Best Practices When Deploying VMware vSphere on the HP ProLiant DL980 (updated October 2012)

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For a detailed discussion of the HP PREMA architecture, see the technical overview at
h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA3-0643ENW.pdf.
For a general overview of the technical specifications for this server, see the HP ProLiant DL980 Server Data Sheet at
h20195.www2.hp.com/V2/GetPDF.aspx/4AA1-5671ENW.pdf.
For detailed technical specifications, see the server QuickSpecs at
h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13708_div/13708_div.pdf.
Figure 1: Front view of the HP ProLiant DL980 server
vSphere 4.1
VMware vSphere 4.1 is the industry’s first cloud operating system, capable of transforming multiple data centers into a
dramatically simplified cloud infrastructure while enabling the next generation of flexible, reliable IT services.
The VMware hypervisor – ESX – runs natively on server hardware, creating a virtualization layer that allows hardware
resources to be shared by multiple virtual machines (VMs). Designed for enterprise and departmental servers that
feature up to 8 processor sockets with 12 cores per processor, ESX provides sophisticated resource-management tools
that allow you to control the CPU, memory, and bandwidth levels available to a particular virtual machine (VM). You can
increase the resources allocated to this VM based on demand and service level agreement, while protecting the
resources needed by other users sharing the same hardware.
For more information about the new features in VMware vSphere 4.1, go to
vmware.com/support/vsphere4/doc/vsp_41_new_feat.html.
For complete documentation on VMware vSphere 4.1, go to
vmware.com/support/pubs/vs_pages/vsp_pubs_esx41_vc41.html.
vSphere 5.0
With the release of vSphere 5.0, VMware has once again set new industry standards with its improvements to existing
features such as increased I/O performance and 32-way virtual SMP, and with new services such as Profile-Driven
Storage, Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS), and vSphere Auto Deploy. New VM virtual hardware provides
additional graphic and USB 3.0 support. Most importantly, with support for up to 32 CPUs and 1TB of RAM per VM, your
virtual machines can now grow 4 times larger than in any previous release to run even the largest applications.
This is the first release of vSphere to rely entirely on the thinner ESXi 5.0 hypervisor architecture as its host platform.
The ESX hypervisor used in vSphere 4.1 is no longer included in vSphere; however, the vSphere 5.0 management
platform (vCenter Server 5.0) still supports ESX/ESXi 4.x and ESX/ESXi 3.5 hosts.