vSphere 6

Jed CrossleyStorage SpecialistNetwize

Agenda

Bigger, Faster, StrongervSphere 6 ManagementStorage RedefinedAdvanced Features and ImprovementsQuestions/Answers

Scalability Improvements

vSphere 5.5 vSphere 6

32 Host per Cluster 64 Hosts per Cluster 2x

4000 VMs per Cluster 8000 VMs per Cluster 2x

320 CPUs per Host 480 CPUs per Host 1.5x

4 TB Ram per Host 12 TB Ram per Host 3x

512 VMs per Host 1024 VMs per Host 2x

64 vCPU per VM 128 vCPU per VM 2x

1 TB vRAM per VM 4 TB vRAM per VM 4x

Why would any VM need that many resources? VMware promotes it’s readiness for Big Data (Hadoop, Cloudera, SAP HANA, etc)

vSphere Management

vCenter

vCenter on Windows vs vCenter Appliance

Metric Windows ApplianceHost per vCenter 1,000 1,000

Powered-On VMs 10,000 10,000

Hosts per Cluster 64 64

VMs per Cluster 6,000 6,000

Linked Mode ● ●

vCenter 6

vSphere Client

Capabilities vSphere Client Web Client

vSphere Management ● ●

ESXi Patching via VUM ● X

Supports Hardware v 8-11 X ●

New Features X ●

How many STILL use the vSphere Windows Client by Default?STOP IT!!

FYI: The Web Client has increased it’s speed since 5.5Login Time = 13x FasterRight Click Menus = 4x FasterEnd to End Tasks = 50% FasterPerformance Charts = 2x Faster

Features only Available to Web Client

Manage vCenter SSO

Inventory Tagging

vMotion Anywhere

Integrated vSphere Replication

Integration with vRealize

More options for Health Check and Export/Import Configs

VDP Integration

Granular Detail on Health

Customizable UI

Edit VM Settings on new vHW

More FT and Clustering Options

VSAN Management

Storage Redefined

Virtual SAN 6 (VSAN)

Virtual SAN (VSAN): Local Storage Integrated into the hypervisor (not a VSA). Allows you to use off the shelf drives and cluster them in a highly available, high performance, shared storage platform for your VMs.

Virtual Volumes (vVols)

How does vSphere 6 Storage with vVols work?ESXi manages the array through VASA 2.0 (vSphere APIs for storage awareness) APIs and the array is logically partitioned into containers, called Storage Containers. Virtual machine disks, called Virtual Volumes, are stored natively on the Storage Containers. I/O from ESXi to the array is addressed through an access point called Protocol Endpoint (PE). Data services are then offloaded to the array. The capacity, performance, availability, protection and security for an individual virtual machine on the underlying storage platform is managed through a policy on the vSphere level.

Advanced Features and ImprovementsCross vSwitch vMotion: Migrate VMs across different vSwitches, it is not dependent on previous network configs or different vDS (Distributed Switches)

Cross vCenter vMotion: Not only can you vMotion to a new vCenter, you can change the Host, Storage, and its Network . You can also migrate from VCSA to Windows vCenter

Long Distance vMotion: Similarly to Cross vCenter vMotion, vCenter 6 allows you to vMotion across geographical distances. Perfect for DR, Maintenance, and Load Balancing. (Also requires 250 Mbps Bandwidth and <100ms latency)

Third Party Distributed Switches: An enhancement of their SDN offering, more vendors and more features available.

vSphere Data Protection (vDP)

vDP is now included with vSphere Essentials Plus and Higher

VMware has taken all the features of VDP Advanced & consolidated them into the same product

Fault Tolerance: Fault Tolerance is an awesome feature for workloads that need guaranteed uptime, but in pervious versionsyou were limited on the VM’s vhardware. Workloads with greater resources can now take advantage of FT.

Feature FT 5.5 FT 6.0vCPUs 1 4

Virtual Disks EZT AnyHot Config FT X ●

H/W Virtualization X ●Backup (Snapshot) X ●Paravirtual Devices X ●

Storage Redundancy X ●VSAN/vVols X X

HA ● ●DRS Partial PartialDPM ● ●SRM ● ●VDS ● ●

Storage DRS X XVCD X X

vSphere Replication X X

Misc items: High Availability ImprovementsvSphere ReplicationImproved SecurityBetter Microsoft ClusteringAnd a lot more…

NETWIZE

VMWARE USER GROUP

FIRST GROUP MEETING

GIVEAWAY!COLEMAN ROADTRIP® LXX GRILL

TAILGATING JUST GOT SIMPLER

PLEASE MARK YOUR INTEREST ON THE SURVEYhttp://www.coleman.com/product/roadtripreg-lxx-grill/2000010225#.VaRHEvlVhBe

Q&A??

Thank you for Attending

The vVol-architecture consists of the following components:

VASA ProviderThe VASA Provider is a software component that is developed by storage array vendors and that exposes the storage services which a vVols array can provide. It also understands VASA APIs for operations such as the creation of virtual volume files. It can be thought of as the “control plane” element of Vvols.

Protocol Endpoints (PE)Protocol Endpoints are the channel through which data is sent between the virtual machines and the arrays. They can be thought of as the “data plane” component of Vvols. PE’s are configured as a part of the physical storage fabric, and are accessed by standard storage protocols, such as iSCSI, NFS v3, and FC.

Storage ContainerA storage container is a logical construct for grouping Virtual Volumes. It is set up by the storage admin, and the capacity of the container can be defined. As mentioned before, vVols allows you to separate capacity management from policy management. Containers provide the ability to isolate or partition storage according to whatever need or requirement you may have.The main thing to note about storage containers is, a storage container maps to a vSphere Datastore. The concept of datastores is deeply embedded within vSphere and all associated products, and they are used for various purposes, such as administrative access control. Vvols provides a corresponding object so that you can continue to logically manage storage as you do with traditional arrays.

Storage Policy-Based Management framework (SPBM)Instead of being based on static, per-LUN assignment, storage policies with vVols are managed through the Storage Policy-Based Management framework of vSphere. This framework uses the VASA APIs to query the storage array about what data services it offers, and then exposes them to vSphere as capabilities. These capabilities can then be grouped together into rules and rulesets, which are then assigned to VMs when they get deployed. When configuring the array, the storage admin can choose which capabilities to expose or not expose to vSphere.