield Endpoint which enables an introspe
41. y VMs that are facing contention to another ESXi host with greater availability for the resource in demand For example when two VMs are in contention with each other for CPU resources an administrator can eliminate the contention by using vMotion to move of one of the VMs to an ESXi host that has more available CPU resources 10 CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCING VMWARE VSPHERE 5 VMOTION ENHANCEMENTS vSphere 5 enhances vMotion s functionality making VM migrations faster and enabling more concurrent VM migrations than were supported in previous versions of vSphere or VMware Infrastructure 3 vSphere 5 also enhances vMotion to take advantage of multiple network inter faces further improving live migration performance vMotion moves the execution of a VM relocating the CPU and memory footprint between physical servers but leaving the storage untouched Storage vMotion builds on the idea and principle of vMotion by providing the ability to leave the CPU and memory footprint untouched on a physical server but migrating a VM s storage while the VM is still running Deploying vSphere in your environment generally means that lots of shared storage Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN or NFS is needed What happens when you need to migrate from an older storage array to a newer storage array What kind of downtime would be required Or what about a situation where you need to rebalance utilization of the array either from a capac ity or performance perspect
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