Remote Infrastructure Management: VMware vSphere 5.1 Installation and Storage Configuration Tutorial

VMware vSphere5.1 Installation:

VMWARE VSphere5.1 New Features:

Compute

• Larger virtual machines – Virtual machines can grow two times larger than in any previous release to support even the most advanced applications. Virtual machines can now have up to 64 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 1TB of virtual RAM (vRAM).

• New virtual machine format – New features in the virtual machine format (version 9) in vSphere 5.1 include support for larger virtual machines, CPU performance counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration designed for enhanced performance.

Storage

• Flexible, space-efficient storage for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) – A new disk format enables the correct balance between space efficiency and I/O throughput for the virtual desktop.

Network

• vSphere Distributed Switch – Enhancements such as Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore, Roll Back and Recovery, and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support and deliver more enterprise-class networking functionality and a more robust foundation for cloud computing.

• Single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support – Support for SR-IOV optimizes performance for sophisticated applications.

Availability

• vSphere vMotion® – Leverage the advantages of vMotion (zero-downtime migration) without the need for shared storage configurations. This new vMotion capability applies to the entire network.

• vSphere Data Protection – Simple and cost effective backup and recovery for virtual machines. vSphere Data Protection is a newly architected solution based on EMC Avamar technology that allows admins to back up virtual machine data to disk without the need of agents and with built-in deduplication. This feature replaces the vSphere Data Recovery product available with previous releases of vSphere.

• vSphere Replication – vSphere Replication enables efficient array-agnostic replication of virtual machine data over the LAN or WAN. vSphere Replication simplifies management enabling replication at the virtual machine level and enables RPOs as low as 15 minutes.

• Reduced downtime upgrade for VMware Tools – After you upgrade to the VMware Tools available with version 5.1, reboots have been reduced or eliminated for subsequent VMware Tools upgrades on Windows.

Security

• VMware vShield Endpoint™ – Delivers a proven endpoint security solution to any workload with an approach that is simplified, efficient, and cloud-aware. vShield Endpoint enables 3rd party endpoint security solutions to eliminate the agent footprint from the virtual machines, offload intelligence to a security virtual appliance, and run scans with minimal impact.

Automation

• vSphere Storage DRS™ and Profile-Driven Storage – New integration with VMware vCloud® Director™ enables further storage efficiencies and automation in a private cloud environment.

• vSphere Auto Deploy™ – Two new methods for deploying new vSphere hosts to an environment make the Auto Deploy process more highly available then ever before.

Management (with VMware vCenter Server™)

• vSphere Web Client –The vSphere Web Client is now the core administrative interface for vSphere. This new flexible, robust interface simplifies vSphere control through shortcut navigation, custom tagging, enhanced scalability, and the ability to manage from anywhere with Internet Explorer or Firefox-enabled devices.

• vCenter Single Sign-On – Dramatically simplify vSphere administration by allowing users to log in once to access all instances or layers of vCenter without the need for further authentication.

Minimum system requirements for installing ESXi:

ESXi 5.1

Supported server platform

64-bit Processor

ESXi 5.1 will install and run only on servers with 64-bit x86 CPUs.
ESXi 5.1 requires a host machine with at least two cores.
ESXi 5.1 supports only LAHF and SAHF CPU instructions.
ESXi 5.1 requires the NX/XD bit to be enabled for the CPU in the BIOS.
ESXi 5.1 supports a broad range of x64 multicore processors.

RAM

2GB RAM minimum
Provide at least 8GB of RAM to take full advantage of ESXi 5.1 features and run virtual machines in typical production environments.

Hardware Virtualization Support

To support 64-bit virtual machines, support for hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD RVI) must be enabled on x64 CPUs.
To determine whether your server has 64-bit VMware support, download the CPU Identification Utility from vmware.com.
Network Adapters
One or more Gigabit or 10Gb Ethernet controllers.

SCSI Adapter, Fibre Channel Adapter or Internal RAID Controller

Any combination of one or more of the following controllers:

Basic SCSI controllers. Adaptec Ultra-160 or Ultra-320, LSI Logic Fusion-MPT, or most NCR/Symbios SCSI.
RAID controllers. Dell PERC (Adaptec RAID or LSI MegaRAID), HP Smart Array RAID, or IBM (Adaptec) ServeRAID controllers.

Installation and Storage

SCSI disk or a local, non-network, RAID LUN with unpartitioned space for the virtual machines.
For Serial ATA (SATA), a disk connected through supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers. SATA disks will be considered remote, not local. These disks will not be used as a scratch partition by default because they are seen as remote. Note: You cannot connect a SATA CD-ROM device to a virtual machine on an ESXi 5.1 host. To use the SATA CD-ROM device, you must use IDE emulation mode.
Supported storage system: ESXi 5.1 supports installing on and booting from these storage systems:
- SATA disk drives. SATA disk drives connected behind supported SAS controllers or supported on-board SATA controllers.
  - LSI1068E (LSISAS3442E)
  - LSI1068 (SAS 5)
  - IBM ServeRAID 8K SAS controller
  - Smart Array P400/256 controller
  - Dell PERC 5.0.1 controller

SATA disk drives. Supported on-board SATA include:
- Intel ICH9
- NVIDIA MCP55
- ServerWorks HT1000

Note: ESXi does not support using local, internal SATA drives on the host server to create VMFS datastores that are shared across multiple ESXi hosts.

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) disk drives supported for installing ESXi 5.1 and for storing virtual machines on VMFS partitions.
Dedicated SAN disk on Fibre Channel or iSCSI
You can install and boot ESXi from an FCoE LUN using VMware software FCoE adapters and network adapters with FCoE offload capabilities. See the vSphere Storage documentation for information about installing and booting ESXi with software FCoE.

1. Boot from DVD which contains the VMware VSphere Visor .

Boot from Local Disk or DVD.

Agree the ELUA License agreement.

Scanning for the available devices.

Select the Keyboard Type.

Enter to continue the installation.

Select your harddisk where you want to install the hypervisor.

Setting up root Password.

Confirm Installation.

Installation Starts.

Installation in progress.

Installation successfully completed and it asks you to reboot.

Now VSphere5.1 server is ready. To access the VSphere server we can use VSphere client 5.1 or Putty via SSH or Vcenter server5.1.

Vcenetr server5.1 comes with software for windows and pre-installed linux image as Vcenter5.1 Appliance.

To deploy the Vcenter server 5.1 Appliance :

Procedure

1	From the vSphere 5 download page on the VMware Web site, download the .OVA file or the .OVF and VMDK files for the vCenter Server appliance onto your system.
2	Using the vSphere Client or the vSphere Web Client, deploy the .OVA file or the .OVF and VMDK files as an OVF template. If you do not want to commit to using the maximum 80GB of disk space at deployment, deploy the vCenter Server Appliance with thin provisioning. In the Disk Format panel of the Deploy OVF template wizard, select Thin provisioned format.
3	Power on the vCenter Server Appliance.
4	Open a console view.
5	Follow the instructions on the welcome screen to open a browser window to the URL shown.
6	Log in to the vCenter Server Appliance and accept the license agreement. When you log in, the vCenter Server Setup wizard starts.

Once you deploy access the vcenter server appliance via web.
Login to vcenter server.

Once the configurations are ready, then you can add the ESX server s to Vcenter server.

Installation Vcenter server5.1 in Windows:

VMware released the new version of vCenter server which is 5.1, with new improvements and features.

Before we move forward I need to write some minimum requirements for the vCenter server, and here they are:

Processor: Intel or AMD x86 processor with two or more logical cores, each with a speed of at least 2GHz.
Memory: 4GB RAM. RAM requirements may be higher if your database runs on the same machine.
Disk storage: 4GB. Disk requirements may be higher if the vCenter Server database runs on the same machine.
Database: Microsoft SQL Server Express for small deployments 5 hosts/50 VMs. Not important for this scenario.

Supported operating systems:

Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter SP2 (required) 64bit
Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter R2 SP2 (required) 64bit
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter SP2 64bit
Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Standard, Enterprise or Datacenter R2 64bit

VMware Vcenter5.1 comes with single sign -on.