Virtualization of servers is one of the hottest topics in today's IT environment. VMware has made major improvements to the VI3 suite of products and released a new and exciting offering called vSphere. There are over 150 new features, and they are "across the board," ranging from the overall product and its packaging to the management interfaces used to configure it. This white paper takes a look at three main topics: what's new in configuration maximums, installation, host profiles, and hot plug capability, and the concept of cloud computing; second, the new features of the vCenter Server 4.0 and how they simplify management and reduce the complexity of working with large virtual environments; and three, the new business aspects of vSphere and the features included in each of the four editions of the product.

What's New in vSphere 4.0

It might be more appropriate to ask "what's not new" in vSphere 4.0! A completely new approach and a new list of acronyms are provided by cloud computing. New, and unbelievable, configuration maximums have been achieved. The installation of the host server has been simplified and can now be profiled. The capability on virtual machines to hot-add components that were once thought impossible has been achieved.

Cloud Computing

VMware has taken a completely new approach to virtualization by embracing the cloud computing concept and developing vSphere as an internal-private cloud (the datacenter) that can co-exist with external clouds provided by third-parties (such as Amazon, Nirvanix, and many others). Cloud computing serves businesses that need production-level performance and reliability, regardless of whether the resource is on or off their premises. A huge ecosystem of technology and cloud service providers has emerged over the last few years and continues to expand.

vSphere promises to offer choice of provider, reliable technologies, and full application support for this new cloud computing environment. Users can leverage the Virtual Appliance Marketplace to deploy over 1000 applications to a cloud or to an on-premise environment. Also new to vSphere and cloud computing is the concept of a vApp, which is a logical "wrapper" that contains an application as well as all of the virtual machines and resources required to make it function, whether internal or external. Often, applications require more than one virtual machine to function properly (for example, a NAT client requires a NAT router), so the concept of the vApp adds a capability to manage an application at a new level while at the same time reducing the complexity involved.

New Configuration Maximums

I can't count the number of times that my VI3 students have said that they are beginning to consolidate servers but that some of the very high-powered servers have not even been considered because of the processor and memory limitations of VMs on VI3. It's interesting to me that the configuration maximums of 4 processors and 64GB of RAM per VM could be considered as a "limitation" but, in some cases, the physical servers that are being used for databases or other high-capacity jobs require more resources than those maximums allow. With vSphere, VMware has all but obliterated that particular objection to consolidating a physical server to a virtual one. Below are some of the new, and somewhat insane, configuration maximums for vSphere 4.0 VMs and ESX 4.0 hosts.

• 8 vCPUs per VM
• 255GB RAM per VM (Available Memory)
• 10 vNICs per VM
• 512 vCPUs per host
• 320 VMs simultaneously running on a host
• 64 physical CPUs per host
• 20 vCPUs per core
• 1TB physical RAM per host

New Installation Video

If you've ever installed ESX 3.5, then you know that some parts of that installation tend to be a little "cryptic" at best. The VMware Install and Configure classes that I teach begin on day one with a complete install of an ESX 3.5 operating system on a Dell PowerEdge host. I typically walk my students through the installation step by step before we begin, and I still end up walking around the room and confirming with the students that they are on the "right track" during the installation. The biggest danger during the installation is that choosing the wrong LUN on the SAN could result in destroying important data on a drive. This is what we refer to as an RGE, or resume generating event! In addition, the incorrect selection of a NIC that is not actually connected to the management network can result in a new "troubleshooting opportunity."

To circumvent these issues and infuse you with more confidence while installing the software, VMware has provided a video depicting an installation of ESX 4.0 using the GUI installation. If "a picture is worth a thousand words," then a video must be worth at least a thousand pictures! The video is included with the ESX 4.0 software, and you can also find it on the web. After watching the video, you can quickly relate the example installation to your own environment and make the appropriate choices. We also highly recommend that you coordinate with your SAN administrator to make sure that you don't create an RGE.

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