vSphere Data Protection (VDP) is a robust, simple-to-deploy, disk-based backup and recovery solution. vSphere Data Protection is fully integrated with VMware vCenter Server and enables centralized and efficient management of backup jobs while storing backups in deduplicated destination storage.
The benefits of vSphere Data Protection are:
Provides fast and efficient data protection for all of your virtual machines, even those powered off or moved between physical hosts.
Significantly reduces disk space consumed by backup data using smart deduplication across all backups.
Reduces the cost of backing up virtual machines and minimizes the backup window using change block tracking and VMware virtual machine snapshots.
Allows for easy backups without the need for third-party agents installed in each virtual machine.
Uses a simple straight-forward installation as an integrated component within vSphere, that can be managed by a web portal.
Direct access to vSphere Data Protection configuration integrated into the standard vSphere Web Client.
Protects backups with checkpoint and rollback mechanisms.
Provides simplified recovery of Windows and Linux files with end-user initiated file level recoveries from a web-based interface.
The VMware vSphere Web Client interface is used to select, schedule, configure, and manage backups and recoveries of virtual machines. During a backup, vSphere Data Protection creates a quiesced snapshot of the virtual machine. Deduplication is automatically performed with every backup operation.
The following terms are used throughout this document in the context of backup and recovery.
A datastore is a virtual representation of a combination of underlying physical storage resources in the datacenter.
A datastore is the storage location (for example, a physical disk, a RAID, or a SAN) for virtual machine files.
Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is a VMkernel feature that keeps track of the storage blocks of virtual machines as they change over time. The VMkernel keeps track of block changes on virtual machines, which enhances the backup process for applications that have been developed to take advantage of VMware’s vStorage APIs.
VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP) enables backup software to perform centralized VM backups without the disruption and overhead of running backup tasks from inside each virtual machine.
Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) is a file or set of files that appears as a physical disk drive to a guest operating system. These files can be on the host machine or on a remote file system.
The vSphere Data Protection appliance is a purpose built virtual appliance for vSphere data protection.
vSphere Data Protection Advanced (VDP Advanced) – Is a new standalone product sold separately from vSphere – It extends the capabilities of VDP with greater scalability and integration with business-critical applications to protect midsize vSphere environments. VDP Advanced provides fast agent-less image-level backups, as well as guest-level application-consistent protection of Microsoft® SQL Server™ and Microsoft® Exchange Server™.
SilverLining is a VMware Fling that implements a simplified user experience to the cloud. The simplified workflows and interactions allow end users easily find virtualized applications and add them into their personal workspace. The Fling includes both a JavaScript SDK (vcloud-js-sdk) and a reference implementation (silverlining) to exercise the SDK. The implementation is created in HTML5, CSS, and JavaScript and can be used as an example of how to create a custom UI that talks to VMware vCloud Director (vCD).
The JavaScript SDK communicates with vCD 5.1 through the vCD API. A limited number of API calls are supported in this release. For a reference to the complete vCD API see http://www.vmware.com/go/vcloudapi for more information.
Once authenticated, the SDK will automatically fetch information about the vApps, Templates and VMs available to the user and store this information in an internal model. The SDK provides methods to work with the data in this model.
Using this model, the SDK can update the data independently of any UI display logic that needs to retrieve data from it. This is especially useful if there is any network lag or temporary disconnect since this data model acts as a cache. Any operations in the UI logic are not interrupted, unless there is a specific reason to communicate with the Cloud Director server, such as a power operation on a vApp.
This Fling includes the following features:
A flexible vCloud Director 5.1 SDK for JavaScript implemented using vCloud API
A reference implementation with a responsive UI done in HTML5, CSS and JavaScript
Use of metadata feature to enhance the UI with custom attributes on templates and vApps
Supports local storage in HTML5 to support offline mode
Notifications system to support long running operations
Separation of form and content of the backend processes from UI updates
VMware vCenter Server Heartbeat delivers high availability for VMware vCenter Server, protecting virtual infrastructure from application, configuration, operating system, network and hardware-related problems. Protect VMware vCenter Server and its database against all types of planned and unplanned downtime with seamless, rapid failover and failback on both physical and virtual platforms. Proactively monitor VMware vCenter Server and ensure seamless failover and failback of for in local and remote locations.
This video created by Peter Boone and Jody Wilson demonstrates installing vCenter Server Heartbeat and also validating the installation.
A massive area of pain for customers in a virtualized environment is managing SSL certificates and keys for components in the VMware stack. Currently under development, with a scheduled release in Q1 2013, the vCert Manager is a solution that provides automated management and operations of SSL Certificates in a VMware environment - a single pane of glass to create, manage, apply, custom SSL certificates for all of the products, including creating the certificate keys, signing request, applying to the Certificate Authority, and when the certificate is issued, to automatically apply it to the particular vSphere component.
vCert manager is available as a plug in install into vCenter, or vCenter Configuration Manager, it integrates at an API level with open SSL or an Enterprise CA such as Microsoft CA in addition to allowing manual import of existing certificates and public CA certificates that can then be applied by the system. It integrates at an API level with the VMware stack of tools (vCenter Server, Update Manager, vShield Manager, vCenter Configuration Manager, vCenter Operations, vSphere Web Client, Virtual Infrastructure Navigator, vCenter Chargeback, SRM, vCloud Director, vCenter Heartbeat, ESX and ESXi Hosts, VMware View, or a subset of these based on discussions and priorities between VSS, ITS2K and VMware from versions compatible from vSphere 4.x onwards (v5.5 of vCenter Configuration Manager and 5.0 of vCenter Operations Only onwards only)
Has auto discovery of VM components (through vCenter, vCOps, vCloud and Linked Mode)
Upon initial installation of VM components, replaces temporary/ unsecure default certificates supplied with the VMware components with those supplied by the Enterprise CA.
Stores all VMware related certificates and VM account credentials in a secure database.
Keeps track of all expirations and revocations and allows an administrator to view upcoming expirations and automatically go apply for a new certificate
Allows role based access control and separation of duties between security admin and VI admin"
VMware vCloud Director 5.1 gives enterprise organizations the ability to build secure private clouds that dramatically increase datacenter efficiency and business agility. Coupled with VMware vSphere®, vCloud Director delivers cloud computing for existing datacenters by pooling virtual infrastructure resources and delivering them to users as catalog-based services. vCloud Director 5.1 helps you build agile infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud environments that greatly accelerate the time-to-market for applications and responsiveness of IT organizations.
This white paper addresses three areas regarding vCloud Director performance:
vCloud Director sizing guidelines and software requirements
Best practices in performance and tuning vCloud Director Architecture
Performance characterization and best practices for key vCloud Director operations and new features
Figure 1 shows the deployment architecture for vCloud Director. A user accesses vCloud Director through a Web browser or REST API. Multiple vCloud Director Server instances can be deployed with a shared database, and both Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server databases are supported.
A vCloud Director Server instance connects to one or multiple VMware vCenter Servers. From now on, we use vCloud Director Server instance and cell interchangeably.
VMware vCenter Support Assistant is a free, downloadable plug-in for vCenter Server. It provides an easy-to-use, secure, one-stop shop BOTH for creating and managing service requests AND generating and uploading logs. It also includes a VMware Knowledge Base search capability, which enables customers to resolve common issues more rapidly.
Support Assistant helps gather more of the information up front that VMware Technical Support finds useful. By minimizing further data requests from VMware Technical Support, vCenter Support Assistant can help reduce time to resolution and, in turn, minimize system downtime.
Storage Explorer assesses storage performance and capacity views across datastores and VMs that helps VM admins to get better visibility of their storage environment. Storage Explorer, a utility within the vOPS Server Explorer freeware suite, displays storage performance and capacity views across datastores and VMs with the following features:
Identify critical VM issues such as low available disk space, high latency and throughput.
Allows user to sort on any metric to find specific issues relevant to them.
Identify critical datastore issues such as overcommitment, low capacity, high latency, VMFS version mismatch.
This intensive, extended-hours training course focuses on installing, configuring, and managing VMware vSphere 5.1. This course combines the content of the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage course with advanced tasks and skills for configuring a highly available and scalable virtual infrastructure. The course is based on VMware ESXi 5.1 and VMware vCenter Server 5.1. Completion of this course satisfies the prerequisite for taking the VMware Certified Professional 5 exam. Students who complete this course may enroll in any of several more advanced vSphere courses. This training course is targeted at experienced system administrators and system integrators willing to work hard to achieve superior vSphere skills with minimal time away from the office.The objectives are:
Configure and manage ESXi networking and storage
Create, configure, migrate, manage, and monitor virtual machines and virtual appliances
Manage user access to the VMware virtual infrastructure
Use vCenter Server to monitor resource usage
Implement VMware vSphere® High Availability and VMware vSphere® Fault Tolerance (FT)
Use host profiles to manage ESXi configuration compliance
Use vSphere distributed switches to scale networking
Use profile-driven storage and VMware vSphere Storage DRS to scale storage
Use VMware vSphere Update Manager to apply ESXi patches
Use VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) to manage vSphere
Deploy ESXi, vCenter Server, and VMware vCenter Server Appliance
Use VMware vSphere ESXi Image Builder CLI to create an ESXi image
Use VMware vSphere Auto Deploy to provision ESXi hosts
Cisco UCS Platform Emulator is the Cisco UCS Manager application bundled into a virtual machine (VM). The VM includes software that emulates hardware communications for the Cisco Unified Computing System.
The UCS Platform Emulator (UCSPE) was developed to enable the use of Cisco UCS Manager and the UCS XML API without requiring physical hardware. UCSPE significantly shortens the development cycle for applications that are based on the UCS XML API. You can create and test programs using only UCSPE installed on a laptop.
UCSPE presents a controlled environment for the following:
Emulation of large-scale environments
Changes in the hardware inventory (device discovery)
Firmware upgrade testing
Troubleshooting real UCS problems
For example, you can use Cisco UCS Platform Emulator to create and test a supported Cisco UCS configuration, or to duplicate an existing Cisco UCS environment for troubleshooting or development purposes.
Cisco UCS Platform Emulator supports both DHCP and static IP. By default, Cisco UCS Platform Emulator is configured to use the local network to obtain an IP address via DHCP. If your network does not include a DHCP server, you must assign a static IP address to Cisco UCS Platform Emulator.
After the initial deployment of the OVA completes, Cisco UCS Platform Emulator displays the management IP address in the VM console. If you assign a static IP address, the IP address persists across VM reboots.
You can host Cisco UCS Platform Emulator using VMplayer, VMfusion and VMware vSphere ESXi.
VMware is about to release a new training course. The vSphere Skills for Operators is a two-day technical classroom training course designed to help the operators and administrators to create and manage virtual machines. This two-day lecture and lab course will help students gain the skills required to work effectively with VMware virtual machines. This course is based on VMware vSphere ESXi 5.1 and VMware vCenter Server 5.1. After completing this course, students may enroll for other advanced vSphere courses.
The overall objective of this course is to provide students a strong understanding of VMware virtual machine features in vSphere 5.1. By the end of this course, the students should be able to do the following:
Describe virtualization, virtual machines, and vSphere components.
Describe the concepts of server, network, and storage virtualization.
Deploy, configure, and manage, and virtual machines.
Use vCenter Server to monitor virtual machine resource usage.
Use VMware vSphere® vMotion® and VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion® to migrate virtual machines.
Secure virtual machines.
Troubleshoot problems with virtual machine configuration.
