My submissions to vSphere Design Pocketbook

I was going through my notes, and I came across the points that I had earlier submitted to the vSphere Design Pocketbook contest that was/still is a generous courtesy from PernixData. Although some of them were already mentioned by other fellow VMware enthusiasts I thought I should list them anyway.

#1 – Storage design (VDI)
Consider SSD hard drives for base images, replicas and linked clones, increases the performance significantly.

#2 – Storage Design (VDP)
Make sure the array controller has a battery for caching and increase the percentage of write out, significantly speeds up the backup.

#3 – Network and Security Design
Always get two PCIe interfaces, never settle to a single quad Ethernet card *single point of failure*.

#4 – Network and Security Design
Always separate the vMotion network to a different VLAN and make sure it’s teamed correctly with ether channel (CISCO) or Link Aggregation (HP/3Com).

#5 – vCenter Design (General)
Although its supported, but after experience do try to keep the vCenter out of the ESXi, even if you have to install VMware Workstation and install it there.

#5 – vCenter Design (with VMware VSA) – Selected by the judges ^_^
Although it supported, please try to get your VSA cluster service to be OUTSIDE of the cluster so that it can monitor the health correctly, usually I just installed on the vCenter which is off the hosts as well.

#6 – vCenter Design (General) – Selected by the judges ^_^
Always consider configuring alerts, just not as a side task when implementing the project but emphasis this task as it will save you time when troubleshooting later on.

#7 – Host Design
Always make sure you have the hosts configured to an NTP server before starting to build up your virtual infrastructure. If you have Windows configure your PDC, also an appliance would do, if not use the internet.

I hope this benefits someone out there :).

(Abdullah)^2