In my previous posting I created a fictitious company who requires you as the VMware Architect to design them a vSphere 5.0 environment to meet all their requirements whilst keeping within their constraints and mitigating risks. Now I didn’t list the constraints or the risks as I felt this was something that is very important to learn how to define in preparation for the VCAP5-DCD and vSphere designs in real life practice.
The first portion of the design I’m hoping to create (and get everyone’s opinions,participation and comments on ) is the storage design. So below are the portions I will be trying to fill out for the Safe and Legit scenario and hopefully people also wanting to learn and participate will fill out each of the sections with their own design decisions and then we can compare and hopefully learn together/off each other.
Storage Array
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
Number of LUNs and LUN sizes
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
Storage load balancing and availability
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
VMware vSphere VMFS or RDM
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
Host zoning
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
LUN Presentation
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
Thick or Thin disks
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
Virtual Machine I/O Priority
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
Storage Profiles
| Design Choice | |
| Justification | |
| Design Impacts | |
Describe and diagram the logical design
| Attribute | Specification |
| Storage Type | |
| Number of Storage Processors | |
| Number of Fibre Channel Switches (if any) | |
| Number of ports per host per switch | |
| Total number of LUNs | |
| LUN Sizes | |
| VMFS datastores per LUN |
Describe and diagram the physical design
| Array vendor and model | |
| Type of array | |
| VMware ESXi host multipathing policy | |
| Min/Max speed rating of storage switch ports | |
Loads of bits to decide and design. I’m hoping to have my storage design decisions and what I thought were the constraints and risks for the design up by the end of the week and if not then by the latest next week Monday in my next posting. Happy designing 
Gregg
