Mythbusting Goes Virtual What’s new in vSphere 5.1

By Eric Sloof

HTTP://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/VMWORLDTV JEREMY VAN DOORN AND ERIC SLOOF

Eric Sloof VMware Certified Instructor NTPRO.NL Twitter: @esloof

Agenda/Myths

1) vMotion is only possible with shared storage.

2) You have to run Windows to manage vSphere.

3) You need Site Recovery Manager to protect your virtual machines from a complete site loss.

4) Due to VMFS, the maximum number of host in a cluster with linked clones is 8.

5) It’s not possible to backup or restore a Distributed vSwitch configuration.

vMotion is only possible with shared storage

Myth 1

New Enhanced vMotion

• Combine vMotion and Storage vMotion.

• Migrate between hosts/clusters without shared storage.

New Enhanced vMotion

• Enhanced vMotion allows you to combine a vMotion and Storage vMotion into a single operation.

• Effectively enabling a “shared nothing” vMotion.

New Enhanced vMotion

• Use cases can be found in large datacenters and SMB markets; Cross host and datastore vMotion allows VM migration between clusters in a large datacenters, which may not have a common set of datastores between them.

Myth Busted

• Two Enhanced vMotion + 6 vMotions at the same time or two Enhanced vMotions + Zero svMotions at the same time.

• DRS or sDRS don’t use Enhanced vMotion technology.

• Leverage the advantages of vMotion (zero-downtime migration) without the need for shared storage configurations.

You need Windows to manage vSphere

Myth 2

The VMware vSphere Web Client

• In vSphere 5.1, the VMware vSphere Web Client is the new primary point for vSphere management.

• It has several advantages over the previous Microsoft Windows–based VMware vSphere Client.

The VMware vSphere Web Client Object Navigator

Sidebar Extension

Create custom actions Inventory Objects Tabs

Add right-click extensions

Portlets

The VMware vSphere Web Client

• In the Web Client, vSphere introduces a new feature called “Work in Progress,” with which the user can pause a current task to work on another task in the UI and then later resume the original task at the point it was interrupted.

Myth Busted

• All new vSphere 5.1 features are only available from the Web Client.

• With the improvements added to VMware vSphere 5.1, the VMware vCenter Server architecture, VMware vCenter Single Sign-On, VMware vCenter Inventory Service and the VMware vSphere Web Client, VMware has released a formidable collection of tools for the administrator of a virtualized environment.

You need SRM to protect your virtual machines from a complete site loss

MYTH 3

vSphere Replication

• vSphere Replication is now a feature of the vSphere platform.

• It copies a virtual machine to another location, within or between clusters, and makes that copy available for restoration through the VMware vCenter Server Web Client.

vSphere Replication

• vSphere Replication is inherently a lightweight replication protocol.

• By replicating only changed blocks on an on-going basis network bandwidth can be saved and commit times for data are minimized.

How to configure vSphere Replication?

• vSphere Replication is a feature of the vSphere platform.

• It copies a virtual machine to another location, within or between clusters, and makes that copy available for restoration through the VMware vCenter Server Web Client.

Configure the recovery point objective

• Part of this process is to select a recovery point objective (RPO), which provides information to vSphere Replication regarding an age limit for the copy of the virtual machine.

• It then attempts to replicate data to meet the RPO at all times.

• Ensuring that the virtual machine data is never older than the defined policy for each virtual machine configured for replication.

Recovering a Virtual Machine • Recovery of a virtual machine

might be necessary for a number of reasons, ranging from testing, impending outages or even recovery from a disaster.

• vSphere Replication is designed to give administrators the ability to manually recover an individual machine with a small number of clicks in the vSphere Web Client.

Myth Busted

• vSphere Replication enables efficient array-agnostic replication of virtual machine data over the LAN or WAN.

• vSphere Replication simplifies management enabling replication at the virtual machine level and enables RPOs as low as 15 minutes.

• Make vSphere Replication a part of your vSphere 5.1 deployment and improve your virtual machine availability without introducing risk.

Due to VMFS the maximum number of host in a cluster is 8

Myth 4

VMware vSphere VMFS-5 file-sharing enhancements

• Prior to vSphere 5.1, the maximum number of hosts that could share a read-only file on a Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) was 8.

• This is a limiting factor for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments using View.

• Because the maximum number of hosts in a cluster that could share the same desktop base disk image file was also 8.

• It is also a limiting factor for deployments of vCloud Director, which uses linked clones for the fast provisioning of VMware vCloud Director vApps.

VMware vSphere VMFS-5 file-sharing enhancements

• In vSphere 5.1, the maximum number of hosts that can share a read-only file on a VMFS is increased to 32.

• This means that linked clones deployed from a base image now can be hosted on any one of the 32 hosts sharing the datastore.

• This provides significant scalability for both View and vCloud Director. This feature applies only to hosts running vSphere 5.1 and higher on VMFS-5.

Myth Busted

• With vSphere 5.1 you’re able to Increase the file share limit on VMFS-5 from 8 to 32, making VMFS as scalable a storage solution as NFS.

It’s not possible to backup or restore a distributed vSwitch configuration.

Myth 5

• Helps take snapshots of working VDS configuration for deployments, rollback, and sharing purpose.

• Take snapshot of VDS and dvPortgroups configuration

DvSwitch Configuration Backup and Restore

DvSwitch Configuration Backup and Restore

The Following operations are supported:

• Backup VDS/dvPortgroup configuration on disk (Export).

• Restore VDS/dvPortgroup from a backup (Restore).

• Create new entity from backup (Import).

• Revert to the previous dvPortgroup configuration after changes are made.

Backup a VDS configuration

Restore a Port group Configuration

Restore a Port group Configuration

vSphere Distributed Switch

• Administrators can now save the VDS configurations and use it to restore the exact same VDS setup after any vCenter Server DB failure Scenario

• Network admins can also build a revision control system over VDS configuration by saving configurations after each change and use this to restore to any older configuration

• Saved VDS configuration can be used as template to create similar other VDS in any other deployment.

Myth Busted

• vSphere Distributed Switch – Enhancements such as Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore, Roll Back and Recovery, and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support and deliver more enterprise-class networking functionality and a more robust foundation for cloud computing.

Free self-paced training - vSphere What's New [V5.1]

HTTP://WWW.YOUTUBE.COM/VMWORLDTV JEREMY VAN DOORN AND ERIC SLOOF

Eric Sloof VMware Certified Instructor NTPRO.NL Twitter: @esloof