Assess Your vSphere Infrastructure with vSphere Assessment Tool

While every Administrator wants to constantly upgrade Infrastructure to “N” state and leverage the latest and greatest capabilities of the hypervisor, the amount of validation that administrator has to carry on the server ecosystem is too cumbersome – validating multiple compatibility matrix across Server, Storage and Network OEMs. This gets even more complex when we have multiple x86 OEMs on the Infrastructure.

Until 2019, Two VMware Products that was close to most of the administrators but had little improvements in capabilities for long time has been vSphere Update Manager and SRM. Both are an administrator’s dependable workhorse which has not only been resilient but has solved a critical business requirement with such simplicity . 2019 has been exciting seeing enhancements that are being made to Update Manager and SRM. On all my discussions with various Product Managers from VMware and Customer Advisory meetings, I have been advocating improvements in Assessment and Reporting part of vSphere Update Manager. From Assessment stand-point, have been requesting for enhancements to update manager to perform assessment or prerequisite validation and from reporting stand-point wanted integration of Update Manager to vROps or vCenter Server so that we can report in ease back to the management considering these days the frequency of upgrades are increasing due to multiple vulnerabilities and its relevant patching need.

This is why I was excited about the General Availability of vSphere Assessment Tool recently and quickly evaluated the capabilities and it is definitely a much needed one! It’s going to help all of us in saving lots and lots of time and effort in assessing a global landscape with ease.

vSphere Assessment Tool is a free assessment service from VMware and consists of two tiers – Client (Download & Install) to gather information from hosts through vCenter Server and an Online Portal/Service where the recorded data in analyzed and results shared in a Simple and Concise UI.

  • Click “Download the tool” to download the client to your desktop/server. Client is available for Windows, OS X and Linux platforms.
  • Install the Client and this is a straightforward installation.
  • Once Installed, Please open the client and add vCenter Servers for data gathering. You can add multiple vCenter Servers and run together or discretely by choosing only specific vCenter Servers.
  • Once you choose vCenter Servers and Click “Run Data Collection“
  • Data gathering completes in a matter on minutes and once completed, Click Proceed and you can either “Send Collected Data” or my preference would be to download the file and upload the same from the Online Portal.
  • Once downloaded, we can also review the downloaded file to validate the information that is gathered.
  • Login back to the portal and Click “Upload File“
  • For added security, There is a unique vSAT Passcode that is available on the portal that needs to be entered while uploading and the same is available when you login every time in the portal itself.
  • Upload the downloaded file from the Client
  • Upload is quick again and once analyzed it quickly displays the output in a neat dashboard as shown below
  • You can choose version for which you are looking to upgrade and it displays clearly below if the host is compatible or Not Supported.
  • The vSphere Assessment tool shows the Compatible status of a host potential for vSphere upgrade, and will display a breakdown of the following components support status: Server Model > Network Devices > Storage Devices Drivers
  • Click on “Supported” or “Not Supported” to showcase the compatibility output

There are still few enhancements (like why not integrate with Update Manager or vROps ) that can be made and there are few hosts that are not being assessed every time i run but then this is a very very good starting point considering the goodness in the tool !!

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure Constructs

Hyper-Converged Infrastructure combines Software Defined Compute, Storage and Networking to deliver a unified system for consumption. HCI Software runs on standard x86 Servers to abstract and pool the underlying resources which is dynamically allocated to VMs or containers based on Policies. Before getting into various platforms that are available for consumption today on HCI, Let us first understand the various constructs that build a Hyper-Converged Infrastructure platform so that comparison of platforms becomes much easier later.

  • Workload Characterization – It all starts with the Use-Case. Understanding application requirement is core to identifying the right HCI platform and therefore its critical the overall requirement is gathered and evaluation carried out based on the requirement.
  • Model – HCI is all about choice and flexibility. There are two models available for customers looking to invest in HCI – All FLASH & Hybrid ( Combination of SSD and HDD ). Depending on the Performance requirement and Storage Optimization needs, choice can be made between one of these Models.
  • Hardware Choice – Considering HCI is about Software defined Storage & Compute (+ Network at times), You always have Choice of Hardware Platform for hosting HCI Software.
  • Replication Factor – This is critical to determine the number of failure the solution can tolerate. Replication Factor is a policy for the number of duplicate copies of each data block that is written to HCI ( 2 or 3 Copies available )
  • Licensing Model – This varies with every platform but at high level remember that this can be Software only licensing where we procure Software separately and install them on our own hardware or integrated platform like VxRAIL, Nutanix, Cisco Hyper-Flex where it can be based on combination and we will cover them in detail when we discuss on the platforms individually.
  • Mode of Deployment – How are the nodes deployed at Customer Site? It can either be a Turnkey solution or Deployed On-Site solution (mostly when software and hardware are procured separately)
  • HCI Models – There are two model (Edge vs Enterprise) depending on where you want to install and Scalability/Capabilities requirements.
  • HCI Architecture – How is Hyper-Convergence Software deployed since it might vary depending on Hypervisor of Choice. It can be either In-Kernel or based on Control Virtual Machine ( The Software is deployed as a Service Virtual machines on the Hypervisor)
  • Overheads – This is the resources that is needed for the HCI Software to perform. Depending on the HCI Software and deployment model (In-Kernel vs. CVM) overheads required would vary.
  • HCI Supported Capabilities – HCI is just a starting point where in the resources are pooled and made available for consumption on a unified data platform. What additional capabilities can HCI deliver for consumption on top of the solution adds lot of value to customers. These may vary from File Services, Object Store, Analytical Services to Backup Services.
  • Optimization – What are the Storage Efficiency capabilities that are available on the Platform – Efficiency (Deduplication & Compression) and Performance (Data Locality vs. Global Distribution )
  • Scalability – Ease of Scalability of the platform (Scale-Up and Scale-Out). When demand increases one should be able to quickly add new nodes without impacting applications or Performance.
  • Rack Awareness Capabilities – Rack awareness / Fault Domain capabilities are critical to building a resilient infrastructure along with increased uptime for the application and infrastructure. These are a set of capabilities where the HCI is aware of the node distribution among racks in a DC and ensures that duplicate copies of the data is always stored on different rack so as to ensure increased resiliency of the platform.
  • Monitoring & Management – Support for Unified Monitoring and Management of multiple Hyper-Converged Infrastructure platforms.
  • Upgrades – The simplicity and ease of upgrade of the entire platform right from the hardware to the software (HCI & Hypervisor) with minimal intervention from Administrator.
  • Security – Security is a critical aspect with whatever do in a Datacenter and HCI is no different. Key use cases would be protecting data stored on HCI clusters which can be addressed in multiple ways starting from RBAC to Two factor Authentication to Data at rest encryption & locking down management access.

These are some of the critical constructs for evaluating and designing right Hyper-Converged Infrastructure platform for your workloads.

Do share your thoughts !

Tryst with Hyper-Converged Infrastructure

In the constant pursue to consume and implement Innovative solutions for Infrastructure , We have been constantly evaluating innovative solutions around Storage Optimization – Storage Virtualization, Software defined Storage, All Flash Storage Platforms etc.. which eventually led us to Hyper-Converged Infrastructure platforms. vSphere was a game changer for the Compute Eco-System Optimization and Standardization driving higher consolidation ratio with every release but we always was lagging on driving software defined storage and network.

We had tried various Storage Virtualization and Software defined Storage platform but with results wasn’t up to our expectations. That’s when we started exploring various Hyper-Converged Platforms that was around – VSAN, Nutanix, Simplivity, Springpath etc. and it was literally love at first sight ! The Promise these platforms had way back then was so huge that Enterprise were ready to take bet on HCI and those we did are reaping their benefits to date ! There was so much startups fighting their way up around this space and i have been privileged to be working with many of them to understand their technology and how it can help us in building next generation modern datacenter driven by Simplicity, Resiliency, Scalability, Performance and yet remain Optimized. The Eco-System has changed so much over the years through Acquisition and Partnership between OEMs and then there is emergence of Secondary Storage HCI platforms as well.

In subsequent posts, I will try and de-clutter the overall design, centralized Monitoring & Management framework, Upgrades & Benefits of some key HCI Platforms that i work on

  • Nutanix on vSphere
  • VMware VSAN / VxRAIL Platform
  • Cisco HyperFlex
  • Cohesity Data Platform