Does vsphere enterprise plus include vcenter

Running head: IMPLEMENTING VSPHERE ENTERPRISE

IMPLEMENTING VSPHERE 4

Implementing VSphere Enterprise Plus into an Existing Network

Michael Boddie

Foundations of Network Virtualization

NTC/330

May 27, 2018

Introduction

VSphere enterprise plus is a tier of VMware license which provides host profiles. This is a proposal migration plan which will include VMware products that need to be installed. The proposal will also include obstacles which one ought to consider during installation of VMware and the configuration process of VMware and a high level timeline for the entire project.

VMware products

There are various products that need to be installed and used for this project. One of the VMware products are VMware vCenter converter standalone. This is a product used to convert virtual and physical machines to VMware virtual machines. One can also configure virtual machines in their vCenter server environment. vCenter converter standalone usually eases the exchange of virtual machines various products. One of the products are VMware hosted products. Another one is virtual machines running on ESXi or ESX instance which vCenter Server manages. Third product is virtual machines running on unmanaged ESXi or ESX host. Migration with a converter standalone product usually involves converting of virtual machines, system images, and physical machines for use in VMware manages and hosted products (Dekens, 2011).

Obstacles that ought to be considered for the installation of vSphere

There are few obstacles that need to be considered when installing vSphere. First, hardware configurations which ought to be supported by ESXi 6.0. The hardware must be compliant on the VMware compatibility guide. This include I/O compatibility, storage compatibility, system compatibility, and system compatibility. Another obstacle is compatible CPU. All the hosts must have compatible and supported processor. VSphere requires two or more CPUS cores, 64-bit x86 processor, NX/XD bit of the CPU must be enables in the host BIOS. The third obstacle is sufficient network adapters. Forth is sufficient memory. In here one hosts must have at least 4 GM Random Access Memory (RAM) but the recommended one is 8 GB RAM so as to take advantage of all the features of VSphere.

To successfully migrate this project, one must ensure their VSphere are compatible with vCenter Server version. It is also important to read the VSphere set-up guide and the VMware vSphere notes for awareness of few known installation issues.

VSphere Configuration

Before one begins configuring VSphere it is important to first read the release notes. Second one should ensure that ESXi has been installed successfully. One should then go ahead to configure the ESXi boot and the network settings, direct console and other settings. Virtual switch acts as an interface to connect virtual Ethernet adapters with physical Ethernet adapters. Before creating and deploying a DSC SWeVM instance one must6 have the minimum virtual switches. To configure virtual switches one should log to the VMware ESXi server using what is known as VMware VSphere client. One then selects the configuration tab, then selects networking in the hardware section. One then goes ahead by clicking add networking link and selects virtual machine then next and selects VSphere switch from a list so as to handle network traffic for that particular connection then next where is required to fill network label filed then clicks the VLAN ID drop-down list then clicks finish (Guthrie, Lowe, & Saidel-Keesing, 2013).

Virtual machines usually communicates with its virtual disk storage on a data-store. To access virtual disks, virtual machines uses what is known as SCSI controllers. These controllers are LSI logic, VMware Paravirtual, BusLogic Parallee, and LSI logic parallel. Virtual machine templates are used for efficiency. By using templates many repetitive configuration and installation tasks can be avoided. Resources in vMware vSphere include power, network resources, CPU, memory, and storage. Resources are allocated based on the limits defined by the use, overhead required to manage the virtualization, and the number of virtual machines. With PowerCLI one can automate creation and modify host profiles. vSphere provides a number of tools which help a system administrator monitor performance of virtual environment. Some of these tools are performance charts, system log files, storage maps and charts.

Timeline

Estimating the time required to migrate to a vSphere environment depends on three major factors which are performance and historical data which includes task and event and statistical data, the database size, and the host hardware and configuration. For this project there is 750 GB memory and no server uses more than 8 GB RAM this means that migrating all data can take not more than 10 hours and 45 minutes. Migrating configuration and Inventory can take about 30 minutes. Migrating configuration, task data, and inventory can take not more than 5 hours and 48 minutes (Estimating the time for migration of vCenter Server 5.5 or 6.0 to vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 , 2016).

References Dekens, L. (2011). VMware vSphere powerCLI reference : automating vSphere administration. Estimating the time for migration of vCenter Server 5.5 or 6.0 to vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 . (2016, November 16th). Retrieved from VMware: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2147711 Guthrie, F., Lowe, S., & Saidel-Keesing, M. (2013). VMware vSphere design.