This document describes Mike Laverick's journey setting up a home lab with vCloud Director. It details his previous vSphere setup and the changes made to support vCD, including using virtual appliances, establishing compute clusters, tiered storage, and distributed virtual switches. Lessons learned include properly configuring VLANs, IP ranges, and edge gateways before using them in vCD. The document also discusses potential future directions for the lab like nested ESX environments and vInception levels.

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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/nest
ed
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