Vcenter over long distances

[Gortee]

All,

I am thinking of deploying a number of resource clusters around different locations.  I am wondering if it would be reasonable to manage these multiple clusters with a single vcenter in a central location.   Keep in mind that these clusters may be 100 miles apart.  (I am not talking stretch clustering)  Is this possible... what are the pro's / con's...

Etc.

Thanks,

J

[weinstein5]

Yes that is a perfectly feasable design - the potetial issue is depending on network latency and availability you might have gaps in the collection of performance data collection and occasional drops in connectivity to the cluster - major pro is you save the cost of additional vCenter licenses -

[Gortee]

Weinstein5,

Thanks for the reply.  I agree that performance metrics and DRS load balancing may be effected by this design.  More than the cost of vcenter we are trying to provide a single pane of glass management. 

Pro:

Single pane of glass for management

Less vcenter licenses

Con:

Network interruptions may cause DRS load balance issues and metric reporting issues. 

What other pro's / cons exist.

[abhilashhb]

You can have a Single SSO and keep the vCenter+inventory service running on two sites. That way in Web client you will get single pane of management. Pro would be reducing complexity of management but still having vcenter's across sites.

[Gortee]

Abhilash,

Thanks for your reply.  In my case we plan on deploying around 10 sites.  SSO has caused many issues in the past.  The deployment you mention means that we could not login to the remote sites without the network connectivity but it does bring the DRS control local.   Please help me justify the cost of multiple vcenters and a single SSO. 

Thanks,

J

[abhilashhb]

You said:

More than the cost of vcenter we are trying to provide a single pane of glass management.

And moreover i'm really not sure how the licensing works in this case. I mentioned this coz i was working on a similar solution for one of y=our customers and as soon as you said single pane of management the first thing that came to mind was this solution.

[Gortee]

You are correct the cost is not my primary concern but it does have to be justified.   I am concerned with a single SSO with multiple vcenters.  I guess my issue is more with multiple vcenters using a single SSO.  I don't trust SSO but it is a possible design.

I am always looking to justify design choices.  The I don't trust is not the best answer in justification terms.

[abhilashhb]

Yes. Just coz you don't trust SSO doesn't mean it wont work well JK.

I think people have run into so many problems with SSO that they are no more in favour of it but VMware leaves them no choice. I think its a good approach if you are thinking of having two vcenters. If you are going with just one then it won't make sense.

[Josh26]

You've discussed distance but not the speed of the joining links. They could be right next to each other, but if they were connected over a dial up modem I wouldn't do it.

Over quality WAN links, this shouldn't be a problem.

[Gortee]

Josh,

Good point I did not bring it up but I should have... my bad for not providing the requirements.   These locations are connected by 100GB backbone where I am the ISP on all links.  Since the datacenters will be using 10GB max best possible speed is 10GB minus interframe gaps.   At this point our network is around 3% utilized on these links so I can safely guarantee 10GB between sites.   In addition it's a multi-ring topology allowing for redundant paths.   So baring any major multi-location disasters I have pretty solid 10GB connections. 

I am pondering Abhilash's suggestion of using local vcenters with a central web client and SSO.   It does bring the advantages of having all vcenter services local to the cluster at each location and central management. 

It does bring up the issue of running other monitoring platform's close to home (vcop's netflow monitoring, hardware monitors.. etc..)

At this point I have two plans:

1. Central vcenter

2. Distributed vcenters with central SSO and web setup.

3. Independent vcenters without any connection to central hub (does not fit requirements)

What other solutions am I missing?

[TBKing]

We're still on 5.0 (no SSO) and have two vCenters in Linked Mode.

Log in to one vCenter and see both data centers.

We also have a small remote site with a single host, no local vC, but managed by the central vC

- soon to be adding more sites

[Gortee]

Thanks for the additional thoughts in my case I will have 10 sites a least so linked mode is not an option.   I am considering the central VC more and more as time progresses.

Thanks,

J

[TommyFreddy]

Is there any instruction regarding building hight for establishing Vcenter. We got a Vcenter in 22th floor.

What should be standard building hight?

Take care!

[Josh26]

Is there any instruction regarding building hight for establishing Vcenter. We got a Vcenter in 22th floor.

What should be standard building hight?

I can't for the life of me see why a building height would have any factor to vcenter. Is this a serious question?

[Gortee]

As the original poster of this question I have also been puzzling over this question... I was looking forward to some spec's around building height..... I guess the same answer applies your vcenter can be over 200 miles away or one floor away if your network connection is crap it will fail.  All about the networking. 

[Josh26]

Lets look at it another way...

I have one network which spans a two KM length. There are certainly no issues with vCenter spanning this, however, those links are all gigabit fibre on one layer 2 segment. I also have vCenter running across a WAN of several KM, spanning several L3 hops. Again, there's no problem with this, because that WAN is heavily QoS's in favour of vCenter traffic.

Unless your building is 2KM high, nothing about that link being vertical makes sense as becoming a problem for vCenter.

Where there certainly will be a problem, is where you connect two services through high latency firewalls, a VPN which happens to route halfway across the world and back (and this can happen even with a VPN to next door), and of course, a 10Base2 network.