vSphere 5 Changes for Backups and Administration Rick Vanover MCITP vExpert VCP Veeam Software

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Agenda About VMware vSphere 5 Major changes in scale Virtual machine hardware version 8 Major changes in storage Storage DRS VDDK 5 VMFS-5 New version of HA How backups are impacted with vSphere 5

Why vSphere 5 Changes are Important  Over time our vSphere administration practice needs to change as the technology changes ●ESX 2 / GSX -> VMware Infrastructure 3 ●VMware Infrastructure 3 -> vSphere 4 ●vSphere 4 -> vSphere 5  The technology changes impact everything ●Virtual machine characteristics ●Storage ●Networking ●Supported configuration  Impacts backup configuration, performance and design

Leading virtualization platform About VMware vSphere 5 Robust features: DRS, HA, VMFS, Advanced storage ESX(i) host(s) Shared storage resources VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows VM Windows

About VMware vSphere 5  First major series to be ESXi only ●Important for anything where host-based agents are required ESXi – vmkernel

Major Changes in Scale  Incredible limits for the virtual machine ●32 vCPUs, 1 TB RAM among others  Scaled up hosts ●2 TB RAM, more network interfaces vSphere 5 Configuration Maximums ● ●Authoritative resource for vSphere configuration parameters

Virtual Machine Hardware Version 8  Updated with vSphere Client or Update Manager  New configuration maximums permitted with new virtual machine hardware  Up-to-date configuration is important for feature-rich backups  New virtual machine format for vSphere 5 ●Version 4:VMware Infrastructure 3 ●Version 7:vSphere 4 ●Version 8:vSphere 5

Major Changes in Storage  Most vSphere 5 major new features are for storage  Advancing features for additional performance ESX(i) host(s) Storage resources  Not just limited to VMFS ●Storage I/O control for NFS ●VAAI offloads for NFS storage

Storage DRS  Technique to pool VMFS volumes logically VMFS Cluster at 6 TB 6 individual VMFS-5 datastores (6x1 TB, example)

Storage DRS  Core metrics: free space and latency  Allows administrator to customize priority for response

VDDK 5  Virtual disk development kit 5 was released with vSphere 5, updating the previous release from vSphere 4  Use for hot-add of virtual disks  Code-level changes  Many backup products may use hot-add for improved backup performance ●Reads ●Writes VM Backup VM Backup VM ESX(i) host(s) Storage resources Traditional explicit VMDK assignment to this VM During a snapshot, temporary co-mapping of VMDK

VMFS-5  For fibre channel and iSCSI storage protocols  VMFS is a clustered file system ●Purpose built for virtual machines ●No coordinator node or software mechanism  VMFS-3 is both backward and forward compatible ●vSphere 5 can downward format at VMFS-3 (3.54)  Easy to upgrade from VMFS-3 to VMFS-5 ●Consider new format  Numerous enhancements ●1 MB block size ●Sub-block algorithm ●Atomic Test and Set (ATS) primitive command  Block size now supports all support file sizes ●Important for snapshots

VMware HA Rewritten for vSphere 5  Protects against host failures  New HA architecture: Fault Domain Manager (FDM)  No dependency on DNS ●Still provision DNS in a correct, robust manner  New master / slave node concept vSphere 5 Clustering technical deepdive Best book to learn this and other vSphere features

How Backups are Impacted with vSphere 5  Changes in core features, such as VDDK underscore the importance of full support of vSphere features  Clean configuration is critical to successful backups: ●Storage ●Networking ●Virtual machine up to date ●Supporting infrastructure

Additional vSphere 5 resources  VMware vSphere 5 documentation ● (Short URL for Pubs.VMware.com)  Getting started with vSphere 5 (VMware KB TV) ● (Short URL for blogs.vmware.com) vLaunchPad ● ●Blogs ●Documentation ●Podcasts ●Storage resources ●News resources

What We Covered About VMware vSphere 5 Major changes in scale Virtual machine hardware version 8 Major changes in storage Storage DRS VDDK 5 VMFS-5 New version of HA How backups are implicated with vSphere 5 Additional vSphere 5 resources

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