Cover; Copyright; Credits; About the Author; Acknowledgments; About the Reviewers; www.PacktPub.com; Table of Contents; Preface; Chapter 1:The Virtual Datacenter; Introduction; Becoming a virtual datacenter architect; Using a holistic approach to datacenter design; Passing the VMware VCAP-DCD exam; Chapter 2:The Discovery Process; Introduction; Identifying the design factors; Identifying stakeholders; Conducting stakeholder interviews; VMware Capacity Planner; Using Windows Performance Monitor; Identifying dependencies; Chapter 3:The Design Factors; Introduction.
Identifying design requirementsIdentifying design constraints; Making design assumptions; Identifying design risks; Creating the conceptual design; Chapter 4:The vSphere Management Design; Introduction; Identifying vCenter components and dependencies; Selecting a vCenter deployment option; Determining the vCenter system requirements; Selecting a database for vCenter deployment; Determining database interoperability; Choosing a vCenter Single Sign-On deployment mode; Designing for management availability; Backing up the vCenter Server components.
Using vCenter Server Heartbeat to provide vCenter availabilitySecuring the management components; Designing a separate management cluster; Chapter 5:The vSphere Storage Design; Introduction; Identifying RAID levels; Calculating storage capacity requirements; Determining storage performance requirements; Calculating storage throughput; Storage connectivity options; Storage path selection plugins; Sizing datastores; Chapter 6:The vSphere Network Design; Introduction; Determining network bandwidth requirements; Standard or distributed virtual switches; Providing network availability.
Virtual switch securityNetwork resource management; Using private VLANs; IP storage network design considerations; vMotion network design considerations; Chapter 7:The vSphere Compute Design; Introduction; Calculating CPU resource requirements; Calculating memory resource requirements; Scaling up or scaling out; Determining the vCPU-to-core ratio; Clustering compute resources; Reserving HA resources to support failover; Using distributed resource scheduling to balance cluster resources; Ensuring cluster vMotion compatibility; Chapter 8:The vSphere Physical Design; Introduction.
Using the VMware Hardware Compatibility List (HCL)Understanding the physical storage design; Understanding the physical network design; Creating the physical compute design; Creating a custom ESXi image; Best practices for ESXi host BIOS settings; Chapter 9:The Virtual Machine Design; Introduction; Right-sizing virtual machines; Enabling CPU Hot Add and Memory Hot Plug; Creating virtual machine templates; Using vApps to organize virtualized applications; Using VM affinity and anti-affinity rules; Converting physical servers with vCenter Converter Standalone.
