UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS

COMMUNICATION TRAINING BATTALION

MARINE CORPS COMMUNICATION-ELECTRONICS SCHOOL
BOX 788251
TWENTYNINE PALMS, CALIFORNIA 92278-8251

Annex B
DS.02.01
Virtualization
Student Outline
Data Systems Administrator Course
M09CVQ1
Date of Revision: 20211014

APPROVED BY: CTB ACADEMICS DATE: 20211001

DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Table of Contents
Terminal Learning Objective ....................................................................................................... 3
Enabling Learning Objectives ...................................................................................................... 3
Introduction to Virtualization ................................................................................................ 5

What is virtualization .................................................................................................................. 5

Characteristics of Virtualized Environments ........................................................................... 6
Characteristics of Virtualization ............................................................................................. 7
Types of Virtualization Technology ........................................................................................ 8
The Purpose of Virtualization................................................................................................. 9
The Types of Hypervisors ..................................................................................................... 10

Type 1 hypervisors: ................................................................................................................... 11

Type 2 hypervisors: ................................................................................................................... 12
Characteristics of Hypervisors .............................................................................................. 13

1. Performance ...................................................................................................................... 13
2. Ecosystem .......................................................................................................................... 13
3. Management Tool .............................................................................................................. 13
4. Live Migration .................................................................................................................... 13
5. Cost .................................................................................................................................... 13
Characteristics of Virtual Machines ...................................................................................... 14

What is a Virtual Machine (VM)................................................................................................ 14

Purpose of Storage Virtualization ........................................................................................ 16
The Types of Data Stores ..................................................................................................... 17
Characteristics of Network-Attached Storage (NAS) ............................................................. 18

What is a NAS? .......................................................................................................................... 18

Characteristics of Storage-Area Network (SAN) .................................................................... 19

What is a SAN? .......................................................................................................................... 19

Characteristics of VMware Storage Area Network (vSAN) .................................................... 21

What is a vSAN? ........................................................................................................................ 21

Best Practices for Software Defined Storage ........................................................................ 23
Characteristics of Virtual Management Tools ....................................................................... 24

Page 2 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Examples of Virtual Management Tools ............................................................................... 25

Characteristics of vSwitches................................................................................................. 27
Characteristics of vDistributed Switches .............................................................................. 28
References .......................................................................................................................... 30
https://www.vmware.com/solutions/virtualization.html .................................................... 30

Terminal Learning Objective

1. Given a command's mission, threat assessment, operational environment, operational

plans, equipment, and personnel, establish a virtualized environment infrastructure in
accordance with applicable STIGs and local cybersecurity policies in support of the
communications plan. (0671-IMPL-1001)

Enabling Learning Objectives

2. Without the aid reference, identify in writing the characteristics of virtual environments,
in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001

3. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of virtualization, in

accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

4. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the types of virtualization technology, in
accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

5. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the purpose of virtualization, in

accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

6. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the types of hypervisors, in accordance
with 0671-IMPL-1001.

7. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of hypervisors, in

accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

8. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of virtual machines,
in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

9. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the requirements for virtualization
regarding virtual machines, in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

Page 3 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

10. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the purpose of storage virtualization, in
accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001

11. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the types of datastores, in accordance
with 0671-IMPL-1001.

12. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of networked
attached storage, in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

13. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of a storage area
network, in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

14. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of VMware storage
virtualization (VSAN) in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

15. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of best practices for
software defined storage in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001

16. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of virtual
management tools, in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

17. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of virtual switch, in
accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

18. Without the aid of reference, identify in writing the characteristics of virtual distributed
switch in accordance with 0671-IMPL-1001.

Page 4 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Introduction to Virtualization
What is virtualization
Virtualization is the creation of a virtual – (rather than actual)—version of something, such as
an operating system (OS), a server, a storage devices or network resources. Virtualization uses
software that simulates hardware functionality in order to create a virtual system. This practice
allows IT organizations to operate multiple operating systems, more than one virtual system
and various applications on a single server. The benefits of virtualization include greater
efficiencies and economies of scale.

Software called hypervisors separate the physical resources from the virtual environments—the
things that need those resources. Hypervisors can sit on top of an operating system (like on a
laptop) or be installed directly onto hardware (like a server), which is how most enterprises
virtualize. Hypervisors take your physical resources and divide them up so that virtual
environments can use them.

Resources are then partitioned as needed from the physical environment to the many virtual
environments. Users interact with and run computations within the virtual environment
(typically called a guest machine or virtual machine).

When the virtual environment is running and a user or program issues an instruction that
requires additional resources from the physical environment, the hypervisor relays the request
to the physical system and caches the changes—which all happens at close to native speed
(particularly if the request is sent through an open source hypervisor based on KVM, the Kernel-
based Virtual Machine).

OS virtualization is the use of software to allow a piece of hardware to run multiple operating
system images at the same time. The technology got its start on mainframes decades ago,
allowing administrators to avoid wasting expensive processing power.

Page 5 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of Virtualized Environments

In a virtualized environment there are three major components
1. Guest
The guest represents the system component that interacts with the virtualization layer rather
than with the host, as would normally happen

2. Virtualization
The virtualization layer is responsible for recreating the same or a different environment where
the guest will operate

3. Host
The host represents the original environment where the guest is supposed to be managed

Page 6 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of Virtualization
VM’s have the following characteristics, which offer several benefits.

1. Partitioning

 Run multiple operating systems on one physical machine.

 Divide system resources between virtual machines.

2. Isolation

 Provide fault and security isolation at the hardware level.

 Preserve performance with advanced resource controls.
 If one virtual-instance crashes, it doesn’t affect the other virtual machines
 Data isn’t shared between one virtual container and another.

3. Encapsulation

 Save the entire state of a virtual machine to files.

 Move and copy virtual machines as easily as moving and copying files.
 Encapsulation can protect each application so that it doesn’t interfere with another
application.

4. Hardware Independence

 Provision or migrate any virtual machine to any physical server.

Page 7 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Types of Virtualization Technology

The concept of virtualization is used in almost every IT infrastructure as it helps multiply the
capacity of physical machines. It helps to fully utilize existing resources, thereby minimizing the
overall cost of business. Organizations use virtualization software (also known as a hypervisor)
to create virtual machines, networks, desktops, and servers. To integrate virtualization, it’s
important to understand its different types. Businesses can choose the type of virtualization
they need based on their requirements.

1. Desktop Virtualization

Desktop virtualization is when the host server can run virtual machines using a hypervisor (a
software program). A hypervisor can directly be installed on the host machine or over the
operating system (like Windows, Mac, and Linux). Virtualized desktops don’t use the host
system’s hard drive; instead, they run on a remote central server. This type of virtualization is
useful for development and testing teams who need to develop or test applications on different
operating systems. The three most popular types of desktop virtualization are Virtual desktop
infrastructure (VDI), Remote desktop services (RDS), and Desktop-as-a-Service (DaaS).

2. Application Virtualization

This is abstracting the application layer away from the operating system. This way, the
application can run in an encapsulated form without being depended upon on by the operating
system underneath. This can allow a Windows application to run on Linux and vice versa, in
addition to adding a level of isolation. One advantage is maintaining a standard cost-effective
operating system configuration across multiple machines by isolating applications from their
local operating systems. There are additional cost advantages like saving on license costs, and
greatly reducing the need for support services to maintain a healthy computing environment.

3. Server Virtualization

Server virtualization is a process of partitioning the resources of a single server into multiple
virtual servers. These virtual servers can run as separate machines. Server virtualization allows
organizations to run multiple independent OSs (guests or virtual) all with different
configurations using a single (host) server. The process also saves the hardware cost involved in
keeping a host of physical servers, so businesses can make their server infrastructure more
streamlined.

4. Network Virtualization

Page 8 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Network virtualization helps manage and monitor the entire computer network as a single
administrative entity. Administrators can keep a track of various elements of network
infrastructure such as routers and switches from a single software-based administrator’s
console. Network virtualization helps network optimization for data transfer rates, flexibility,
reliability, security, and scalability. It improves the overall network’s productivity and efficiency.
It becomes easier for administrators to allocate and distribute resources conveniently and
ensure high and stable network performance.

5. Storage Virtualization

Storage virtualization is the process of pooling physical storage of multiple network storage
devices so it looks like a single storage device. Storage virtualization facilitates archiving, easy
backup, and recovery tasks. It helps administrators allocate, move, change and set up resources
efficiently across the organizational infrastructure. An example would be VMware vSAN.

The Purpose of Virtualization

A central purpose of virtualization is to run applications normally requiring multiple units of
hardware. The scalability of VMs also allows administrators of servers to expand and contract
their server without having to adjust the hardware in the system. This ensures a server can
operate with much greater efficiency, effectively dividing one system into many individual
parts. But virtualization is additionally useful because it isolates each system in the unit. If the
damage is done to one of the operating systems, VMs can use their hypervisor as a shield to
preserve the autonomy of all the guests being run on a single host.

When a server oversees multiple operating systems with diverse users and functions, the
hypervisor’s ability to isolate each operating system is crucial in ensuring the users can each
maintain clean data which isn’t affected by the other systems in their server. The hypervisor
makes virtualization a great tool for testing new software. Let’s say a unit administrator is
looking to use a new application on the server. How can he tell if the new program is going to
affect the other programs in my system? In a traditional operating system, any problems
caused by a new application would require them to test each individual application to decide
which one is negatively affected by the new installation. With a VM, they can simultaneously
run multiple systems to see how the new application interacts with the whole.

Page 9 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

The Types of Hypervisors

There are two main hypervisor types, referred to as “Type 1” (or “bare metal”) and “Type 2” (or
“hosted”). A type 1 hypervisor acts like a lightweight operating system and runs directly on the
host’s hardware, while a type 2 hypervisor runs as a software layer on an operating system, like
other computer programs.

The most commonly deployed type of hypervisor is the type 1 or bare-metal hypervisor, where
virtualization software is installed directly on the hardware where the operating system is
normally installed. Because bare-metal hypervisors are isolated from the attack-prone
operating system, they are extremely secure. In addition, they generally perform better and
more efficiently than hosted hypervisors. For these reasons, most enterprise companies choose
bare-metal hypervisors for data center computing needs.

While bare-metal hypervisors run directly on the computing hardware, hosted hypervisors run
on top of the operating system (OS) of the host machine. Although hosted hypervisors run
within the OS, additional (and different) operating systems can be installed on top of the
hypervisor. The downside of hosted hypervisors is that latency is higher than bare-metal
hypervisors. This is because communication between the hardware and the hypervisor must
pass through the extra layer of the OS. Hosted hypervisors are sometimes known as client
hypervisors because they are most often used with end users and software testing, where
higher latency is less of a concern.

Hardware acceleration technology can create and manage virtual resources faster by boosting
processing speed for both bare-metal and hosted hypervisors. A type of hardware accelerator
known as a virtual Dedicated Graphics Accelerator (vDGA) takes care of sending and refreshing
high-end 3-D graphics. This frees up the main system for other tasks and greatly increases the
display speed of images. For industries such as oil and gas exploration, where there is a need to
quickly visualize complex data, this technology can be very useful.

Both types of hypervisors can run multiple virtual servers for multiple tenants on one physical
machine. Public cloud service providers lease server space on the different virtual servers to
different companies. One server might host several virtual servers that are all running
workloads for different companies. This type of resource sharing can result in a “noisy
neighbor” effect, when one of the tenants runs a large workload that interferes with the server
performance for other tenants. It also poses more of a security risk than using a dedicated bare-
metal server.

A bare-metal server that a single company has full control over will always provide higher
performance than a virtual server that is sharing a physical server’s bandwidth, memory and
processing power with other virtual servers. The hardware for bare-metal servers can also be
optimized to increase performance, which is not the case with shared public servers. Businesses

Page 10 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

that need to comply with regulations that require physical separation of resources will need to
use their own bare-metal servers that do not share resources with other tenants.

Type 1 hypervisors:

1. VMware ESX and ESXi

These hypervisors offer advanced features and scalability, but require licensing, so the costs are
higher.

There are some lower-cost bundles that VMware offers and they can make hypervisor
technology more affordable for small infrastructures.

VMware is the leader in the Type-1 hypervisors. Their vSphere/ESXi product is available in a
free edition and 7 commercial editions.

2. Microsoft Hyper-V

The Microsoft hypervisor, Hyper-V doesn’t offer many of the advanced features that VMware’s
products provide. However, with XenServer and vSphere, Hyper-V is one of the top 3 Type-1
hypervisors.

It was first released with Windows Server, but now Hyper-V has been greatly enhanced with
Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. Hyper-V is available in both a free edition (with no GUI and no

Page 11 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

virtualization rights) and 4 commercial editions – Foundations (OEM only), Essentials, Standard,
and Datacenter. Hyper-V

Type 2 hypervisors:

1. VMware Workstation/Fusion/Player

VMware Player is a free virtualization hypervisor.

It is intended to run only one virtual machine (VM) and does not allow creating VMs.
VMware Workstation is a more robust hypervisor with some advanced features, such as record-
and-replay and VM snapshot support.

VMware Workstation has three major use cases:

 For running multiple different operating systems or versions of one OS on one desktop,
 For developers that need sandbox environments and snapshots, or
 For labs and demonstration purposes.

2. VMware Server

VMware Server is a free, hosted virtualization hypervisor that’s very similar to the VMware
Workstation.
VMware has halted development on Server since 2009

3. Microsoft Virtual PC

This is the latest Microsoft’s version of this hypervisor technology, Windows Virtual PC and runs
only on Windows 7 and supports only Windows operating systems running on it.

4. Oracle VM VirtualBox

VirtualBox hypervisor technology provides reasonable performance and features if you want to
virtualize on a budget. Despite being a free, hosted product with a very small footprint,
VirtualBox shares many features with VMware vSphere and Microsoft Hyper-V.

5. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization

Red Hat’s Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) has qualities of both a hosted and a bare-metal
virtualization hypervisor. It can turn the Linux kernel itself into a hypervisor so the VMs have
direct access to the physical hardware.

Page 12 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of Hypervisors
1. Performance

Look for benchmark data that shows how well the hypervisor performs in a production
environment. Ideally, bare-metal hypervisors should support guest OS performance close to
native speeds.

2. Ecosystem

Look for good documentation and technical support to implement and manage hypervisors
across multiple physical servers at scale. Also, look for a healthy community of third-party
developers that can support the hypervisor with their own agents and plugins that offer
capabilities, such as backup and restore capacity analysis and fail-over management.

3. Management Tool

Running VMs isn’t the only thing you must manage when using a hypervisor. You must
provision the VMs, maintain them, audit them, and clean up disused ones to prevent "VM
sprawl." Ensure that the vendor or third-party community supports the hypervisor
architecture with comprehensive management tools.

4. Live Migration

This enables you to move VMs between hypervisors on different physical machines without
stopping them, which can be useful for both fail-over and workload balancing.

5. Cost

The management software that makes it scalable to support an enterprise environment can
often be expensive. The vendor’s licensing structure, which may change depending on
whether you deploy it in the cloud or locally.

Page 13 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of Virtual Machines

What is a Virtual Machine (VM)
A virtual machine (VM) is in a virtual environment and functions as a virtual computer system
with its own CPU, memory, network interface, and storage, created on a physical hardware
system (located off- or on-premises). Software called a hypervisor separates the machine’s
resources from the hardware and provisions them appropriately so they can be used by the
VM.

VMs are isolated from the rest of the system, and multiple VMs can exist on a single piece of
hardware, like a server. They can be moved between host servers depending on demand or to
use resources more efficiently. Each operating system runs in the same way an operating
system or application normally would on the host hardware, so the end user experience
emulated within the VM is nearly identical to a real-time operating system experience running
on a physical machine

1. CPU

The CPU, or processor, is the component of a computer system that performs the tasks
required for computer applications to run. The CPU is the primary element that performs the
computer functions. CPUs contain cores. vCPU is the abbreviation for virtual centralized
processing unit. As for a definition, a vCPU represents a portion or share of the underlying,
physical CPU that is assigned to a particular virtual machine (VM).

2. Memory (RAM)

The memory resource settings for a virtual machine determine how much of the host's memory
is allocated to the virtual machine. The virtual hardware memory size determines how much
memory is available to applications that run in the virtual machine. A virtual machine cannot
benefit from more memory resources than its configured virtual hardware memory
size. ESXi hosts limit the memory resource use to the maximum amount useful for the virtual
machine, so that you can accept the default of unlimited memory resources.

3. Network Interface Card (vNIC)

The network adapter (NIC) on a virtual machine assist in connecting to a network, to enhance
communications, or to replace an older adapter. When an administrator adds a NIC to a virtual
machine, they select the adapter type, network connection, whether the device should connect
when the virtual machine is turned on. Will function as VMXNET if VMWARE Tools are
installed. VMXNET is optimized for performance in a virtual machine. Because operating system
vendors do not provide built-in drivers for this card, you must install VMware Tools to have a
driver for the VMXNET network adapter available.

Page 14 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

4. Storage (Virtual Disk Configuration)

Administrators can add large-capacity virtual disks to virtual machines and add more space to
existing disks, even when the virtual machine is running. They can set most of the virtual disk
parameters during virtual machine creation or after you install the guest operating system.
The amount of free space in the datastore is always changing. Ensure that you leave sufficient
space for virtual machine creation and other virtual machine operations, such as growth of
sparse files, snapshots, and so on. The disk files for a virtual disk store the information that you
write to a virtual machine's hard disk — the operating system, the program files and the data
files. The virtual disk files have a .vmdk extension.

* vSphere supports two models of storage provisioning, thick provisioning and thin
provisioning.

 Thick provisioning

It is a traditional model of the storage provisioning. With the thick provisioning, large amount of
storage space is provided in advance in anticipation of future storage needs. However, the
space might remain unused causing underutilization of storage capacity.

 Thin provisioning

This method contrast with thick provisioning helps eliminate storage underutilization problems
by allocating storage space in a flexible on-demand manner. Thin provisioning allows the ability
to report more virtual storage space than there is real physical capacity. When thin provisioning
is used, monitor actual storage usage to avoid conditions when the amount of physical storage
space is low. (This is the preferred method)

Page 15 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Purpose of Storage Virtualization

Storage virtualization is the process of grouping the physical storage from multiple network
storage devices so that it looks like a single storage device.

The process involves extracting and covering the internal functions of a storage device from the
host application, host servers or a general network in order to enable the application and
network-independent management of storage.

Storage virtualization is also known as cloud storage. Storage virtualization helps by facilitating
easy backup, archiving and recovery tasks by consuming less time and possibly restoring lost or
corrupted data.

Page 16 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

The Types of Data Stores

Depending on the storage type, some of the following tasks are available for the datastores.
Using vSphere Client, an administrator can create datastores of certain types. They can perform
administrative operations on datastores. Several operations, such as renaming a datastore, are
available for all types. Administrators can organize datastores according to functions of
services. An example would be creating, naming and allocating space on a datastore for ISO’s to
be uploaded. This practice is common within the USMC. Datastores are a virtual representation
of physical storage resources in the data center. It is the storage location for virtual machine
files. In an on premise environment, these physical storage resources can come from the local
SCSI disk of the ESXi host, the Fibre Channel SAN disk arrays, the iSCSI SAN disk arrays, or
Network Attached Storage (NAS) arrays. For both on-premises and cloud
SDDCs, vSAN datastores hide the idiosyncrasies of the underlying physical storage and present a
uniform model for the storage resources required by virtual machines.

vCenter Server (VCSA) and ESXi support the following types of datastores.

1. VMFS (version 5 and 6)

Datastores that you deploy on block storage devices use the vSphere Virtual Machine File
System (VMFS) format. VMFS is a special high-performance file system format that is optimized
for storing virtual machines. Can be extended to span over physical storage devices.

2. NFS (version 3 and 4.1)

An NFS client built into ESXi uses the Network File System (NFS) protocol over TCP/IP to access
a designated NFS volume. The volume is located on a NAS server. The ESXi host mounts the
volume as an NFS datastore, and uses it for storage needs. (This is seldom being used in the
USMC)

3. vSAN

vSAN aggregates all local capacity devices available on the hosts into a single datastore shared
by all hosts in the vSAN cluster. This is the preferred method.

4. vVol

vVols datastore represents a storage container in vCenter Server and vSphere Client. (Rarely
used within USMC)

Page 17 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of Network-Attached Storage (NAS)

What is a NAS?
A NAS system is a storage device connected to a network that allows storage and retrieval of
data from a centralized location for authorized network users. NAS systems are flexible and
scale-out, meaning that as you need additional storage, you can add on to what you have. It’s
faster, less expensive and provides all the benefits of a public cloud on site, giving you complete
control. They typically provide access to files using network file sharing protocols such
as NFS, SMB, CIFS, or AFP.

1. NFS (Network File System)

A Network File System (NFS) allows remote hosts to mount file systems over a network and
interact with those file systems as though they are mounted locally. This enables system
administrators to consolidate resources onto centralized servers on the network. NFS is good
for UNIX server-to-server file sharing.

2. SMB (Server Message Block)

Using the SMB protocol, an application (or the user of an application) can access files or other
resources at a remote server. This allows applications to read, create, and update files on the
remote server. SMB can also communicate with any server program that is set up to receive an
SMB client request. The native Windows network file sharing protocol is the preferred
protocol for Windows clients.

3. AFP (Apple Filing Protocol)

AFP is a network file control protocol system specifically designed for Mac-based platforms. AFP
is common for faster networks where large files need to be transferred. (This is rarely used on
most USMC networks)

Page 18 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

4. CIFS (Common Internet File System)

Common Internet File System (CIFS) is a network file system protocol used for providing shared
access to files and printers between machines on the network. A CIFS client application can
read, write, edit and even remove files on the remote server.

Characteristics of Storage-Area Network (SAN)

What is a SAN?
A Storage Area Network (SAN) is a specialized, high-speed network that provides block-level
network access to storage. SANs are typically composed of hosts, switches, storage elements,
and storage devices that are interconnected using a variety of technologies, topologies, and
protocols. SANs may also span multiple sites.

A SAN presents storage devices to a host such that the storage appears to be locally attached.
This simplified presentation of storage to a host is accomplished through the use of different
types of virtualization.

Page 19 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

SANs will be connected through two protocols, Fibre Channel (FC) and iSCSI.

1. Fibre Channel (FC)

It is a high-speed network technology that can provide lossless original block data in an orderly
manner. This technology defines multiple communication layers for transmitting SCSI
commands and information units using the Fibre Channel Protocol (FCP). In addition to SCS,
Fibre Channel can also interoperate with IP and other protocols. It provides point-to-point,
switching and loop interfaces, and can provide data rates up to 128Gbps. Fibre Channel can
support devices that are 10 kilometers apart. However, Fibre Channel (FC) networks can
be complex and require special equipment such as switches, adapters, and ports.

*SCSI - SCSI commands are sent in a command descriptor block (CDB), which consists of a one
byte operation code (opcode) followed by five or more bytes containing command-specific
parameters. (Fibre Channel is rarely used in the USMC)

2. iSCSI

It is a transport layer protocol that can provide block-level access to storage devices through a
TCP/IP network. This protocol works on top of TCP and describes how to transmit SCSI data
packets via a local area network (LAN), wide area network (WAN) or the Internet. iSCSI enables
organizations to build shared storage networks, such as storage area networks (SAN).
Because iSCSI uses standard Ethernet technology, organizations often use iSCSI, which makes
it cheaper and easier than Fibre Channel (FC). (Typically used in the USMC)

Page 20 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of VMware Storage Area Network (vSAN)

What is a vSAN?
VMware vSAN is a software defined storage solution from VMware to eliminate the need of the
additional storage boxes using the local server storage. vSAN abstracts the local storage of ESXi
hosts and makes a pool of it to be used as a shared storage which is very much optimized.
vSAN is a very easy to use solution. With a few clicks the administrator can create and configure
the storage pool. vSAN also provides the policies referred to as SPBM (Storage Policy Based
Management) which can be applied to a single VM or a single disk based on the requirements.

vSAN supports both hybrid and all-flash configurations using a two-tier architecture. Both
configurations use a caching tier and a capacity tier. The caching tier is composed of at least
one flash drive per host. The capacity tier is composed of at least one flash device (for all-flash)
or one magnetic disk (for hybrid) per host. vSAN combines the host's storage resources into a
single, high-performance, shared data store that all the hosts in the cluster can use.

Page 21 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Cluster Size
 Min. 2 hosts - Max. 64 hosts

Key Features of vSAN

 Software defined
 Integrated with vSphere
 Simple
 Flexible
 Storage policies
 Deduplication & Compression
 Encryption
 Erasure coding
 All Flash or Hybrid

Page 22 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Best Practices for Software Defined Storage

There are strong benefits of Software Defined Storage. But none of this will work well if the
software-defined storage design does not integrate smoothly with the underlying physical
devices. These are the critical points to consider when implementing the software defined
storage:

1. Know your storage performance and capacity requirements

The first thing to do is to identify workloads and their respective applications, servers, and
clients. Typical characteristics to look at will be storage space and not over allocating resources.
*Do not forget to choose “Thin disk” mode when allocating storage to a virtual machine.

2. Understand vendor and hardware compatibilities

Once the administrator has identified workloads, performance characteristics, and capacity
needs. They can look to optimize the environment by utilizing vendors that are renown within
the USMC architecture. For example staying consistent with VMWare for their virtualization
needs rather than choosing another vendor. Ensuring VMWare technologies are compatible
with the physical server that the type 1 hypervisor will reside on. As they deploy new software
and hardware, be careful to deploy recommended firmware and drivers.

3. Design for current and future resilience

Once the Storage Area Network is compatible with physical storage vendors, administrators will
need to posture their environment for scalability. Design it for growth so the environment will
scale to match their developing storage requirements. When designing for resilience,
understand the current and future thresholds before implementation. Know the uptime
requirements and resilience objectives for the storage configurations including cluster nodes,
redundant network connections for uninterrupted traffic, and performance. Pay attention to
scalability and growth characteristics within the environment to include; storage media,
processors, and RAM. Understand the process and know how simple (or not) it will be to
update firmware and drivers. The last thing you want is to put your whole team on alert and
down during upgrades to systems for hours every time updates are needed.

4. Backups and Disaster Recovery

Build in redundancies by mirroring high performance applications to different storage devices in

the pool or across multiple pools. Take into consideration, backups will be needed along with
the possibility of recovering from a disaster such as a power outage. Do not utilize all the
storage space for just production VM’s. Plan for physical server failure and downtime when
conducting maintenance. Conduct maintenance on existing storages periodically to remove old
or stale files that are no longer needed.

Page 23 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of Virtual Management Tools

What are Virtualization Management Tools?
Virtualization management tools are designed to administer the operations and processes of a
virtualization environment. The number of virtual machines running in the data center can
reach hundreds and thousands. For this reason, it becomes imperative to have visibility into the
virtualization environment to understand the overall performance and health of the system.
Marine Corps Units will use virtualization management tools to administer resources to a
variety of machines as well as to handle memory allocation. In this way, virtualization
management tools can help make a group of virtual machines run as efficiently as possible.

What do Virtualization Management Tools do?

The primary tasks performed by these tools are to check to make sure that all virtual machine
software and hypervisor versions are up to date. They also establish and maintain connectivity
across the environment, and monitor the performance of each virtual machine. They do this by,
for example, allocating more memory or processing power to right-size virtual machines for
optimal performance.

Virtualization management tools are also required to identify the root cause of any problems.
They do this by analyzing the application, server, virtual and storage layers to troubleshoot
issues.

Increasingly, virtualization management tools are being asked to handle more strategic
management tasks. For example, they are required to identify usage patterns and help to
predict future virtualization infrastructure bottlenecks and resource limits.

Virtualization Management Features and Capabilities

1. Virtual Machine administrator alerts

2. Processor and memory allocation to virtual machines
3. Dynamic resource allocation
4. Performance monitoring
5. Programmable APIs
6. Future requirements prediction

Page 24 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Examples of Virtual Management Tools

VMWare vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)
vCenter Server Appliance is a preconfigured SUSE Linux-based virtual machine optimized for
running vCenter Server and the associated services. It is a prepackaged 64-bit application with
an embedded PostgreSQL database that supports up to 100 hosts and 3000 virtual machines.

vCenter allows the configuration of host and VMs while monitoring their performance. It
provides an in-depth visibility into configuring all critical components on every level of your
virtual infrastructure. Administrators can use events, alerts, and the scheduler. vCenter even
allows managing the environment with users, groups, and additional roles.

Each vCenter Server is associated with a vCenter Single Sign-On domain. The domain name
defaults to vsphere.local, but you can change it during deployment. The domain determines the
local authentication space.

VCSA allows managing resource shares for CPU, memory, disk space, and networking
bandwidth. Administrators can modify allocations while virtual machines are running; and
enabling applications to dynamically acquire more resources when needed.

vCenter allows moving a virtual machine from one physical server (ESXi host) to another with
no downtime. Storage vMotion is a feature that allows the live migration of a running virtual
machine's VMDKs from one storage system to another, with no downtime for the VM.

Page 25 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

vRealize Operations (vROPS)

VMware vRealize™ Operations™ delivers intelligent operations management across physical,
virtual, and cloud infrastructures—from VMware vSphere® and Hyper-V to Amazon Web
Services. It correlates data from applications to storage in a unified, easy-to use management
tool that provides control over performance, capacity, and configuration, with predictive
analytics driving proactive action, and policy-based automation.

With vRealize Operations, IT organizations of all sizes can improve performance, avoid
downtime, and become more efficient with comprehensive visibility across applications and
infrastructure in one place.

vRealize Operations delivers

• Intelligent operations – Self-learning tools, predictive analytics, and Smart Alerts about
application and infrastructure health enable proactive identification and remediation of
emerging performance, capacity, and configuration issues.

• Policy-based automation – Out-of-the-box and customizable policies for critical IT operations

are associated with Smart Alerts, guided remediation, and compliance standards to deliver
recommendations, or trigger actions, that optimize performance and capacity and enforce
configuration standards.

• Unified management – An open and extensible platform, supported by third-party

management packs for Microsoft, SAP, and others, provides complete visibility in a single
console across applications, storage, and network devices

Page 26 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

VMware Tools

VMware Tools is a suite of utilities that enhances the performance of the virtual machines guest
operating system and improves management of the virtual machine. Without VMware Tools
installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important functionality.
Installing VMware Tools eliminates or improves these issues:

1. Low video resolution

2. Inadequate color depth
3. Incorrect display of network speed
4. Restricted movement of the mouse
5. Inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files
6. Missing sound
7. Provides the ability to take snapshots of the guest OS
8. Synchronizes the time in the guest operating system with the time on the host

Characteristics of vSwitches
A virtual switch is a software program – a logical switching fabric that emulates a switch as a
layer-2 network device. A virtual switch ensures the same functions as a regular switch, with
the exception of some advanced functionalities. Namely, unlike physical switches, a virtual
switch:

1. Does not learn the MAC addresses of transit traffic from the external network.
2. Does not participate in Spanning Tree protocols.
3. Cannot create a network loop for redundant network connection.

VMware’s virtual switches are called vSwitches. vSwitches are used for ensuring connections
between virtual machines as well as connecting virtual and physical networks. A vSwitch uses a
physical network adapter (also called NIC - Network Interface Controller) of the ESXi host for
connection to the physical network. Administrators may want to create a separate network
with a vSwitch and physical NIC for performance and/or security reasons in the following cases:

1. Connecting storage, such as NAS or SAN, to ESXi hosts.

2. vMotion network for live migration of virtual machines between ESXi hosts.
3. Fault Tolerance logging network

Page 27 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

Characteristics of vDistributed Switches

When it comes to the basics of how the vSphere Distributed (vDS) passes traffic, it is very
similar to the VSS. However, in terms of management and features, it is a much more powerful
virtual networking construct. The vSphere Distributed Switch separates the management plane
and the data plane. All management of the vSphere Distributed Switch resides on the vCenter
Server while the data plane that passes traffic remains local to the ESXi host.

Aside from much more robust management the virtual networking across the vSphere
landscape, the vDS provides many other advantages and features compared to the vSphere
Standard Switch. These include the following:

1. Simplified virtual machine network configuration – With the vDS, administrators can
significantly simplify VM networking configuration across their vSphere infrastructure.
The vDS allows administrators to provide centralized control of their VM networking,
including centralized control over the port group naming, VLAN configuration, security,
and many other settings.
2. Link Aggregation Control Protocol (LACP) – Keep in mind that the only supported way
to run LACP in the vSphere environment with vSphere virtual networking is using the
vSphere Distributed Switch.
3. Network health-check capabilities – The vDS provides many network health check
capabilities, including verifying vSphere to physical network checks.
4. Advanced network monitoring and troubleshooting – With the vDS, administrators
have access to RSPAN ERSPAN, IPFIX Netflow version 10, SNMPv3, rollback and recovery
of the network configuration
5. Templates for backing up and restoring virtual machine network configuration
6. Netdump for network-based host debug
7. Advanced networking features – These include Network I/O Control (NIOC), SR-IOV,
and BPDU filter, among others.
8. Private VLANs (PVLAN) support – The vSphere Distributed Switch allows the use of
Private VLANs, which provide even more security options for segmenting traffic
Page 28 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

9. Bi-directional traffic shaping – Administrators can shape traffic policies on DV port

group definitions (average bandwidth, peak bandwidth, and burst size)

Page 29 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1
DS.02.01 Intro to Virtualization

References

MASTERING VMWARE VSPHERE 6.7 ISBN: 978-1-119-51294-3

https://www.vmware.com/solutions/virtualization.html

https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-
vSphere/6.7/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-302A4F73-CA2D-49DC-8727-
81052727A763.html

Page 30 of 30
Data Systems Administrator Course M09CVQ1