Private cloud: Requirement Analysis for building a DDC test environment

In the previous series of articles, I introduced Microsoft's private cloud (IAAS) solution-Dynamic Data Center (DDC) solution, I believe you have some knowledge about the concepts, functions, and architecture of dynamic data centers. In the next article, we will continue to explore the functions of dynamic data centers. This article will introduce how to build a dynamic data center test environment. This section is divided into two parts: hardware and software. The first part is about the hardware requirements of DDC.

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　　DDC hardware requirements

Successful implementation of any dynamic data center requires careful analysis and capacity planning to meet current and future growth. Each enterprise has different requirements, such as different business nature, different performance requirements of business systems, number of users, and growth potential. This article does not contain detailed plans for building a dynamic data center.

The hardware infrastructure of DDC must meet the following requirements:

1. high-availability virtual machines with automatic failover (also known as fast migration)

2. Network redundancy and high availability

3. New virtual machines can be provided in lightweight or zero-touch mode.

4. integrates Operations Manager 2007 R2 and Virtual Machine manager 2008r2 to provide physical and virtual network infrastructure performance and resource optimization (Pro) features.

5. provides large San-based shared storage (such as iSCSI and Fiber Channel) for Virtual Disks or straight-through disks ).

6. System Center Enterprise Suite (includes 4 core products-SC-CM, SC-OM, SC-DPM, and SC-VMM ).

7. Run the WCF Service and instance demonstration.

▲Figure 1 main components of a Dynamic Data Center (DDC)

As shown in, we have used a total of four Windows Server 2008 servers to run the system Center Enterprise suite, and a local or remote instance of SQL Server 2005 SP3 or a later version of the database server, and a high-availability cluster composed of one or more hyper-V hosts. Hyper-V host clusters connect to backend iSCSI storage or fiber-channel-based SAN shared storage. All hyper-V host clusters use the cluster technology in Windows Server 2008. In the DDC toolkit, the WCF-based portal service can be installed on one of the system center servers, or on an independent server. Note that each hyper-V host cluster can have up to 16 nodes (host servers ), each hyper-V host can usually run 10-20 hyper-V virtual machines (the actual number of running virtual machines is related to the performance of the hyper-V host) nodes. In the lab environment, we need at least a 2-node hyper-V host cluster for high availability and failover.

Management Servers are used to run the system Center Enterprise suite. Of course, they can enable real physical machines or virtual machines running on hyper-V hosts, however, we recommend that you use a physical host in a production environment and a virtual machine in an experimental testing environment. We must use Windows Server 2008 and SQL Server 2005 (or later) to host the System Center Enterprise suite. The components in the System Center Enterprise suite help our enterprise customers manage and optimize physical and virtual infrastructure for the entire dynamic data center.

Every Management Server dynamically manages our data centers. Therefore, each of them must be installed on an independent virtual or physical server and must be supported by the SQL Server backend, there are also SQL reporting services, Active Directory accounts, certificates, and other infrastructure services, such as DNS and DHCP services. Management Servers can be separately installed on one or more servers (Load Balancing/redundancy) to build SQL servers with high availability for any local or remote instances.

DDC software requirements

The management software required in DDC is composed of four core products in the System Center Enterprise suite. In the following sections, we will discuss each product, as well as the key points and precautions for deploying them in the DDC lab environment. Note that the hardware requirements for deployment in the production environment are different from those in the virtual environment. In addition, we will not discuss the detailed steps for the hardware device to be configured and debugged multiple times for failover and scalability.

To build the system center lab environment, we need at least four servers based on Windows Server 2008 R2. As shown in the physical architecture, this is the minimum requirement required to complete the DDC experiment environment. These servers can be either a physical server or a virtual machine. Note that in the production environment, we recommend that you configure a higher-configuration physical server as needed to host system center applications.

▲Figure 2 DDC lab deployment of system center suite

The System Center Enterprise suite includes:

1. System Center Virtual Machine manager 2008 R2: vmm provides a scalable Virtual Machine management mechanism. It can be integrated with Operations Manager to dynamically optimize the performance and resources of virtual machines.

2. System Center Operations Manager 2007 R2: it can be used to monitor hardware, network, and software usage. R2 is further enhanced and expanded to monitor Linux-based systems and applications.

3. System Center Configuration Manager 2007 R2: Provides software distribution, patch updates, configuration management, operating system deployment, software and hardware asset management, remote assistance, and other functions.

4. systems Center Data Protection Manager 2010: provides short-term or long-term backup and recovery for physical and virtual hosts, as well as granular backup and recovery for other Microsoft products, such as exchange.

Summary

In the process of building a dynamic data center test environment, high-availability virtual machines, network redundancy, and storage devices are required in hardware requirements, with hardware guarantee and support of Virtual Machine management software and system Center Enterprise suite, a complete test environment can be built, in the next article, we will continue to introduce how to install and configure the software.

 

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