New Install - new to VMware

[dahaselh]

I’ve been tasked with a virtualization project and since my only interaction with VMware up to this point is the week of training I received, I thought I would run some of this past you guys.  We are putting two hosts in a datacenter which will, in time host around 24 VMs.  If you could take a look at the information below and give me feedback on this setup, I would greatly appreciate it.

There will be two hosts (ESXi 4.1 U1), each has the following hardware:

HP DL 380G7

2 - 6 core CPUs

8 – NIC

48 GB RAM

Raid 5 array – 143GB

LSI SAS 9201-16e HBA - SAS

Storage:

IBM DS3512 | 10 Drives | 3TB Storage | SAS connections

There are two controllers and each controller has 4 SAS ports.

The vCenter server will be installed on the local drives attached to Host1.

Let’s start with the storage –

I’m splitting the space right down the middle and creating 2 logical drives @ 1.1TB each.  Host1 will be connected to port 1 on controller A and port 1 on controller B for redundancy.  Host 2 will be connected to port 3 on controller A and port 3 on controller B.  Although each host should be able to see all storage on the device, they will be restricted to using 1 logical drive each.

NICs & vSwitches –

4 onboard NICs (1,2,3,4) and 4 on an add-on card (5,6,7,8)

vSwitch1 – Management/vmotion – 2 pNICs (1,5)

vSwitch2 – Production – 4 pNICs (2,6)

vSwitch3 – DMZ – 2 pNICs (3,4,7,8)

I have a couple of VMs that will need to be accessed externally, but I’m not really sure how to best accomplish this task.  I’ve been looking at vShield zones, but I don’t recall spending a lot of time on that in training so I have quite a bit of reading to do in order to get a better understanding of this service.  If I do end up using vShield zones, will that completely change my NIC setup above?

What do you think?

[VMSpotlight]

Is this just your "planned" set-up or is this already deployed/in place?

[dahaselh]

The planned setup.  As i've been reading about VMware i've been taking notes and this is what I came up with.  I actually left out the version (Advanced) we are licensed for in my original post if that makes any difference. 

[VMSpotlight]

Looks ok, but switch setup I always found to be tricky unless you are confident in what you are doing.

I'm not an expert on architecture and usually had help from a Guru so I can't really advise on that. :S

[golddiggie]

Why are you planning to use DAS storage instead of a SAN configuration? How many physical servers do you actually have in your environment?

Looks like you have the assignments flipped for the DMZ and production pNIC's...

IF you were to use a SAN, you'd have greater flexibility. I wouldn't use the local datastore for the vCenter Server either. Put everything on shared storage. Otherwise, you're seriously limiting your flexibility. IME/IMO, building a new environment, it makes sense to build in as much flexibility from the start, using SAN, proper networking (including the physical switches) and such. As things stand now, if you lose the host that's running the vCenter Server, you won't be able to do much of anything about those VM's. Well, not easily/quickly that is. You also won't get an alert/email that something has gone wrong (if you configure alarms/alerts) so you could walk into a sheit-storm, or get a phone call saturation due to VM's going offline and not coming back up within a reasonable amount of time. Personally, I'd rather NOT set my self up for that level of pain. IMO, better to ask for some more funds, and get a SAN from the start. Reduced down time, headaches, etc. make it a worthy investment. 

[cblomart]

I pretty mch agree with golddiggle.

SAN is a must if you want something resilient...

The vSwitch config is strange except if you plan for a solution giving plenty of access to DMZ.

Not a specialist about vsphere vsheild either... Basicaly ig you thightly discrimnate network adapters and portgroup assignement a good DMZ (two firewall or a "tree leged" one) would be ok (i think). Simply don't mix network connections on a vm...