VCP4

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Revision as of 11:36, 2 November 2009 by Sstrutt (talk | contribs) (→‎Upgrade VMware ESX/ESXi: Added backup info)
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Plan, Install and Upgrade VMware ESX/ESXi

Install VMware ESX/ESXi on local storage

Minimum Hardware Requirements

  • 64bit CPU (AMD Opteron, Intel Xenon [inc Nahalem])
    • CPU Virtualisation features required to support 64bit VM's
  • 2GB RAM
  • 1+ NIC
  • SCSI, Fibre Channel or Internal RAID controller
  • LUN, SAS or SATA (SATA must be connected through a SAS controller)

Notes

  • ESX's hardware clock should be set to UTC
  • IPv6 not supported during installation

ESXi Specifics

  • All blank internal disks are formatted with VMFS (except 4GB VFAT scratch/swap partition, used for vm-support dumps)
  • Direct Console is used to
    • Configure host defaults
    • Set-up administrator access
    • Troubleshoot
  • If no DHCP found during install, default 169.254.0.0 / 16 address assigned

vSphere Editions

Edition Features
Standard 6 cores/CPU, 4way vSMP, 256GB/ESX, Update Manager, HA
Advanced 12 cores/CPU, Hot Add, FT, vShield, VMotion
Enterprise 6 cores/CPU, Storage vMotion, DRS
Enterprise Plus 12 cores/CPU, 8way vSMP, maxGB/ESX, vNetwork Distributed Switch, Host Profiles, 3rd Party Multipathing

Upgrade VMware ESX/ESXi

Pre-Upgrade Backups

  • Backup ESX Host Config
    • Back up the files in the /etc/passwd, /etc/groups, /etc/shadow, and /etc/gshadow directories (shadow dir's may not exist).
    • Backup any custom scripts
    • Backup any .vmx files
    • Backup any local images etc on local VMFS
  • Backup ESXi Host Config
    • Use vSphere CLI to run vicfg-cfgbackup --server <ESXi-host-ip> --portnumber <port_number> --protocol <protocol_type> --username username --password <password> -s <backup-filename>
  • VM backup
    • Snapshot before upgrade

Secure VMware ESX/ESXi

Install VMware ESX/ESXi on SAN Storage

Identify vSphere Architecture and Solutions

Configure ESX/ESXi Networking

Configure Virtual Switches

Configure vNetwork Distributed Switches

Configure VMware ESX/ESXi Management Network

Configure ESX/ESXi Storage

Configure FC SAN Storage

Configure iSCSI SAN Storage

Configure NFS Datastores

Configure and Manage VMFS Datastores

Install and Configure vCenter Server

Minimum Requirements

  • 2x CPU's (2GHz)
  • 3GB RAM
  • 2GB disk
  • Microsoft SQL2005 Express
Scale VC CPU Memory
50 ESXs, 250 VMs 32 bit 2 4 GB
200 ESXs, 2000 VMs 64 bit 4 4 GB
300 ESXs, 3000 VMs 64 bit 4 8 GB
  • Database must be 32bit only, regardless of VC's OS (default database on 64bit SQL is 64bit)