Virtualization Of RGL's IT Infrastructure Using VMware Technology

Design Aspects in Converting Physical IT Infrastructure to Virtual Infrastructure

Question:

Discuss Management of the Company Is Concerned About the Increasing Costs?

RGL wants to decrease the IT costs by virtualising the existing physical IT infrastructure. They got many Xeon servers with different RAM and storage hard disks. The RGL management is doing a research on existing virtualization technologies and they found VMware technology is the best technology for this virtualization project. Entire IT Infrastructure design including servers selection, CPU and RAM Selection, storage selection will be decided. All the design aspects in converting physical IT infrastructure to virtual infrastructure will be investigated.

The existing virtualization technologies are Hyper-V from Microsoft, VSphere technology from VMware and XenApp technology from Citrix. Among these three technologies Microsoft’s Hyper-V cannot be used in the existing technology as it is not good for desktop virtualization. Citrix XenApp is mainly used for Desktop virtualization but it is not good for server virtualization. Hence only VMware virtualization technology is the only best option for this situation ("VMware Virtualization Management", 2017).

VSphere 6.5, ESXi 6.5 ("VMware vSphere 6.5 Documentation Library", 2017), VCENTER 6.5, Tier-1 and Tier-2 SAN, Standard backup and DR solutions offered by VMware, Standard DR solutions offered by the VMware and standard Desktop virtualization technologies offered by VMWare ("Free VMware vSphere Hypervisor, Free Virtualization (ESXi)", 2017). VSphere 6.5 is better then its previous versions like vSphere5.5 (Hatua, 2014) (Herrod, 2010). Usually VMware offers Veeam Technology for Backup. The same can be used for DR Purpose too. DDR Backup also possible. TSM Symantec also offers backup solution for all the VMware infrastructure. That also can be selected if the infrastructure is big. Once servers and virtual machines are backed up, the backup data can be retained for more than a month. The same backup data can be used to recreate the VMs and thus the same backup solution can be used for the DR Purpose too.

All the existing physical servers will be converted into physical ESXi servers. Necessary VMs will be created in this virtual infrastructure that will support entire IT infrastructure.

The management can go with one data centre, one domain, one forest solution. They can go with only one VCENTER solution to control the entire virtual infrastructure (Mauro, 2017). VMs needs to be created to support Active Directory, Database, Email, File, print and Unix infrastructure. Distributed switches can be designed to support the entire infrastructure.

VSphere 6.5 is a x64 bit OS and hence it supports very large infrastructure. The security in the VMware solution is good. The IT infrastructure can be expanded very easily. For the given cost since the quality is good it is cost effective. VMware supports all the applications. It can support all the engineering and scientific fields. High research software too can be installed in VMware based virtual machines and the software will work well. CPU consuming and Memory consuming software will work well in VMware based products. Vcpu and vRAM can be increased easily. Now a days VSphere6.5 supports hot add facility to the hard disk, RAM so the capacity of the infrastructure can be improved without any down time. Vsphere is a stable technology. Updates will not come very often and hence it won’t require any special skills to manage. Updates can be installed very easily. OS updates also possible using update manager. If only one ESXi server is well secured, then that can act as a bench mark ESXi and all other ESXi servers can be brought to the same security level very easily. Host migration and storage migration facilities are there in VSphere. So there won’t be any resource crunch in the virtual infrastructure. VSphere supports virtualization of all the business critical applications ("Virtualizing Business Critical Applications - VMware Solutions", 2017).

Comparison of Existing Virtualization Technologies

All the employees are using their own laptops or company provided desktops. These are hardware and hence the hardware cost will be very more if they use physical laptops and physical desktops. Physical machines will be facing lot of hardware issues now and then. VHorizon is the technology offered by the VMware for desktop virtualization. Citrix virtualization also can be used. Since already VSphere technology is used in the virtualization, desktop solution that is very well compatible with the vSphere technology. Horizon supports all the requirements in the given technical organization. vHorzon offers quick desktop start up and shut down facilities. All other resources can be assigned very automatically ("VMware Validated Designs for Software-Defined Data Centre", 2017).

Two backup solutions are possible. Symantec backup and Veeam. Veeam is the best one due to lot of reasons. This software can be installed easily, can be configured easily and can be re-configured without much downtime. It supports windows, Unix, mac virtual machines and takes the backup easily. Usually there will be a separate backup VLAN will be used and all the backup traffic will be going through in that VLAN only. Hence backup won’t affect the network performance. All the VMs and the applications can be brought to the backup environment very easily. Restore also very easily and it will not consume much resources and time. IBM Tivoli Manager is another backup and restore software that can be used (2017)

At present the organization got only one data center. They can have another DR center in another state. If they have another DR data center, then they can go with data store replication ("Modernize Data Centers", 2017). They can store the backup copies in local as well as remote places. The backup can be stored in local tapes and that can be used for restore purposes during DR time. VMware offers lot of business continuity and DR solutions ("Business Continuity & Disaster Recovery (BCDR) Solutions: VMware", 2017). Cloud based solutions too can be used for backup and DR Purpose ("Server Virtualization using Cloud Environment for Data Storage & Backup", 2016).

VSphere is a very secure environment. Distributed switches can be contributed with enough secured VLANs. Data security changes may not happen. Best practices are offered by VMware ("VMware Product Security - Making Our Products More Secure", 2017). The same can be followed. Host profiles can be used to secure the ESXi servers. ISO 27000 Security rules and ITIL rules and terms can be used to secure the environment. VMware Compliance Reference Architecture Framework can be followed for better information security ("Compliance and Cyber Risk Solutions", 2017). Third party vendors like Kaspersky offers lot of security solutions for VMWare infrastructure (Lab, 2017)

Conclusion

The objective is converting a physical infrastructure to a virtual infrastructure. All the existing asset details are discussed. Hardware details are discussed. Existing operating system details are discussed. The target virtual infrastructure design is provided. All the physical servers need to be converted into ESXi 6.5 servers. vCentre VM can be used to control the entire infrastructure. Veeam solution can be used for both Backup and DR purpose. vHorizon can be used for desktop virtualization. One DR datacentre can be used for best DR purpose. VMware Compliance Reference Architecture Framework and ITIL frame work, best security practices offered by VMware can be used for security provisioning. Updates can be installed very easily. OS updates also possible using update manager. If only one ESXi server is well secured, then that can act as a bench mark ESXi and all other ESXi servers can be brought to the same security level very easily. Host migration and storage migration facilities are there in VSphere. So there won’t be any resource crunch in the virtual infrastructure. Veeam backup can be used for backup. The same software can be used to restore the virtual infrastructure in DR times. VMware Compliance Reference Architecture Framework can be followed for better information security.  Another DR Datacentre can be setup for DR Purpose.

References

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