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vStart 100 and 200 VMware vSphere Reference Architecture
Dell Inc 7
Table 1 below describes the solution components:
Component Logical Groups Table 1.
Component
Description
Role
ESXi Cluster
PowerEdge R720 servers running
VMware ESXi Embedded
Host virtual machines (VMs)
iSCSI Storage
EqualLogic PS6100X with 24 x
600 GB 10K RPM 2.5‖ SAS Drives
Provide shared storage for the
ESXi cluster to host the VMs
Management Server
PowerEdge R620 server running
Microsoft
®
Windows Server
®
2008
R2 SP1 Standard Edition
Host VMware vCenter Server and
EqualLogic SAN HQ
LAN Traffic Switches
PowerConnect 7048 or 6248
switches
Support VM, vMotion,
Management, and Out-of-Band
Management traffic
SAN Traffic Switches
PowerConnect 7048 or 6248
switches
Support iSCSI data and iSCSI
management traffic
Dell Management Plug-in for
VMware vCenter
Dell virtual appliance hosted on
the ESXi Cluster
Enables hardware monitoring,
inventory, firmware updates,
bare metal deployment of
hypervisors, and warranty
retrieval, all integrated into the
vCenter Server user interface
Dell EqualLogic HIT/VE Plug-in
for VMware vCenter
Dell virtual appliance hosted on
the ESXi Cluster
Enables Auto Snapshots and
storage volume management, all
integrated into the vCenter
Server user interface
3.1 Product Overview
This section provides an overview of the components in the solution.
3.1.1 PowerEdge R720 for ESXi 4 Cluster
The Dell PowerEdge R720 uses Intel® Xeon® E5 2600 series processors and Intel chipset architecture in
a 1U rack mount form factor. The R720 supports up to sixteen 2.5‖ drives. There is also an option for
an LCD on the front of the server for system health monitoring, alerting, and basic management
configuration. The server features two CPU sockets and 24 memory DIMM slots supporting 2, 4, 8, 16 or
32GB DIMMs to meet the memory demands of a virtualized infrastructure.
3.1.2 EqualLogic PS6100 for iSCSI Storage
The Dell EqualLogic PS6100 is a virtualized iSCSI SAN that combines intelligence and automation with
fault tolerance to provide simplified administration, rapid deployment, enterprise performance and
reliability, and seamless scalability. The storage architecture delivers a self-optimizing SAN that is
simple to manage and has an all-inclusive software suite to help reduce Total Cost of Ownership (TCO).
In the vStart 100 and 200, the PS6100X uses 10,000 RPM Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) 2.5‖ form factor disk
drives to provide capacity and performance for a range of applications.