vSphere 6.0- Configuration maximums

vSphere 6.0- Configuration maximums

Metric	vSphere 6.0
ESXi Host – Logical CPUs	480
ESXi Host – NUMA nodes	16
ESXi Host – Virtual CPUs	2 048 (Don’t know if the official PDF includes a typo since this was 4 096 in vSphere 5.5)
ESXi Host – Virtual CPUs per core	32 (based on performance required)
ESXi Host – RAM	6-12 TB (12 TB depending on partner)
ESXi Host – VMs	1 024
ESXi Host – FT Protected VMs	4 VMs or 8 vCPUs (whichever limit is reached first)
vCenter Server – ESXi Hosts	1 000
vCenter Server – ESXi hosts per Datacenter	500
vCenter Server – Powered on VMs	10 000
vCenter Server – Registered VMs	15 000
vCenter Server Content Library – Total items per VC (across all libraries) of vCenter Servers	200
vCenter Server Content Library – Total number of libraries per VC	20
vCenter Server Platform Service Controller (PSC) – Maximum PSCs per vSphere Domain	8
vCenter Server Platform Service Controller (PSC) – Maximum PSCs per site, behind a load balancer	4
vCenter Server Linked mode – Number of vCenter Servers	10
vCenter Server Linked mode – Number of ESXi hosts in linked mode vCenter Servers	4 000
vCenter Server Linked mode – Powered on VMs	30 000
vCenter Server Linked mode – Registered VMs	50 000
vSphere Cluster – Max ESXi hosts	64
vSphere Cluster – Number of VMs	8 000 (6 000 when using VSAN)
vSphere Cluster – Number of Powered On VM configuration files	2 048 (A FT protected VM counts for 2 VM configuration files)
vSphere Cluster – FT protected VMs	98
vSphere Cluster – FT VM vCPUs	256
VM – Virtual CPUs	128
VM – Virtual RAM	4 TB
VM – VMDK size	62 TB
VM – vNICs	10
VM – SCSI Controllers	4
VM – SCSI targets	60
VM – SATA Adapters	4
VM – SATA devices per SATA adapter	30
VM – Number of vCPUs for FT protected VM	4
VM – RAM per FT protected VM	64 GB
VM – Disks per FT protected VM	16

The official VMware vSphere 6.0 configuration maximum PDF can be downloaded here

vCenter Server 6.0

What’s New in vCenter Server 6.0

In vSphere 6.0, you will notice considerably new terms, when installation vCenter Server 6.0. As similar to the previous versions of vCenter Deployment, You can install vCenter Server on a host machine running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later or you can deploy vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA). With vSphere 6.0, There are 2 different new vCenter Deployment Models.

• vCenter with an embedded Platform Services Controller
• vCenter with an external Platform Services Controller

One of the Considerable Change, you will notice with vCenter Server installation is deployment models and embedded database. Embedded database has been changed from SQL express edition to vFabric Postgres database. vFabric Postgres databaseembedded with vCenter installer is suitable for the environments with up to 20 hosts and 200 virtual machines and vCenter 6.0 continuous to support Microsoft and Oracle Database as external database. with vCenter Upgrades, where SQL express was installed will be converted to vPostgres. Let’s review the System requirements to install vCenter 6.0:

Supported Windows Operation System for vCenter 6.0 Installation:

• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 64-bit
• Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit

 Supported Databases for vCenter 6.0 Installation:

• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1
• Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2 SP2
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012
• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 SP1
• Microsoft SQL Server 2014
• Oracle 11g R2 11.2.0.4
• Oracle 12c

Components of vCenter Server 6.0:

There are two Major Components of vCenter 6.0:

• vCenter Server: vCenter Server product, that contains all of the products such as vCenter Server, vSphere Web Client,Inventory Service, vSphere Auto Deploy, vSphere ESXi Dump Collector, and vSphere Syslog Collector

• VMware Platform Services Controller: Platform Services Controller contains all of the services necessary for running the products, such as vCenter Single Sign-On, License Service and VMware Certificate Authority

vCenter 6.0 Deployment Models:

vSphere 6.0 introduces vCenter Server with two deployment model. vCenter with external Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller.

vCenter with an embedded Platform Services Controller:

All services bundled with the Platform Services Controller are deployed on the same host machine as vCenter Server. vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller is suitable for smaller environments with eight or less product instances.

vCenter with an external Platform Services Controller:

The services bundled with the Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server are deployed on different host machines.You must deploy the VMware Platform Services Controller first on one virtual machine or host and then deploy vCenter Server on another virtual machine or host. The Platform Services Controller can be shared across many products. This configuration is suitable for larger environments with nine or more product instances.

That’s it. I hope this post helps you to understand the few of the New features and components available with vCenter server 6.0. Let’s Plan to upgrade our vCenter Server to 6.0. Thanks for reading!!!. Be social and share it in media,if you feel worth sharing it.

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) - vSphere 6.0

VMware Fault Tolerance (FT) is being one of my favorite feature but because of its vCPU limitation, It was not helping to protect the Mission Critical applications. With vSphere 6.0, VMware broken the limitation lock of Fault Tolerance. FT VM now Supports upto 4 vCPUs and 64 GB of RAM (Which was 1 vCPu and 64 GB RAM in vSphere 5.5). With this vSMP support, Now FT can be used to protect your Mission Critical applications. Along with the vSMP FT support, There are lot more features has been added in FT with vSphere 6.0, Let’s take a look at what’s new in vSphere 6.0 Fault Tolerance(FT).

Benefits of Fault Tolerance

• Continuous Availablity with Zero downtime and Zero data loss
• NO TCP connections loss during failover
• Fault Tolerance is completely transparent to Guest OS.
• FT doesn’t depend on Guest OS and application
• Instantaneous Failover from Primary VM to Secondary VM in case of ESXi host failure

What’s New in vSphere 6.0 Fault Tolerance

• FT support upto 4 vCPUs and 64 GB RAM
• Fast Check-Pointing, a new Scalable technology is introduced to keep primary and secondary in Sync by replacing “Record-Replay”
• vSphere 6.0, Supports vMotion of both Primary and Secondary Virtual Machine
• With vSphere 6.0, You will be able to backup your virtual machines. FT supports for vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) and it also supports all leading VADP solutions in Market like symantec, EMC, HP ,etc.
• With vSphere 6.0, FT Supports all Virtual Disk Type like EZT, Thick or Thin Provisioned disks. It supports only Eager Zeroed Thick with vSphere 5.5 and earlier versions
• Snapshot of FT configured Virtual Machines are supported with vSphere 6.0
• New version of FT keeps the Separate copies of VM files like .VMX, .VMDk files to protect primary VM from both Host and Storage failures. You are allowed to keep both Primary and Secondary VM files on different datastore.

Difference between vSphere 5.5 and vSphere 6.0 Fault Tolerance (FT)

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vCenter Server Appliance(vCSA) 6.0

What’s New in vCenter Server Appliance(vCSA) 6.0

vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) is a Security hardened base Suse (SLES 11 SP3) operating system packaged with vCenter server and vFabric Postgres database.  vCSA appliance supports Oracle as external database. vCenter Server Appliance contains all of the necessary services for running vCenter Server 6.0 along with its components. As an alternative to installing vCenter Server on a Windows host machine, you can deploy the vCenter Server Appliance. It helps you quickly deploy vCenter Server without spending time to prepare windows operating system for vCenter server Installation. vCSA now supports most of the features which is supported with windows version of vCenter server.

What’s New with vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) Installation:

As compared with the deployment of previous version of vCSA, vCSA 6.0 is different. Prior to vSphere 6.0, vCSA can be deployed using OVF template but It  should be deployed usingISO image in vCSA 6.0. You need to download .iso installer for the vCenter Server Appliance and Client Integration Plug-in.

Install the Client Integration plugin and double-click “html” file in the software installer directory,which will allow access to the VMware Client Integration Plug-In and click Install or Upgrade to start the vCenter Server Appliance deployment wizard. You will be provided with various options during the deployment including the Deployment type of vCenter Server.

vCenter 6.0 Deployment Methods:

Embedded Platform Services Controller:

All services bundled with the Platform Services Controller are deployed on the same virtual machine as vCenter Server. vCenter Server with an embedded Platform Services Controller is suitable for smaller environments with eight or less product instances.

External Platform Services Controller:

The services bundled with the Platform Services Controller and vCenter Server are deployed on different virtual machines.You must deploy the VMware Platform Services Controller first on one virtual appliance and then deploy vCenter Server on another appliance. The Platform Services Controller can be shared across many products. This configuration is suitable for larger environments with nine or more product instances.

 vCSA 6.0 Appliance Access:

As Compared with the Previous Versions of vCSA, vCSA 6.0 appliance access has been modified a bit. vCSA no more having admin URL with port 5480 to control and configure the vCenter Server appliance. Now there are 3 Methods to access the vCSA appliance

• vSphere Web Client UI
• Appliance Shell
• Direct Control User Interface (DCUI)

With DCUI added with vCSA. Look and Feel of vCSA is very similar to ESXi host. Black box model.

vCSA 6.0 Appliance Sizing:

During vCSA 6.0 deployment, you will be asked to select the deployment size of vCSA appliance. There are 4 default out-of-box sizes available with vCSA deployment.

Comparison  between vCenter  6.0 Windows and vCSA 6.0

vCSA now supports most of the features which is supported with the windows version of vCenter server.  I would like to provide quick comparison table between vCenter windows version and vCenter server appliance with embedded database.

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NFS 4.1 supported with Kerberos Authentication and Multipathing

vSphere 6.0 – NFS 4.1 supported with Kerberos Authentication and Multipathing

As we all aware that vSphere 6.0 is released with lot of new features and enhancements. One of the new feature of vSphere 6.0 is support for NFS v4.1. vSphere 6.0 supports NFS v4.1 with kerberos authentication along with mutipathing support. You will be able to add multiple IP address associated with single NFS mount for redundancy. With vSphere 6.0 support for NFS v 4.1 have many new features and improvements

• Session Trunking/Multipathing
• Improved Security with Kerberos Authentication
• Improved Locking(In-band mandatory locks)
• Better Error Recovery(Client and server not state-less any more, with recoverable context.)

Choose your NFS Version:

You will be provided with the option to choose the NFS version during NFS datastore create option. You should use the same NFS version for the mounting the NFS datastore across all ESXi hosts. Mounting one or more hosts to the same NFS datastore using different NFS versions will lead to data corruption. In simple terms, If you have selected NFS 4.1 for the particular datstore, you should mount that NFS datastore with version NFS 4.1 in all ESXi hosts.

Configuring Kerberos Authentication:

Configuring Kerberos Authentication is a 4 step process. Follow the steps in order:

1. Configure NTP settings of the ESXi host
2. ESXi host must joined to the domain
3. Set NFS Kerberos credentials

      4. Enable Kerberos while creating datastore

 Configuring NFS Multipathing:

Enter the datastore name, folder path, and NFS server address. Enter multiple IP addresses that are available on your NAS to achieve multipathing to NFS server mount point, If the server that will back this datastore has trunking enabled.

 vSphere Feature Comparison between NFS v3 and NFS v4.1:

NFS datastores which are mounted using the NFS version 4.1 cannot work with few of the vSphere Features like SDRS (Storage DRS), SIOC (Storage I/O Control), SRM (Site Recover Manager) and Virtual Volumes (VVols).

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VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols)?

Virtual Volumes (VVols) is one the new feature addition with vSphere 6.0. Virtual volumes are encapsulations of virtual machine files, virtual disks, and their derivatives. Virtual volumes are stored natively inside a storage system that is connected through Ethernet or SAN. They are exported as objects by a compliant storage system and are managed entirely by hardware on the storage side. Typically, a unique GUID identifies a virtual volume.

Virtual volumes are not preprovisioned, but created automatically when you perform virtual machine management operations. These operations include a VM creation, cloning, and snapshotting. ESXi and vCenter Server associate one or more virtual volumes to a virtual machine.

Currently all storage is LUN-centric or volume-centric, especially when it comes to snapshots, clones and replication. VVols makes it storage VM-centric. With VVols, most of the data operations can be offloaded to the storage arrays. VVols goes much further and makes storage arrays aware of individual VMDK files.Virtual volumes encapsulate virtual disks and other virtual machine files as natively stored the files on the storage system.

How Many Virtual Volumes (VVols) created Per Virtual Machine ?

For every VM a single VVol is created to replace the VM directory in today’s system.

• 1 config VVol  represents a small directory that contains metadata files for a virtual machine. The files include a .vmx file, descriptor files for virtual disks, log files, and so forth.
• 1 VVol for every virtual disk (.VMDK)
• 1 VVol for swap, if needed
• 1 VVol per disk snapshot and 1 per memory snapshot

Additional virtual volumes can be created for other virtual machine components and virtual disk derivatives, such as clones, snapshots, and replicas.

Major Components of VMware Virtual Volumes (VVols):

There are 3 important objects in particular related to Virtual Volumes(VVols) are the storage provider, the protocol endpoint and the storage container. Let’s discuss about each of the 3 items:

Storage Providers:

• A VVols storage provider, also called a VASA provider. Storage provider is implemented through VMware APIs for Storage Awareness (VASA) and is used to manage all aspects of VVols storage.
• Storage provider delivers information from the underlying storage,so that storage container capabilities can appear in vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client.
• Vendors are responsible for supplying storage providers that can integrate with vSphere and provide support to VVols.

Storage Container:

• VVols uses a storage container, which is a pool of raw storage capacity or an aggregation of storage capabilities that a storage system can provide to virtual volumes.
• The storage container logically groups virtual volumes based on management and administrative needs. For example, the storage container can contain all virtual volumes created for a tenant in a multitenant deployment, or a department in an enterprise deployment. Each storage container serves as a virtual volume store and virtual volumes are allocated out of the storage container capacity.
• Storage administrator on the storage side defines storage containers. The number of storage containers and their capacity depend on a vendor-specific implementation, but at least one container for each storage system is required.

Protocol EndPoint (PE):

• Although storage systems manage all aspects of virtual volumes, ESXi hosts have no direct access to virtual volumes on the storage side. Instead, ESXi hosts use a logical I/O proxy, called the protocol endpoint, to communicate with virtual volumes and virtual disk files that virtual volumes encapsulate.
• ESXi uses protocol endpoints to establish a data path on demand from virtual machines to their respective virtual volumes.
• Each virtual volume is bound to a specific protocol endpoint. When a virtual machine on the host performs an I/O operation, the protocol endpoint directs the I/O to the appropriate virtual volume. Typically, a storage system requires a very small number of protocol endpoints. A single protocol endpoint can connect to hundreds or thousands of virtual volumes.

VVols Datastore:

• A VVols datastore represents a storage container in vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client.
• After vCenter Server discovers storage containers exported by storage systems, you must mount them to be able to use them. You use the datastore creation wizard in the vSphere Web Client to map a storage container to a VVols datastore.

• The VVols datastore that you create corresponds directly to the specific storage container and becomes the container’s representation in vCenter Server and the vSphere Web Client.
• From a vSphere administrator prospective, the VVols datastore is similar to any other datastore and is used to hold virtual machines. Like other datastores, the VVols datastore can be browsed and lists configuration virtual volumes by virtual machine name. Like traditional datastores, the VVols datastore supports unmounting and mounting. However, such operations as upgrade and resize are not applicable to theVVols datastore. The VVols datastore capacity is configurable by the storage administrator outside of vSphere.

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What’s New – Improved and Faster vSphere Web Client , vSphere 6.0

vSphere 6.0 What’s New – Improved and Faster vSphere Web Client

vSphere 6.0 has been released  with lot of new features and improvements to the existing vSphere version. vSphere Web client was introduced from vSphere 5.1 and Web Client is one of the biggest area, where all the system administrators were really looking for an improvement. VMware really considered the feedback from customers and partners about the vSphere web Client and now made an incredible changes to the vSphere web client. As compared to vSphere 5.0,5.5 and 5.5, below are the improvements:

• Login time was improved 13 times faster
• Right-click is improved 4 times faster. 
• One Click and navigate anywhere
• Highly Customizable User Interface (Simply Drag and Drop)
• Performance charts are available and usable in less than half of the time
• VMRC is integrated and allows advanced VM operations

Tasks are placed at bottom:

Tasks are placed at the bottom as same as vSphere Client. Which allows you to see all your tasks. Look and feel is same as vSphere Client.

Improved Navigation:

One of the biggest issue in previous version of web Client was it’s difficulty in navigating the inventory items. Lot of core items like Hosts & Clusters, VM and Templates, Storage and networking are placed back in home page. New menu has been added to the top allows to access to inventory items from everywhere.

Redesigned Context Menus:

Context menus of web client has been redesigned as similar to vSphere Client.

Performance Comparison:

VMware Shows the detailed comparison between how web client 6.0 has been improved versus previous versions of vSphere Web Client.

With vSphere 6.0, System Administrators will really enjoy the performance improvements of vSphere 6.0 Web Client. I hope this is informative for you. Thanks for Reading!!!. Be Social and share it in social media, if you feel worth sharing it.