Cloud Computing

What's New in VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.0

26 May 2017 by Uma Panda

What’s New in VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4

This is a significant milestone release in VMware commitment to deliver customers standardized, proven, and robust data-center level designs for the Software-Defined Data Center. The excitement from VMware customers and partners for this release has been phenomenal – from the wave of product updates, new advanced day-two operations, streamlined online access, and the release of the Solution Enablement Toolkit for partners.

As VMware talk to customers and partners on a daily basis, there are many questions about the design. Hence VMware wanted a way to provide a quick architecture reference as we get started with the design. It is really pleasant to have a look at VMware’s architecture reference poster for the VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.0

VMware Validated Designs provide a set of prescriptive documents that explain how to plan, deploy, and configure a Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC). The architecture, the detailed design, and the deployment guides provide instructions about configuring a dual-region SDDC. It’s tested by VMware to ensure that all components and their individual versions work together, scale, and perform as expected. Unlike Reference Architectures which focus on an individual product or purpose, a VMware Validated Design is a holistic approach to design, encompassing many products in a full stack for a broad set of use case scenarios in an SDDC. It supports a number of use cases, and is optimized for integration, expansion, Day-2 operations, as well as future upgrades and updates. As new products are introduced, and new versions of existing products are released, VMware continues to qualify the cross-compatibility and upgrade paths of the VMware Validated Designs. Designing with a VMware Validated Design ensures that future upgrade and expansion options are available and supported.

This poster depicts many portions of the fundamental architecture for both quick reference and discussion.

vvd-sddc-40-poster.pdf

VMware Software Components in the Validated Design:

VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.0 is based on a set of individual VMware products with different versions that are available in a common downloadable package.

What's New:

VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.0 provides the following new features:

Updated Bill of Materials that incorporates new product versions
All new SDDC roles and personas guidance
Platform Services Controllers in each region are now behind an NSX load balancer
Use of host profiles to deploy ESXi on the hosts in the management and the shared edge and compute pods.
New operational guidance for certificate replacement of the SDDC management cluster
Support for SHA-2 Certificates
NSX distributed logical router for the shared edge and compute cluster
Improved free space recommendations for vSAN and NFS datastores
Less nodes required for the analytics cluster of vRealize Operations Manager
Now using syslog to send log data from vCenter Server and Platform Services Controller to vRealize Log Insight
Implemented SSL for log forwarding
Incorporated the use of vSphere Update Manager for upgrading ESXi hosts
Adoption of service accounts for secure application-to-application communication
Remote Office and Branch Office (ROBO) guidance that extends the VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center with details about connecting smaller remote locations to primary data centers.
The components execution progress is reported real-time in the execution UI in specific colour code.

Supports the deployment and configuration model for the entire stack like Region-A & Region-B

VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center 4.0.1 updates the 4.0 guides to resolve issues with Platform Services Controller High Availability Load Balancer host name usage, Platform Services Controller Load Balancer deployment, and other technical points. You can find details on these changes in the Updated Information section of each guide that VMware modified for the 4.0.1 release.

The poster has six major sections. Now let’s look in to all those:

Logical Components Architecture: This section illustrates the logical architecture and how the solutions are deployed and integrated across a full-stack, dual-region Software-Defined Data Center. From vCenter Servers and load-balanced Platform Services Controllers, to cross-region and cross-vCenter NSX, through cloud operations and automation with the vRealize Suite.
Core and Pod Architecture: This section illustrates the pods used in the design and how they are constructed and deployed to provide a common set of scalable building blocks for the Software Defined Data Center.
Distributed Logical Networking and Application Virtual Networks: This section illustrates the design’s use of distributed logical routing across a dual-region Software Defined Data Center by incorporating VMware NSX into the management stack. It also depicts the deployment of the full stack of SDDC solutions with Application Virtual Networks and network services provided by NSX.
Storage: This section illustrates the use of vSAN and NFS in the design. VMware Validated Designs are designed and tested with VMware vSAN in the management & shared edge and compute pods for primary storage and NFS for secondary storage (templates, archives, and backups.) VMware vSAN is required for the management pod; however, the choice of storage used in the shared edge and compute pod, and additional compute only pods is always at the discretion of the customer. We highly recommend using VMware vSAN Ready Nodes for the management pod, the VMware Validated Designs may use systems on the VMware Compatibility Guide for vSAN.
Pods and Clusters: This section illustrates, at a high-level, how the design pulls together the pods, solutions, and the use of distributed logical routing.
Region Protection and Disaster Recovery: This section illustrates how the design protects vRealize Automation, vRealize Orchestrator, vRealize Operations, and vRealize Business for Cloud in management stack using Site Recovery Manager along with NSX.