Eric Sloof

VMware View offers a personalized, device-neutral, end-user computing experience with increased security and control. It enables agile desktop solutions that quickly meet changing business needs and proactively protect against planned and unplanned downtime. This case study provides insight and information on how to increase availability and recoverability of a View infrastructure using VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) and common disaster recovery (DR) tools and methodologies.

vCenter SRM automates the failover process of the VMware View management environment to enable fast, reliable recovery and meet specific Recovery Time Objectives (RTO).The architecture described here is an active/passive design, in which the entire View infrastructure operates within one datacenter until the failover scenario is invoked. This solution does not satisfy every use case or requirement for virtual desktop disaster recovery.

Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) and Return on Investment (ROI), for example, were not evaluated during testing and implementation. However, this study does demonstrate a successfully tested DR solution for a View infrastructure that is easy to implement and support. Among the environments that can benefit from this solution are those that already include SRM and those where a virtual desktop use case has a definitive DR requirement.

Other solutions are possible for DR with VMware View, but they may be more complicated and less reliable. Although vCenter SRM is required for this specific solution, it is not a requirement for VMware View disaster recovery in general.

Link to the white paper: VMware View Infrastructure Resiliency VMware View 5 and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager

Introduction to SharePoint Virtualization discusses why VMware recommends virtualization of SharePoint. You will also learn about the need for virtualizing SharePoint and the benefits of virtualizing SharePoint on vSphere. 

Developing SharePoint Virtualization Design discusses the design prerequisites for virtualizing SharePoint. This module also discusses the key tasks in developing a SharePoint virtualization design. Moreover, this module covers general guidelines for virtualizing SharePoint.  

Implementing SharePoint on Virtual Infrastructure discusses the implementation alternatives for SharePoint virtualization. This module also covers how to implement the virtualization of SharePoint on vSphere. Finally, this module discusses how to test and monitor SharePoint performance on vSphere.


Virtualizing Microsoft SharePoint with VMware vSphere 5

The significant presence of network-attached storage (NAS) in the datacenter today has enabled many people to deploy virtualization environments with NAS-based shared storage resources. For clarity, both Network File Systems (NFS) and NAS refer to the same type of storage protocol and are used interchangeably throughout this paper. 

The capabilities of VMware vSphere on NFS are very similar to those of vSphere on block-based storage. VMware offers support for all vSphere features and functions on NFS, as it does for vSphere on block storage. Running vSphere on NFS is a viable option for many virtualization deployments, because it offers strong performance and stability when configured correctly. This paper provides an overview of the considerations and best practices for deployment of vSphere on NFS-based storage.

Best Practices for Running VMware vSphere on Network-Attached Storage (NAS)

The vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT) brings together validated VMware designs, tools, and best practices for architecting, implementing, operating, and using vCloud-based Infrastructure as a Service solutions.

Developed by VMware’s own cloud architects, vCAT has already helped hundreds of VMware customers succeed with vCloud. Now, responding to many customer requests, these VMware architects and consultants have integrated all that information into a definitive printed guide, adding even more context and examples for successful planning and deployment. Distilling VMware’s immense real-world experience, they provide a de facto reference and baseline for every vCloud project and cloud computing environment.

vCloud Architecture Toolkit (vCAT) covers all this, and more:

• VMware vCloud service definitions
• Architecting, operating, and consuming VMware vCloud services
• Implementation and workflow examples
• Software tools
• Cloud bursting theory
  
  

Makyo lets you copy virtual machines and vApps from one vCenter Server to another using a wizard in the vSphere Web Client. The said copy operation from one vCenter Server to another is done by starting an OVF export operation on the source server and an import OVF operation on the target server. No intermediate files are created when you copy a virtual machine or a vApp. The fling is installed as a plugin to the vSphere Web Client. 

After completing the course, you should be able to: 

• Discuss the common deployments of vShield Edge
• Install vShield Edge
• Deploy vShield Edge using VLAN isolation
• Deploy vShield Edge using Port Group Isolation
• Configure vShield Edge services: DHCP, NAT, Web Load Balancer, firewall, and site-to-site VPN
• Perform vShield Edge management tasks