VMware 3V0-21.23 - VMware vSphere 8.x Advanced Design

The desired consolidation ratio for the target platform is 10:1:

The consolidation ratio is a key technical requirement as it directly influences the planning for the deployment and resource allocation in the new VMware Cloud platform. It defines how many virtual machines can be consolidated per physical host in the target environment, which is critical for the sizing and resource planning.

A VMware Aria Operations report containing current resource usage:

The VMware Aria Operations report provides actual data on the current resource consumption of the application. This report is essential for understanding how much resource the application currently uses and helps in determining the necessary capacity in the target platform. This is a technical requirement since it informs resource allocation, scaling, and performance expectations.

Based on VMware vSphere 8.x Advanced documentation and the provided requirements, the architect is designing a lifecycle management strategy for a brownfield vSphere 8 solution using heterogeneous server hardware (Intel and AMD processors from Vendors A and B) across two physical sites. The solution must support 5,000 workloads, minimize the number of clusters, ensure no service impact during upgrades, and utilize all existing hardware, which is on the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) with 36 months of vendor support remaining.

Requirements and Context Analysis:

Heterogeneous hardware: The environment includes Intel-based servers (Vendor A) and AMD-based servers (Vendor B) with varying CPU cores and RAM configurations.

Deployment:

Primary site: Intel-based servers (Vendor A: 10 servers with 2 x 20-core, 512 GB RAM; 10 servers with 2 x 24-core, 768 GB RAM).

Secondary site: Both Intel-based (Vendor A) and AMD-based servers (Vendor B: 20 servers with 2 x 16-core, 512 GB RAM; 10 servers with 1 x 24-core, 256 GB RAM).

REQ001: Support 5,000 workloads across two sites, requiring all available hardware.

REQ002: Minimize the number of clusters to simplify management.

REQ003: Ensure no service impact during upgrades, implying a robust lifecycle management strategy.

vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM): vLCM in vSphere 8 supports managing ESXi host upgrades and patches using baselines or images. Baselines are collections of patches and updates, while images are specific ESXi versions with defined components tailored to hardware.

Key Considerations for Lifecycle Management:

Heterogeneous hardware: Different processor architectures (Intel vs. AMD) may require specific drivers, firmware, or ESXi components, impacting vLCM remediation.

vLCM baselines vs. images:

Baselines: Allow applying common patches and updates across hosts, even with different hardware, as long as the updates are compatible.

Images: Require a specific ESXi image tailored to the hardware, which may differ between Intel and AMD hosts due to architecture-specific requirements.

No service impact during upgrades: Suggests the use of features like vSphere High Availability (HA), Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), and vMotion to ensure workloads are migrated during host upgrades, supported by clustering.

Minimize clusters: Implies grouping hosts into as few clusters as possible, but heterogeneous hardware may require separate clusters or careful vLCM configuration to manage upgrades effectively.

Evaluation of Options:

A. The different processor architectures across both sites will remediate against a shared vSphere Lifecycle Manager baseline:

Why correct: vSphere Lifecycle Manager baselines allow applying common patches, updates, and extensions across hosts with different hardware architectures (Intel and AMD) as long as the updates are compatible with the VMware HCL. This assumption supports lifecycle management by enabling a unified remediation strategy across both sites, regardless of processor differences. It aligns with minimizing clusters (REQ002) by allowing hosts with different architectures to be managed under a single baseline, and it supports no service impact (REQ003) by leveraging vLCM’s ability to orchestrate upgrades with vMotion and DRS. The use of baselines is more flexible than images for heterogeneous environments, making this a valid assumption for the architect to make.

The solution will configure the six (6) available network connections into load balanced pairs.

Configuring the six network connections into load-balanced pairs ensures that network traffic is distributed efficiently across the available physical NICs, providing redundancy and preventing any single network adapter from becoming a bottleneck. This aligns with the requirement to separate and balance traffic types, ensuring that no single network adapter is overloaded.

The solution will deploy a vSphere distributed switch with three (3) uplink port groups.

Using a vSphere Distributed Switch with three uplink port groups provides a clean separation of traffic types (management, replication, vMotion, and workload traffic). The distributed switch allows for better scalability, visibility, and management of network traffic in a multi-NIC setup, meeting the need to segregate network traffic and ensure redundancy at the switch level.

The solution will configure the Route Based on Physical NIC Load load balancing method.

The Route Based on Physical NIC Load load balancing method distributes traffic based on the current load of each physical NIC, ensuring that network traffic is balanced efficiently across all available NICs. This helps maintain optimal performance and ensures that one NIC is not overwhelmed by traffic from different types of network operations.

The customer's requirement for making it easy to identify and apply patches or updates to ESXi hosts, including pre-staging the files, is focused on simplifying the management of the vSphere environment. This is a key aspect of manageability, which refers to the ease with which IT administrators can handle tasks like patching, updates, and configuration management in a consistent and efficient manner.

vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) is used to manage ESXi host configurations and software versions in a consistent and streamlined manner. In this case, the architect needs to account for the heterogeneous hardware across two sites (Intel and AMD-based servers).

Since Intel and AMD processors are incompatible for remediation with a single vSphere Lifecycle Manager image, the different processor architectures should be grouped by site (not across sites). Within each site, vLCM can manage a single image per processor architecture, ensuring that each site’shosts with compatible processors are remediated consistently. Intel-based servers will be managed with one image and AMD-based servers with another image, but they can be managed in separate sites.

This approach avoids the issue where heterogeneous hardware with different processor types would need separate images. By keeping them within the same site, the architecture simplifies the lifecycle management and meets the requirement for minimizing clusters and ensuring service availability during upgrades.

To meet the requirements outlined, the architect will need to design a solution with three VMware vCenter instances. Here's why:

Isolation of Virtual Infrastructure Management Operations: The management workloads (such as vCenter itself, along with other virtual infrastructure management tools) should be isolated from compute workloads. This suggests the need for a separate vCenter instance to manage the infrastructure without impacting compute workloads.

Physical Isolation of Production and Development Workloads: Production workloads and development workloads need to be physically isolated, which suggests the need for different vCenter instances to maintain separation.

Support for Operational Management in the Event of a Disaster: In the event of a disaster affecting the primary site, the secondary site should still be able to manage compute workloads. This could be achieved by having a vCenter instance in each site (primary and secondary) to ensure continued management in the event of a failure.

Breakdown of the three vCenter instances:

vCenter 1: Manages production workloads across both primary and secondary sites.

vCenter 2: Manages development workloads in the secondary site, ensuring isolation from production.

vCenter 3: Manages the virtual infrastructure management workloads, ensuring isolation from compute workloads.

VMware vCenter instance in each management domain for the virtual infrastructure management of management workloads:

The customer requiresisolation between management and compute workloads. By deployingvCenter instances in dedicated management domains, the management workloads can be handled separately from production and development compute workloads, ensuring isolation.

VMware vCenter instance in the secondary site management domain for the virtual infrastructure management of production compute workloads:

Thesecondary siteshould also have avCenter instancefor the management ofproduction compute workloads. This ensures thatoperational managementof production workloads is still possible even in the event of adisaster affecting the primary site, which aligns with the requirement to ensure themanagement of compute workloads in the secondary site.

VMware vCenter instance in the primary site management domain for the virtual infrastructure management of production compute workloads:

AvCenter instancein theprimary site management domainshould handle themanagement of production compute workloads. The primary site is typically where most production workloads reside, and having the vCenter instance here ensures that management operations can be performed efficiently.

Separate management domain within each site for hosting local management workloads:

To ensure thatmanagement operations are isolatedand that themanagement workloads do not affect compute workloads, aseparate management domainshould be deployed in each site. This ensures that the management functions do not consume compute resources that are intended for production or development workloads.