Mike Laverick's lab environment over the years

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From Zero to Colo - vCloud Director in my lab
With Mike Laverick (VMware)
Blog: www.mikelaverick.com
Email: mike@mikelaverick.com
Twitter: @mike_laverick

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Before I begin
 Thank You VMUG Leaders!
 Competition Is Good…
 www.eucbook.com

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Agenda
 The 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…

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What is vCloud Director?

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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

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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)

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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

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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?

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Compute…

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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

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Storage…

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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

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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 

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Network…

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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…

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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

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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)

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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…

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OVFs – Portable?

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OVFs – Portable?

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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

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vINCEPTION – Home Lab?

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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…

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vCloud vSphere vApp!

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Cloud Nesting

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Lab Future…
 The DONE List
 Make my External Juniper Firewall work with vShield
 Need new servers?
 Dell?

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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)

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Questions (Welcomed) & (Attempts at) Answers
Blog: www.mikelaverick.com
Email: mike@mikelaverick.com
Twitter: @mike_laverick