Server Virtualization Proposal

This is my server virtualization   proposal I did in my 2nd year  

Server virtualization PROPOSAL

Adrian Osborne

Networking diagram: 

Proposal

Virtualization

            For the virtualization, the way to go with the hypervisor being VMware’s ESXI. It works on both Windows and Linux Platforms.  For management needs it gets the job done. It’s a lot easier to use than other hypervisors for an example Microsoft Hyper-V.  The recommendation is that VMware would be the way to go all around. With Vcenter for the management suite. because it makes it easy to centralize all user management. You can, however, still make use of local user accounts on the ESXI host, either for situations in which VCenter is unavailable, or when you wish to manage a small environment with only a few hosts without using Vcenter.  For the KIOS and POS we can use VMware horizon at each site.  With VMware, it can delivery for the users is apps and their desktop through a single platform. IT organizations can take advantage of closed-loop management and automation, and tight integration with the software-defined data center, to deliver and protect all the Windows or Linux and online resources users want, at the speed they expect, with the efficiency business demands.

            In terms of Licensing cost VMware ESXI with is free VMWare offers their ESXi hypervisor completely free with no limits placed on hardware such as limited RAM or CPU support.  The minimum license that allows us to use HA is VSphere Standard, which costs about $1000.  To use all advanced features, a VSphere Enterprise Plus license is needed, which costs about $3500.  It looks like to use distributed virtual switches the enterprise license is required, so that is the option I would recommend. The VMware horizon Workspace ONE Standard, Cloud Subscription is $ 8 per user will would work in our case because we don’t need so many users for the KIOS and POS machines.

Servers

                For most of the workload much of the infrastructure that we will need to implement this phase of the project is already present.  We already have a datacenter with existing network infrastructure to service an enterprise-grade virtualization environment using VMWare’s VSphere technology. We can use one of the servers in the Network as a SAN. Using this to cluster our host servers together to provide high availability (HA) with automatic failover to all our virtualized services to endure that they are always online and available. For a Dell PowerEdge t710 server the price on eBay is $500 or you can get refurbished one for $1219.98 from staples or another place like that. I would recommend getting the one for $500 dollars. The Dell PowerEdge R730 would be possible for  $3000 to $5000. They would handle the NAS and Linux servers at each site.

 STORAGE

            As mentioned earlier for storage in the main datacenter a SAN will do quite nicely. Housing our VM datastores on the shared storage of a SAN allows multiple physical ESXi hosts to access the same set of VMs.  This means that any host can run any VM at any time.  For a SAN, I would recommend using a SAS drive however, a good fast SAS drive would not be cheap. For a 600 GB 15 000 RPM drive from Dell cost about $800 but are the best choice for use as the primary storage location for our virtual machine datastores to get the best performance and reliability. The reason why I would recommend SAS drives to put it in one of the servers in the datacenter would be because, a standard SATA drive wouldn’t stand up to the HA demands of the serer for its virtualization and it would fail. Not very good for needing HA.

Networking  

        For the networking, I would recommend every site and the datacenter have it own VLAN. In the case of location one the admin computers there would be one VLAN 10 subnet the network in this case would be 172.16.10.0. In the next VLAN for location one it would be for the KIOS VLAN 11 ip address 172.16.11.0. The next one for the POS would be VLAN 12 with the ip address 172.16.12.0. The WI-FI VLAN would be VLAN 13 ip address 172.16.13.0. VLAN for the server NAS would VLAN 14 with 172.16.14.0. The Linux Server would be VLAN 15 with 172.16.15.0.

For location 2 the VLANS would be set up almost like the VLANs location one with the VLANS being set up between VLAN 20-24 ip address of each VLAN 172.16.20-24.0. With each of the machines being up set just like the first one.  Location 3 would be setup like the first two with the VLANS being VLAN 30-34 ip addresses of each VLAN would range from 172.16.30 to 172.16.34.0. With locations 4 and 5 have those setups similar as well with VLAN 40 to 44 VLAN 50 to 54 retrospectively. With the datacenter, the servers can be on VLAN 1, VLAN2, VLAN 3. Like the server that hosts the SAN VLAN 1 ip address 172.16.1.0. the other two in the datacenter be on VLAN 2 ip address 172.16.2.0 and vlan 3 ip address 172.16.3.0. 

Pricing for FCoE (fibre channel over Ethernet) without speaking directly to their representative from a vendor is hard to determine.  Besides the FCoE switch and cabling, only a modest server running Linux would be necessary to implement the iSCSI targets needed for the SAN. For the Switches, I would recommend using a couple of layer 2 switches from dell. In fact, the Dell Networking 2800 Series it starts at $247 a pop.

Operational Considerations

            For the network and virtualization to work and because of redundancy. I didn’t go to far from the case study in terms of hardware. I would recommend since the dell PowerEdge servers are in the datacenter already. That we continue to use them across all the sites there are very good blade servers for just the occasion.  For the Virtualization VMware will work its easier than Microsoft Hyper-V. Benefits are that it is free and easier to use and for the just our KIOS and POS machines. You could use many users and profiles however that would take up time as well as an Active directory which could mean more money for NSCC to spend. We could take advantage of Cloud based VMware horizon for that only $ dollars a user doesn’t need many user since their only POS and KIOS machines.     

Disaster Recovery

        With the server infrastructure for our retail sites virtualized we will be very well protected against downtime caused by the most common culprits such as hardware failure, communications connectivity loss, OS failure of a host, and many more.   For backups at the local sites the backup will stored in the NAS storage filled with SATA drives. Besides at each local site I would recommend one of the severs have a NAS storage as well more of it backup the datacenter as well as each site. This will allow us to build a large capacity array cheaply, and since the drives will not be used at high duty cycles they are suitably robust to be used for this purpose.

            For backup, just in case of power loss I would recommend a UPS in the datacenter because that would be handy for power loss letting us backup the data in a sudden power loss. With hardware configurations, we are going to need a backup. So, on the datacenter the backups to those would have to be stored there as well. We will also want to keep backups of our virtual machines as well So that they can be restored should they be damaged, or unable to boot the virtual machines. This I recommend should be done daily. If not done daily It should be weekly.  With in terms of backing up our Virtual Machines it can be done without taking real actual hardware offline. Making it easier to restore the Virtual Machines because we don’t have to restore hardware.