I've done vSphere 5 NIC designs using 6 NICs and 10 NICs but this one is going to be a bit different. I'm only going to focus on 10GbE NIC designs as well as Cisco UCS. Let's be honest with ourselves, 10GbE is what everyone is moving to, and if you are implementing vCloud Director, it's probably going to be in a 10GbE environment anyway.

I've always considered that a good vCloud design is based on a good vSphere design, which still stands and holds true for the most part. In a few recent engagements I've been involved in, I've seen architects want to use 4 NICs for their vCloud Hosts… and here's why

When you are designing a vCloud environment, most people will tend to use VCDNI (vCloud Director Network Isolation… soon to be VXLAN) which involves a little bit more complexity when it comes to the design. During the deployment of a VCDNI network a new port group is created on the vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS). This port group is automatically created by vCloud Director and therefore inherits the following features (which are strongly recommended to NEVER change):

• The default NIC behavior is to always choose dvUplink1 on the vSphere Distributed Switch
• dvUplink1 is set as the Active NIC while all other NICs attached to the vDS are set to Stand-by
• The port group is set as "route based on originating port id"
• The security settings are the original defaults with:
  • Promiscious Mode: Reject
  • MAC Address Changes: Accept
  • Forged Transmits: Accept

So what does this potentially mean for your design and NIC considerations? It usually means that the NIC assigned to dvUplink 1 will be constantly utilized. I honestly don't know if the VCDNI/VXLAN port groups will choose a different dvUplink other than dvUplink1, but in all of my testing only dvUplink1 has been chosen. You need to take this into account so these are a few designs I have created using 4x10GbE, 2x10GbE and 2x1GbE, and 2x10GbE with UCS.

Other than some cool technology, VCE brings many more benefits to the table. Today, I'm going to dive into the certification matrix. Before we actually talk about the matrix, lets look at what comes before then. Since VCE is comprised of parent company products (VMware, Cisco, EMC, and Intel), we have alpha access to not only new software level releases, but as well as new hardware. VCE's Platform Engineering team is tasked with taking existing hardware as well has new hardware, and coming up with a physical and logical architecture design that meets requirements based upon performance, environmentals, and ease of repeatability. After Platform Engineering has created a validated design, they need to keep the architecture up to date with new hardware released from parent companies which may or may not require the swapping of components for new Vblocks. Have you ever calculated how much time it takes someone like yourself to completely design a virutalized infrastructure such as this? There are literally thousands of options from the main hardware components, types of cables and interconnects, power options, and placement of equipment into racks which dictates power draw, BTUs, and cable lengths. On average, it's close to 300 pieces that are aggregated together.

Now Quality Assurance steps in. QA is responsible for the integration and testing of the design. This integration testing is performed so we know that all components are able to communicate with one another and the Vblock talks as a complete system. This is the first part of the validation process. After all components are validated, their firmware and software versions are noted and then the regression testing begins. This base regression test is for existing component verification. Afterwards, new functionality tests are then performed so new features are fully tested and considered working throughout the stack. Lastly, interoperability tests happen by additional e-lab teams. An example of some tests are: installation and configuration, recovery, stability, load/performance, patch and maintenance testing, interface testing inbound and outbound, negative test strategies, provisioning with and without cloud products like UIM, usability, and physical testing of fault tolerant systems, visual indicators, and thermals. In fact, check out these numbers from January 2012. Over 2000 hours of testing are put into Vblock Platforms during every major release cycle.

Attachments:

VCE Certification Matrix 2.5 for Vblock 300

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23/05/12 08:50

After 96 hours of downtime, kendrickcoleman.com is alive once again. This is my post-mortem of the experience and a little piece of my mind.

I woke up around 8am EST Saturday May 5th to see a tweet from @BasRaayman that said "Kenny, you might want to check with your hoster, your blog is stating "This Account Has Been Suspended"?". Great, what a fantastic way to start my Derby day. I look at my email and I see "WEB HOSTING ACCOUNT DEACTIVATED" in all caps.

Here are some snippets from the email:

Dear Kendrick:

It has come to our attention that your site is using an extreme amount of resources on our servers and network; consequently, your site has outgrown the Just Host shared hosting package.  It has become increasingly more difficult to keep your site online, and doing so now degrades the experience for the other users on our servers. Others who have experienced such growth with their site(s) and hosting needs have chosen to move their site(s) to a Dedicated Server or Virtual Private Server (VPS). Just Host does not currently offer Dedicated or VPS hosting. These alternative hosting services will include more resources and site stability, as well as better backup and server redundancy. Add a comment

Last week I was sitting at the Louisville VMUG listening to some vendors speak. Even when he was gauging the crowd, he asked the question "what type of cloud is everyone running today?" Everyone responded with the same answer "Private Cloud". That got me fired up enough to send out this tweet that read "I want to express this very important point. Server Virtualization != Private Cloud"

Of course, everyone is going to have their own opinions on this topic because the term "cloud" is always open for debate. Let me give you a take on what I think. I've had this conversation with Chris Colotti and some other folks a few times so I would consider myself somewhat educated on the topic.

Server virtualization (or a virtualized datacenter) is what we have been doing for years now. Get a couple of servers, some switches, a storage array, make it all talk, then use VMware Converter or PlateSpin to do some P2Vs. Consolidation, simplifying DR efforts, simplifying administration, and achieving a lower TCO are the main goals of server virtualization. At the heart of all this was running a multitude of virtualized operatiing systems on a hypervisor that virtualized the underlying hardware. Pretty fascinating stuff. Is that cloud? Of course not. It's just a cool technology.

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