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Herausgeber: Packt Publishing
Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
Sprache: Englisch

Beschreibung

Design a virtualized data center with VMware vSphere 6.7

Key Features

Get the first book on the market that helps you design a virtualized data center with VMware vSphere 6.7

Learn how to create professional vSphere design documentation to ensure a successful implementation

A practical guide that will help you apply infrastructure design principles to vSphere design

Book Description

VMware is the industry leader in data center virtualization. The vSphere 6.x suite of products provides a robust and resilient platform to virtualize server and application workloads.

This book uses proven infrastructure design principles and applies them to VMware vSphere 6.7 virtual data center design through short and focused recipes on each design aspect. The second edition of this book focused on vSphere 6.0. vSphere features released since then necessitate an updated design guide, which includes recipes for upgrading to 6.7, vCenter HA; operational improvements; cutting-edge, high-performance storage access such as RDMA and Pmem; security features such as encrypted vMotion and VM-level encryption; Proactive HA; HA Orchestrated Restart; Predictive DRS; and more.

By the end of the book, you will be able to achieve enhanced compute, storage, network, and management capabilities for your virtual data center.

What you will learn

Identify key factors related to a vSphere design

Mitigate security risks and meet compliance requirements in a vSphere design

Create a vSphere conceptual design by identifying technical and business requirements

Design for performance, availability, recoverability, manageability, and security

Map the logical resource design into the physical vSphere design

Create professional vSphere design documentation

Who this book is for

If you are an administrator or consultant interested in designing virtualized data center environments using VMware vSphere 6.x (or previous versions of vSphere and the supporting components), this book is for you.

Details

Das E-Book können Sie in Legimi-Apps oder einer beliebigen App lesen, die das folgende Format unterstützen:

EPUB

Seitenzahl: 362

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

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Leseprobe

VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design CookbookThird Edition

Over 100 practical recipes to help you design a powerful virtual infrastructure based on vSphere 6.7

Mike Brown

Hersey Cartwright

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design Cookbook Third Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author(s), nor Packt Publishing or its dealers and distributors, will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to have been caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

Commissioning Editor: Vijin BorichaAcquisition Editor:Prachi BishtContent Development Editor:Deepti ThoreTechnical Editor:Varsha ShivhareCopy Editor:Safis Editing Project Coordinator:Nusaiba AnsariProofreader: Safis EditingIndexer:Tejal Daruwale SoniGraphics:Jisha ChirayilProduction Coordinator: Aparna Bhagat

First published: January 2014 Second edition: June 2016Third edition: March 2019

Production reference: 1280319

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78980-151-4

www.packtpub.com

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Contributors

About the authors

Mike Brown is an army veteran and full stack, data center engineer with over 10 years' experience in IT. At work, he's most comfortable on the data center floor with his laptop, a console cable, and a closed container of coffee. At home, he's the biggest cheerleader for his children at their football and basketball games or just while they're hanging out.

Mike has held many positions in IT, from help desk to systems administrator, to engineer and consultant. He can be found on Twitter at @VirtuallyMikeB. His technical achievements include VCIX6-DCV and other VMware, Cisco, NetApp, and Microsoft certifications.

I am thankful to have worked with a lot of smart people who have shared their knowledge and given me opportunities to grow. I am fortunate to have mentors and friends such as Michael Mills, Luke Morgan, and Dr. Christopher Seedyk, who have shared this journey with me.

Hersey Cartwright has worked in the technology industry since 1996 in a variety of roles, from help desk support to IT management. He first started working with VMware technologies in 2006. He is currently a solutions engineer for VMware, where he designs, sells, and supports VMware software-defined data center products in enterprise environments within the healthcare industry. He has experience working with a wide variety of server, storage, and network platforms.

About the reviewer

Mario Russo is a senior solution architect at Atos, based in Italy. He has worked as an IT architect, a senior technical VMware trainer, and in the presales department. He has worked on VMware technology since 2004. He is a VCI level 2 certified instructor of VMware and holds the following certifications: VCAP5-DCA, VCP-Cloud, VMware Certified Professional 6 – Network Virtualization (NSX v6.2), VCP7-CMA, VMware Certified Professional 7 – Cloud Management and Automation, Nutanix Platform Professional AOS5 (NPP5), Zerto Certified Professional (5.0) Implementation Engineer, RecoverPoint Version 2.0 – Associate, and Information Storage and Management Version 3.0. He has also acted as a technical reviewer for many books published by Packt Publishing.

Thanks to my wife, Lina, and my daughter, Gaia, for supporting me and helping me to overcome any challenge that life puts my way.

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Title Page

VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design Cookbook Third Edition

About Packt

Why subscribe?

Packt.com

Contributors

About the authors

About the reviewer

Packt is searching for authors like you

Preface

Who this book is for

What this book covers

To get the most out of this book

Download the color images

Conventions used

Sections

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

Preface

VMware is the industry leader for data center virtualization. This third edition of the Data center Design Cookbook covers VMware's vSphere 6.7 suite of products, which provides a robust and resilient platform for virtualizing server and application workloads. The features available in vSphere 6.7 simplify management, increase availability, provide security, and guarantee the performance of workloads deployed in the virtualized data center.

The VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design Cookbook provides recipes for creating a virtual data center design using the features of vSphere 6.7 by guiding you through the process of identifying the design factors and applying them to the logical and physical design process.

The VMware vSphere 6.7 Data Center Design Cookbook steps through the design process from beginning to end. From the discovery process, to creating the conceptual design, to calculating the resource requirements of the logical storage, compute, and network design, to mapping the logical requirements to a physical design, and finally, creating the design documentation.

The recipes in this book provide guidance on making design decisions to ensure the successful creation and, ultimately, the successful implementation of a VMware vSphere 6.7x virtual data center design.

Who this book is for

If you are an administrator or consultant interested in designing virtualized data center environments using VMware vSphere 6.7 and its supporting components, then this book is for you. This book will help both new and experienced architects to deliver professional VMware vSphere virtual data center designs.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, The Virtual Data Center, provides an introduction to the benefits of the virtual data center, VMware vSphere products, and the basic virtualization concepts. This chapter identifies the differences between a data center administrator and a data center architect. An overview of the VMware Certified Advanced Professional Data center Design (VCAP-DCD) and VMware Certified Design Architect (VCDX) certifications is also covered.

Chapter 2, The Discovery Process, explains how to identify stakeholders, conduct stakeholder interviews, and perform technical assessments to discover the business and technical goals of a virtualization project. This chapter covers how to use the following tools—VMware Capacity Planner, Windows Performance Monitor, and vRealize Operations Manager—to collect resource information during the discovery process.

Chapter 3, The Design Factors, explains how to identify and document the design requirements, constraints, assumptions, and risks. This chapter details how to use the design factors to create a conceptual design.

Chapter 4, vSphere Management Design, describes the vCenter Server components and their dependencies. Recipes for determining which vCenter Server deployment options to use, the Windows server or virtual appliance to be used, and for determining the type of database to use based on the deployment size, are included.

Chapter 5, vSphere Storage Design, covers logical storage design. Recipes are included for calculating the storage capacity and performance requirements for the logical storage design. This chapter covers the details of selecting the correct RAID level and storage connectivity to support a design. Recipes for VSAN and VVOLs are provided in this chapter.

Chapter 6, vSphere Network Design, provides details on the logical network design. This chapter explains how to calculate bandwidth requirements to support a vSphere design. Details on selecting a virtual switch topology, designing for network availability, and the network requirements to support vMotion and IP connected storage, are also covered.

Chapter 7, vSphere Compute Design, provides recipes for calculating the CPU and memory requirements to create a logical compute design. The chapter also covers cluster design considerations for High Availability (HA) and the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS).

Chapter 8, vSphere Physical Design, explains how to satisfy design factors by mapping the logical management, storage, network, and compute designs to hardware to create a physical vSphere design. The chapter also provides details on creating a custom installation ISO to install ESXi and the best practices for host BIOS configurations.

Chapter 9, Virtual Machine Design, looks at the design of virtual machines and application workloads running in the virtual data center. Recipes are provided for right-sizing virtual machine resources, enabling the ability to add virtual machine resources, and creating virtual machine templates. This chapter details the use of affinity and anti-affinity rules to improve application efficiency and availability. Converting or migrating physical servers to virtual machines is also covered in this chapter.

Chapter 10, vSphere Security Design, provides an overview of the vSphere features available to provide security in the virtual data center. Recipes covering authentication, access controls, and security hardening, which must be incorporated into a data center design to secure the vSphere environment, are also included.

Chapter 11, Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity, covers options relating to backup, recovery, and continued operations in the event of system failure. This chapter covers how to create backups of vSphere configurations so they can be quickly restored. The protection of virtual machines using popular products for backup and replication is also covered in this chapter.

Chapter 12, Design Documentation, covers documenting a vSphere design. Documentation includes the architecture design document, the implementation plan, the installation guide, the validation and test plan, and the operational procedures. This chapter also provides tips for presenting a design to stakeholders and using the design documentation to implement the design.

To get the most out of this book

The following are the software requirements for this book:

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7

VMware vCenter Server 6.7

VMware PowerCLI 6.5.1

VMware vCLI 6.7

Download the color images

We also provide a PDF file that has color images of the screenshots/diagrams used in this book. You can download it here: https://www.packtpub.com/sites/default/files/downloads/9781789801514_ColorImages.pdf.

Conventions used

There are a number of text conventions used throughout this book.

CodeInText: Indicates code words in text, database table names, folder names, filenames, file extensions, pathnames, dummy URLs, user input, and Twitter handles. Here is an example: "If jumbo frames are not configured correctly, vmkping will fail."

Any command-line input or output is written as follows:

esxcli storage nmp satp set -default-psp=<psp policy to set> --satp=<SATP_name>

Bold: Indicates a new term, an important word, or words that you see onscreen. For example, words in menus or dialog boxes appear in the text like this. Here is an example: "Once the collection process has been completed, you can view the report using the Reports section of Performance Monitor."

Warnings or important notes appear like this.

Tips and tricks appear like this.

Sections

In this book, you will find several headings that appear frequently (Getting ready, How to do it…, How it works…, There's more…, and See also).

To give clear instructions on how to complete a recipe, use these sections as follows:

Getting ready

This section tells you what to expect in the recipe and describes how to set up any software or any preliminary settings required for the recipe.

How to do it…

This section contains the steps required to follow the recipe.

How it works…

This section usually consists of a detailed explanation of what happened in the previous section.

There's more…

This section consists of additional information about the recipe in order to make you more knowledgeable about the recipe.

Get in touch

Feedback from our readers is always welcome.

General feedback: If you have questions about any aspect of this book, mention the book title in the subject of your message and email us at [email protected].

Errata: Although we have taken every care to ensure the accuracy of our content, mistakes do happen. If you have found a mistake in this book, we would be grateful if you would report this to us. Please visit www.packt.com/submit-errata, selecting your book, clicking on the Errata Submission Form link, and entering the details.

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The Virtual Data Center

This chapter focuses on many of the basic concepts and benefits of virtualization. It provides a quick overview of VMware virtualization, introduces the virtual data center architect, and lays some of the groundwork necessary for creating and implementing a successful virtual data center design using VMware vSphere 6.7.

We will also explore the VMware Certified Advanced Professional 6-Data Center Virtualization Design (VCAP6-DCV Design) exam and the new VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification, including a few tips that should help you prepare to successfully complete the exam and certification. Then, we will look over some of the new features of vSphere 6.7. This section will include where to find the current release notes and the latest vSphere product documentation. Finally, we will take a high-level look at the process for planning an upgrade to an existing vSphere deployment to vSphere 6.7.

In this chapter, we will cover the following recipes:

Becoming a virtual data center architect

Using a holistic approach to data center design

Passing the VMware

VCAP6-DCV

Design exam

Becoming a VMware Certified Design Expert

Identifying what's new in vSphere 6.7

Planning a vSphere 6.7 upgrade

Benefits and technologies of virtualization

If you are already familiar with virtualization, this chapter will provide a review of many of the benefits and technologies of virtualization.

Since the focus of this book is on design, we will not go into great detail discussing the specifics of how to configure resources in a virtual data center. Most of you probably already have a good understanding of VMware's virtualization architecture, so this chapter will just provide a basic overview of the key VMware components that are the building blocks to the virtual data center.

Virtualization creates a layer of abstraction between the physical hardware and the virtual machines that run on it. Virtual hardware is presented to the virtual machine granting access to the underlying physical hardware, which is scheduled by the hypervisor's kernel. The hypervisor separates the physical hardware from the virtual machine, as shown in the following diagram:

Logical representation of hypervisor layer

The hypervisor separates the physical hardware from the virtual machines. The new release of vSphere 6.7 does not change the design process or the design methodologies. The new functions and features of the release provide an architect with more tools to satisfy design requirements.

The hypervisor

At the core of any virtualization platform is the hypervisor. The VMware hypervisor is named vSphere ESXi, simply referred to as ESXi. ESXi is a Type 1 or bare-metal hypervisor. This means that it runs directly on the host's hardware to present virtual hardware to the virtual machines. In turn, the hypervisor schedules access to the physical hardware of the hosts.

ESXi allows multiple virtual machines with a variety of operating systems to run simultaneously, sharing the resources of the underlying physical hardware. Access to physical resources, such as memory, CPU, storage, and network, used by the virtual machines is managed by the scheduler, or Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM), provided by ESXi. The resources presented to the virtual machines can be over committed; this means more resources that are physically available can be allocated to the virtual machines on the physical hardware. Advanced memory sharing and reclamation techniques, such as Transparent Page Sharing (TPS) and ballooning, along with CPU scheduling, allow for over commitment of these resources to be possible, resulting in greater virtual-to-physical consolidation ratios.

ESXi 6.7 is a 64-bit hypervisor that must be run on a 64-bit hardware. An ESXi 6.7 installation requires at least 1 GB of disk space for installation. It can be installed on a hard disk locally, a USB device, a Logical Unit Number (LUN) on a Storage Area Network (SAN), or deployed stateless on hosts with no storage using Auto Deploy. The small footprint of an ESXi installation provides a reduction in the management overhead associated with patching and security hardening.

With the release of vSphere 5.0, VMware retired the ESX hypervisor. ESX had a separate, Linux-based service console for the management interface of the hypervisor. Management functions were provided by agents running in the service console. The service console has since been removed from ESXi, and agents now run directly on ESXi's VMkernel.

To manage a standalone host running ESXi, a Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) is provided for basic configuration and troubleshooting. A shell is available that can either be accessed locally from the console or remotely using Secure Shell (SSH). The esxcli command-line tools and others can be used in the shell to provide advanced configuration options. An ESXi host can also be accessed directly using the vSphere Client. The ESXi DCUI is shown in the following screenshot:

Screenshot of ESXi's DCUI

The DCUI can be accessed remotely using SSH by typing the dcui command in the prompt. Press Ctrl + C to exit the remote DCUI session.

Virtual machines

A virtual machine is a software computer that runs a guest operating system. Virtual machines are comprised of a set of configuration files and data files stored on local or remote storage. These configuration files contain information about the virtual hardware presented to the virtual machine. This virtual hardware includes the CPU, RAM, disk controllers, removable devices, and so on, and emulates the same functionality as the physical hardware. The following screenshot depicts the virtual machine files that are stored on a shared Network File System (NFS) datastore:

Virtual machine files stored on a shared NFS datastore displayed using the vSphere Web Client

The files that make up a virtual machine are typically stored in a directory set aside for the particular virtual machine they represent. These files include the configuration file, virtual disk files, NVRAM file, and virtual machine log files.

The following table lists the common virtual machine file extensions along with a description of each:

File extension

Description

.vmx

This is a virtual machine configuration file. It contains the configurations of the virtual hardware that is presented to the virtual machine.

.vmdk

This is a virtual disk descriptor file. It contains a header and other information pertaining to the virtual disk.

-flat.vmdk

This is a preallocated virtual disk. It contains the content or data on the disk used by the virtual machine.

.nvram

This is a file that stores the state of a virtual machine's

Basic Input Output System

(

BIOS

) or

Extensible Firmware Interface

(

EFI

) configurations.

.vswp

This is a virtual machine swap file. It gets created when a virtual machine is powered on. The size of this file is equal to the amount of memory allocated minus any memory reservations.

.log

This is a virtual machine log file.

.vmsd

This is a virtual machine file used with snapshots to store data about each snapshot active on a virtual machine.

.vmsn

This is a virtual machine snapshot data file.

Virtual machines can be deployed using a variety of methods, as follows:

Using the New Virtual Machine Wizard in the vSphere Client or vSphere Web Client

By getting converted from a physical machine using the VMware Converter

By getting imported from an

Open Virtualization Format

(

OVF

) or

Open Virtualization Archive

(

OVA

)

By getting cloned from an existing virtual machine

By getting deployed from a virtual machine template

When a new virtual machine is created, a guest operating system can be installed on the virtual machine. VMware vSphere 6.7 supports more than 120 different guest operating systems. These include many versions of the Windows server and desktop operating systems, many distributions and versions of Linux and Unix operating systems, and Apple macOS operating systems.

Virtual appliances are preconfigured virtual machines that can be imported to the virtual environment. A virtual appliance can be comprised of a single virtual machine or a group of virtual machines with all the components required to support an application. The virtual machines in a virtual appliance are preloaded with guest operating systems, and the applications they run are normally preconfigured and optimized to run in a virtual environment.

Since virtual machines are just a collection of files on a disk, they become portable. Virtual machines can be easily moved from one location to another by simply moving or copying the associated files. Using VMware vSphere features, such as vMotion, Enhanced vMotion, or Storage vMotion, virtual machines can be migrated from host to host or datastore to datastore while a virtual machine is running. Virtual machines can also be exported to an OVF or OVA to be imported into another VMware vSphere environment.

Virtual infrastructure management

VMware vCenter Server provides a centralized management interface to manage and configure groups of ESXi hosts in the virtualized data center. The vCenter Server is required to configure and control many advanced features, such as the Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), Storage DRS, and VMware High Availability (HA). The vCenter Server management Graphical User Interface (GUI) is accessed using the browser-based vSphere Client. Many vendors provide plugins that can be installed to allow third-party storage, network, and compute resources to be managed using the vSphere Client.

vCenter access using the C#, or Windows vSphere Client, is only available in versions prior to 6.5. Since the release of vSphere 5.5, however, access to, and the configuration of, new features is only available using the vSphere Web Client. The vSphere Web Client can be accessed at https://FQDN_or_IP_of_vCenter_Server:9443/.

vCenter Server 6.7 must use a 64-bit architecture if installed on a Windows Server. It can be run on dedicated physical hardware or as a virtual machine. When the vCenter Server is deployed on Windows, it requires either the embedded PostgreSQL database, a Microsoft SQL database, or an Oracle database to store configuration and performance information. IBM DB2 databases are supported with vSphere 5.1, but this support was removed in vSphere 5.5.

With the release of vCenter 6.0, the Microsoft SQL Express database is no longer used as the embedded database. Embedded PostgreSQL is now used as the embedded database for small deployments. The PostgreSQL database on a Windows Server can be used to support environments of less than 20 hosts and 200 virtual machines. When upgrading to vCenter 6.7, if the previous version was using the Microsoft SQL Express database, the database will be converted to the embedded PostgreSQL as part of the upgrade. The embedded PostgreSQL database is suitable for almost all deployments, but using an external database is still supported.

Another option for deploying the vCenter Server is the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). The VCSA is a preconfigured, Linux-based virtual machine preinstalled with the vCenter Server components. The appliance includes an embedded PostgreSQL database that supports the configuration maximums of 2,000 hosts and 25,000 powered-on virtual machines.

Several other management and automation tools are available to aid the day-to-day administration of a vSphere environment: the vSphere Command-Line Interface (vCLI); vSphere PowerCLI provides a Windows PowerShell interface; vRealize Orchestrator can be used to automate tasks; and the vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) is a Linux-based virtual appliance that is used to run management and automation scripts against hosts. vMA was deprecated, and its final release only supports vSphere 6.5. These tools allow an administrator to use command-line utilities to manage hosts from remote workstations.

VMware provides a suite of other products that benefit the virtualized data center. These data center products, such as VMware vRealize Operations (vROps), VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM), and VMware vRealize Automation (vRA), can each be leveraged in the virtual data center to meet specific requirements related to management, disaster recovery, and cloud services. At the core of these products is the vSphere suite, which includes ESXi, the vCenter Server, and the core supporting components.

Understanding the benefits of virtualization

The following table provides a matrix of some of the core VMware technologies and the benefits that can be realized by using them:

VMware technology

Primary benefits

Description

vSphere ESXi

Server consolidation Resource efficiency

ESXi is VMware's bare-metal hypervisor that hosts virtual machines, also known as guests, and schedules virtual hardware access to physical resources.

vSphere HA

Increased availability

HA restarts virtual machines in the event of a host failure. It also monitors and restarts the virtual machines in the event of a guest operating system failure.

vMotion and vSphere DRS

Resource efficiency Increased availability

vMotion allows virtual machines to be live-migrated between hosts in a virtual data center. DRS determines the initial placement of the virtual machine on the host resources within a cluster and makes recommendations, or automatically migrates the virtual machines to balance resources across all hosts in a cluster.

Resource pools

Resource efficiency

These are used to guarantee, reserve, or limit the virtual machine's CPU, memory, and disk resources.

VMware

Fault

Tolerance

(

)

Increased availability

FT provides 100 percent uptime for a virtual machine in the event of a host hardware failure. It creates a secondary virtual machine that mirrors all the operations of the primary. In the event of a hardware failure, the secondary virtual machine becomes the primary and a new secondary is created.

Thin provisioning

Resource efficiency

This allows for storage to be over provisioned by presenting the configured space to a virtual machine, but only consuming the space on the disk that the guest actually requires.

Hot add CPU and memory

Resource efficiency scalability

This allows for the addition of CPU and memory resources to a virtual machine while the virtual machine is running.

Storage vMotion

Resource efficiency

This moves virtual machine configuration files and disks between storage locations that have been presented to a host.

vSphere Storage

Application Programming Interface

(

APIs

);

data protection

VM backups and disaster recovery

Allows third parties to build agentless backup and disaster recovery solutions that integrate with the vSphere platform

vSphere replication

Disaster recovery

This features provides the ability to replicate virtual machines between sites.

vCenter server

Simplified management

This provides a single management interface to configure and monitor the resources available to virtual data centers.

vCenter server linked mode

Simplified management

This links multiple vCenter Servers together to allow them to be managed from a single client.

Host profiles

Simplified management

This maintains consistent configuration and configuration compliance across all the hosts in the environment.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of all VMware technologies and features, but it does provide an insight into many of the technologies commonly deployed in the enterprise virtual data center.

There are many others, and each technology or feature may also have its own set of requirements that must be met in order to be implemented. The purpose here is to show how features or technologies can be mapped to benefits that can then be mapped to requirements and ultimately mapped into a design. This is helpful in ensuring that the benefits and technologies that virtualization provides satisfy design requirements.

Identifying when not to virtualize

Not all applications or server workloads are good candidates for virtualization. It is important that these workloads are identified early on in the design process.

There are a number of reasons why a server or application may not be suitable for virtualization. Some of these include the following:

Vendor support

Licensing issues

Specialized hardware dependencies

High resource demand

Lack of knowledge or skillsets

A common reason to not virtualize an application or workload is the reluctance of a vendor to support their application in a virtual environment. As virtualization has become more common in the enterprise data center, this has become uncommon; but, there are still application vendors that will not support their products once virtualized.

Software and operating system licensing in a virtual environment can also be a challenge, especially when it comes to physical server to virtual machine conversions. Many physical servers are purchased with Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) licenses, and these licenses, in most cases, cannot be transferred to a virtual environment. Also, many licenses are tied to hardware-specific information, such as interface MAC addresses or drive signatures. Licensing issues can usually be overcome. Many times, the primary risk becomes the cost to upgrade or acquire new licensing. As with other potential design risks, it is important that any issues and potential impacts licensing may have on the design be identified early on in the design process.

Some applications may require the use of specialized hardware. Fax boards, serial ports, and security dongles are common examples. There are ways to provide solutions for many of these, but often, given the risks associated with the ability to support the application, or the loss of one or more of the potential benefits of virtualizing the application, the better solution may be to leave the application on dedicated physical hardware. Again, it is important that these types of applications be identified very early on in the design process.