How I reshaped my lab environment

+

From Zero to Colo - vCloud Director in my labWith Mike Laverick (VMware)Blog: www.mikelaverick.comEmail: [email protected] Twitter: @mike_laverick

+Before I begin

Thank You VMUG Leaders!

Competition Is Good…

www.eucbook.com

+

+AgendaThe Home Lab Backstory - Long, Long

ago in a galaxy called 2003….

Former vSphere Setup

CH-CH-CH Changes - vSphere5.1 Setup Compute Network Storage

vCD Lesson Learned…

My Lab To-Do List…

+What is vCloud Director?

+The Home Lab Backstory - Long, Long ago in 2003…

My first attempt with ESX 2.0/vCenter 1.0

Location: Under my desk

Girlfriend Impact: NIL

+The vCloud Suite: SDDC Era Virtual Appliances where possible/necessary

vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA) Feature Parity with Windows version Switch allowed me to completely reconfigure resources around

vCloud/SDDC agenda Reduce “infrastructure VM” footprint Beware of plug-ins; Support for the web-client (e.g. NetApp VSC)

vCloud Director Virtual Appliances (vCD-VA) Use built-in Oracle XE DB Dead easy to setup (No Packages, DB setup) Beware: No multi-cell, No migration Beware: Demo only; Labs; Training purposes…

vShield Manager Virtual Appliance (Mandatory)

vSphere Replication Appliance (VR)

vSphere Data Protection Appliance (vDP)

+vSphere5/SRM5.0/View5.1 Era – SRM 5.0 Period (2011)

Hello 2x Dell Equallogics Hello 1x NS-120 & 1x NS-20 Hello 2x NetApp 2040s Hello massive colocation bill!!!

VMware Employee Period (2012) >>>>>>>>>>> HomeLab & ProLab Merge Goodbye EMC Goodbye 2xPDU Hello 24U of extra racks space Hello to 14 AMPs extra power!

Location: Quality Colocation

Costs: £870 GBP, $1,300 USD

Girlfriend Impact: Married 2013,4th May

+Virtual Silos The VMware Cluster as the New Silo?

Discrete Blocks of: Compute Network Storage

Q. Why do we like silos?

Q. Why do we hate silos?

+Compute…

+Compute Continued…

One Site; Two Clusters

“Infrastructure” Resource Pool – No Management Cluster

GOAL: Maximize Resource; Setup Tiered Clusters

Decisions: Different CPU types forced DRS separation Gold Cluster = HP DL 385s

WHY? = More memory & FC connected to SAS storage Silver Cluster = Lenovo TS200

WHY? = Less RAM, Only 1GP pipe to either SAS/SATA on NFS/iSCSI

+Storage…

+Storage Continued… Destroyed Datastores!

Except Infrastructure datastore Templates Software (iso, templates, miscs)

Originally a much more complicated layout – 7 Tiers!!!

4 Tiers 1. Platinum (NetApp, FC, SAS, SnapMirror – 5min RPO) 2. Gold (Dell, iSCSI, SAS, Replication – 1hr RPO) 3. Silver (NetApp, NFS, SATA, Datastore Cluster, 3x300 GB, Thinly Provisioned) 4. Bronze (Dell, iSCSI, SATA, Thinly Provisioned)

vSphere Replication for Replication from 3>4 or 4<3

+Storage Anxieties… Many Organizational Tenants sharing the SAME datastore

What about Site Recovery Manager? What about performance – Capacity management isn’t the

issue

With Array-based Replication (ABR) One Failover to rule them all? No per-vApp Failover No per-Organization failover

Solutions? Platinum/Gold datastores per-Organization vSphere Replication VMware vVols

+Network…

+Network Continued… Goodbye Standard Switch

Struggle to provide redundancy/separate with the “Combo Approach”

Many of the Adv features of vCD require Distributed vSwitch

Classical Approach: Two DvSwitches

One for internal vSphere Networking (vMotion, IP Storage, FT, Management)

One for Virtual DataCenter Backed by two VMNICs each…

+Network Anxieties… All my Provider vDCs share the SAME DvSwitch

What about “Fat Finger Syndrome”?

How realistic is that?

Time to re-examine “Best Practices”

Do best practices represents an ideal OR an ideal filtered through the limitations of a technology Provider vDCs in vCD 1.x – One Cluster, No Tiering of

Storage Provider vDCs in vCD 5.x – Many clusters, Tiering of Storage

+Lesson Learned When thinking about a Provider vDC

All the resources matter Compute + Storage + Networking By far the easiest for me was compute

But my “Gold” cluster has no FT Support Prepare to make compromises/trade offs UNLESS all your hosts are the SAME

VXLAN needs enabling on Distributed Switches via vSphere Client Prior to creating a Provider vDC

Watch out with VMs already on the cluster – vCD ESX Agent Running existing “infrastructure” VMs on a cluster Stops the install of the vCD Agent Has to be done on per-ESX host basis (easy)

+More Lessons Learned…

Get your VLANs sorted BEFORE you use them in vCD…

Beware of Orphaned VLAN references in the vCD Databases

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/2003988

+Work out your IP before you start!“Wrong”

192.168.3.x – “External Network” 172.168.x.x – “Organization Network” 10.x.x.x – “vApp Network”

“Right” 10.x.x.x – “External Network” 172.168.x.x – “Organization Network” 192.168.1.x – “vApp Network”

Keep it simple – whole ranges dedicated

+IP Ranges can be tricky to change Even with vApps powered off – options unavailable

Gateway Address Network Mask

Resolution involves admin: Add new vApp Network Remap all VMs to new vApp Network Remove old vApp Network

+vApp Networks & Edge Gateway Every vApp Network you create:

Creates a vCNS Edge Gateway Consumes resources

Solution Create two vApps per Organization TypeA: One on the Organization Network TypeB: One on its own vApp Network Power off the Type B vApp to save resources Beware of static MAC/IP on Power Offs

+Establish a meaningful naming convention…

I KNOW EVERYONE SAYS THIS, BUT IN A HOME LAB DON’T YOU CUT CORNERS SOMETIMES?

<ORGNAME><NetworkType><Purposes> CORPHQ-OrgNetCorp-EdgeGateway CORPHQ-vAppNet-WebGateway Makes screengrabs, documentation & troubleshooting

soooo much easier… Register Edge Gateway devices in DNS… Helps with SysLog – watch out for stale DNS Records…

+OVFs – Portable?

+OVFs – Portable?

+Your Lab? Nested ESX

http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/bestpractices/nested

vTARDIS? - http://vinf.net/2011/10/03/vtardis-5-at-a-vmug-near-you/

Workstation/Fusion – Out of the box nested ESX… AutoLab - http://www.labguides.com/autolab/

Redundant Array of Inexpensive PCs (RAIPC) Community Hardware Page: http://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/

bestpractices/crc

+vINCEPTION – Home Lab?

+vINCEPTION Levels

vINCEPTION Level 0 Physical ESX hosts, Virtual Everything Else (DC, vCenter,

vCD)

vINCEPTION Level 1 vApp of vSphere running under Level 0 Including vCD, vCNS Manager

vINCEPTION Level 2 vApps running under Level 1…

+vCloud vSphere vApp!

+Cloud Nesting

+

+Lab Future… The DONE List

Make my External Juniper Firewall work with vShield

Need new servers? Dell?

+Follow my journey journal… Text Blogpost

Follow my journey! Search for “Mike Laverick – My vCloud Journey Journal”

Subscribe iTunes: http://tinyurl.com/audiowag (Audio) http://tinyurl.com/videowag (Video)

+

Questions (Welcomed) & (Attempts at) AnswersBlog: www.mikelaverick.comEmail: [email protected] Twitter: @mike_laverick