The DroboElite: A Bargain

y At least 25% of the customers, who purchase a DroboElite, use it within the vSphere (i.e. ESX) environment. y The Elite is officially certified for use with vSphere4.0 (i.e. ESX 4.0)
y The Elite, with its 8 slots, dual iSCSI ports, DDR and Smart Volumes, is

a veritable bargain compared to iSCSI arrays such as the Dell EqualLogic PS4000 series arrays, which costs anywhere from $25K to $36K.

What is VM Ware?
y VM Wares ESX/ESXi is virtualization software: so-called bare-metal hypervisor - that installs directly on a physical machine y A hypervisor is a program that allows multiple operating systems to run on the same physical machine, sharing the same physical resources such as processors, disk drives and memory y Virtualization is a hypervisor: essentially a process by which hardware is changed into software: virtualization allows one to run multiple operating systems on a single computer

What is vSphere4.0?
y vSphere consists of:

ESX/ESXi the hypervisor or virtualization platform vCenter Server installs on a XP or 2003 PC and allows complete management of the ESX/ESXi environment, especially the virtual machines vSphere Client similar to the above and allows one to connect remotely from a Windows PC and perform very basic tasks VMFS the high-performance clustering file system that VMs use

What is Virtualization?
y Virtualization is a hypervisor in action: essentially a process by which hardware is changed into software y Virtualization allows one to run multiple operating systems on a single computer: even programs like Parallels (Mac) is virtualization software y In general, when installing a hypervisor such as ESX, a virtualization layer is placed between the hardware (on which ESX is installed) and virtual machine or operating system y In essence, the virtualization (hypervisor) acts as a go-between for the multiple operating systems and the actual hardware (e.g. Dell PowerEdge 2900) on which the hypervisor (e.g. ESX) is installed.

ESX: Bare-Metal Hypervisor

y Since ESX installs directly onto a physical machine, it is called a bare-metal hypervisor, giving it direct-access to the machines resources o (CPUs, memory, drives) y Bare-metal just means it is installed directly onto the machine, as opposed to being installed inside of an operating system, like an application y ESX (hypervisor) is an operating system or platform that allows the partitioning of the physical machines resourcs from which virtual machines are created and with which resources are shared y ESX really extracts the physical resources from the machine on which its installed so you can create (and run) virtual machines

What is a Virtual Machine?

y Virtual Machines (or VMs) are software constructs of PCs or Servers that one creates within the ESX environment y Once one creates VMs, then guest operating systems (e.g. Windows 2008) are installed into the VMs y VMs are 100% software are just a set of files created by ESX, that includes virtual disks and virtual CPUs instead of the physical equivalents y All VMs you install are isolated from one another: they dont know that the other exists y All VMs share resources provided by the physical machine on which ESX is installed: CPUs, disk space, memory, NICs y Since Virtual Machines (VMs) are just a set of files (e.g. configuration file, virtual disk file, NVRAM settings), they can easily be moved between hosts or storage

VMFS: Virtual Machine File System

y VMFS is a clustering file system with lock-outs which prevents data corruption and many hosts from powering-on the same VM at once y A clustering file system (sometimes called shared-disk file system) allows multiple servers to access storage at the same time y VMFS was created to storage virtual machines disk image

y VMFS version 3 (VMFS3) is used by ESX Server v3.x and vSphere (4.x) y Most Elite and Pro customers use our product as VMFS datastores

Datastores: VM Depositories
y A datastore is a logical storage unit created on a physical disk y A datastore is used to hold VMs, ISO images, etc. y VMFS datastores are most common, especially with Elite or Pro y A VM, which is a set of files, is stored (as files) on a datastore y iSCSI-based storage is a very common type of datastore y The Elite is typically used as a VMFS datastore

vSwitch: Virtual Switches

y A vSwitch is a switch made of software that connects VMs to each other, to Datastores and to ESX hosts y All network communications must be handled by a vswitch, including that for the VMKernel (hypervisor) and the service console (ESX only) y Ideally, you create separate switches for the VMs and the iSCSI storage (e.g. Elite) y One creates a vswitch for the Elite so it can be added as Storage within the vSphere (ESX) environment and used by VMs and by hosts y Each vswitch must have one or more real NICs associated with it

How are Elite/ESX Customers Using the 8-Slot Array?

y They use our Dashboard to create Multi-Host LUNs y Using ESXs vswitch, Initiator and Elites IP info, they add it as Storage y They format the Elite with VMFS y They move (i.e. migrate) VMs to the Elite, from ESX hosts y They also create VMs on the Elite itself, for use as virtual workstations or servers y They Clone the VMs already on the Elite y Use Elite as iSCSI storage and VM depository

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What is a Migration?
y Remember that a Virtual Machine (VM) is just a set of files: virtual disk (vmdk), NVRAM, configuration and log files y A Migration is just moving files from one host or storage location to another y A migration is not a Clone, which is just a copy of a VM y Migrations are either cold (VM is OFF) or hot (VM is ON) y VMotions are performed while the VM is on y Storage VMotions move the VMs virtual disk from one datastore to another

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What is a Clone? What is a Template?

y A clone is a copy of a VM, like a template y Technically, a template is a master copy of a VM and will, typically include the guest O/S, applications, etc. y You can use clones or templates as a way of provisioning (i.e. making more) VMs, instead of creating them from scratch.

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How Do We Make it All Work?

y Install ESX or ESXi on a suitable machine y In order to manage and view the ESX configuration, install vSphere Client and/or vCenter Server on a Windows XP or Windows 2003 PC y Make note of all network settings for the Client machine/PC, the Elite and the ESX servers y Make sure that Elite has multi-host LUNs created: no more than 2TB is size y Connect Elite, via switch, to the ESX machines and the Client PC y Use ESX iSCSI initiator and scan for the Elite y Use ESX and create VMFS LUNs on the Elite

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Installing ESX Server: Minimum Hardware Requirements

Processor 2 CPUs 2.0GHz or higher Intel or AMD (64-bit) x86 processors.

Memory 4GB RAM. Disk storage at least 10GB (SATA) Networking Two 1Gbps NICs Recommended

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