Reference Guide

vStart 100 and 200 VMware vSphere Reference Architecture
Dell Inc 11
4.5 VMware vSphere Features
The solution is designed to enable key features of VMware vSphere:
 Support for VMware HA to enable High Availability for VMs.
 VMware vMotion is supported for manual load balancing and zero downtime maintenance.
 VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), Dynamic Power Management (DPM), and Storage
vMotion are also supported.
 60 day trial versions of VMware vCenter Server and vSphere ESXi are included. Additional OS
licenses needed. See your Dell Sales and Services representatives for more information.
4.6 Leverage EqualLogic Storage Integration with VMware
As mentioned earlier in the document, EqualLogic is tightly integrated with VMware to provide better
performance and manageability. Integration is achieved through various features like EqualLogic MEM
for storage network connection multipathing, VAAI integration for better performance, and ASM/VE for
snapshot capabilities. These features are available as a part of the solution.
4.7 Thin Provisioning
The solution enables support for thin provisioning of storage both at the EqualLogic and the ESX level.
Thin provisioning avoids the inefficiencies of over allocation by limiting the actual physical storage
resource allocation to what is utilized now, and enables the automatic addition of storage resources as
the requirements grow.
4.8 Storage Tiering
EqualLogic PS arrays provide IT organizations numerous techniques for storage tiering as a standard
part of their all-inclusive feature set. These techniques extend the automation at the core of the PS
Series design philosophy, while allowing broad customization of storage tiers to suit a wide range of
business and organizational requirements.
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5 Architecture
The architecture for the vStart 100 and 200 is identical with the exception of the smaller number of
servers and storage arrays in the vStart 100. As such, the architecture discussed in this section will
focus on the vStart 200. For those targeting to purchase or have currently deployed the vStart 100, the
three additional servers and one additional iSCSI array can be ignored.
5.1 Network Architecture Overview
vSphere network traffic in this solution is comprised of four distinct types: Virtual Machine (VM),
Management, vMotion, and iSCSI. In addition, support for out-of-band management is included. Two
separate networks are created to support different traffic types:
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