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vStart 1000v for Enterprise Virtualization using VMware vSphere: Reference Architecture
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1 Introduction
The vStart 1000 solution is an enterprise infrastructure solution that has been designed and validated
by Dell™ Engineering. It is available to be partially racked, cabled, and delivered to your site, to speed
deployment. Dell Services will deploy and configure the solution tailored for business needs and ready
to be integrated into your datacenter. vStart 1000 is offered in configurations with either VMware®
vSphere® (vStart 1000v) or Microsoft® Windows Server® 2008 R2 with Hyper-V® role enabled (vStart
1000m) Hypervisors. This paper will define the Reference Architecture for the VMware vSphere based
vStart 1000v solution.
vStart 1000v includes Dell PowerEdge
TM
M1000e blade chassis, Dell PowerEdge M620 blades, Dell
Compellent™ Storage, Dell Force10™ network switches, Brocade Fibre Channel switches, and VMware
vSphere. The solution also includes Dell PowerEdge R620 servers as management servers. VMware
vCenter Server, Compellent Enterprise Manager, and OpenManage™ Essentials are included with the
solution.
2 Audience
IT administrators and IT managers, who have purchased or are planning to purchase a vStart
configuration, can use this document to understand the component details of the solution.
3 Overview
This section provides a high-level product overview of the VMware vSphere, Dell PowerEdge blade
servers, Dell Force10 S4810, Force10 S55, Brocade 5100 Fibre Channel Switches, and Dell Compellent
Storage, as illustrated in Figure 1. Readers can skip the sections of products with which they are
familiar.