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This section describes the core components of the management solution and 3-Tier Platform virtual infrastructure.
vSphere is highly configurable, which can make it an attractive hypervisor choice for organizations, whether they choose a private cloud, a public cloud, or a hybrid cloud approach. Key components and features of vSphere include:
During the initial system build, the management solution and 3-Tier Platform changes are integrated into the virtual infrastructure configuration. The integration aligns with VMware best practices and use of VMware ecosystem products and solutions.
VMware ESXi runs on the management appliance and 3-Tier Platforms servers using VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus.
VMware ESXi is installed on a mirrored pair of M.2 cards as the boot device, and hosts the OSDATA partition, which includes scratch data stores, VMware Tools, and core dumps.
All servers are required to boot in UEFI Secure Boot mode.
The management solution and 3-Tier Platform do not support stateless boot into memory.
The Cisco Trusted Platform Module (TPM) is a system unit that securely stores measurements, passwords, certificates, or encryption keys that are used to authenticate the converged system. The TPM provides authentication and attestation services to enable safer computing in all environments. The TPM is enabled by default.
The management solution capacity, server count, and physical location of the managed 3-Tier Platform and networking requirements may impact the number of supported VMware vCenter Servers.
The management solution hosts the VMware vCenter Server that supports the virtual infrastructure.
The VMware vCenter Server enables the following management and orchestration functionality:
3-Tier Platform administrators can create and apply the following alarms to all managed objects in VMware vCenter Server:
VMware Single Sign-On (SSO) provides authentication to configure security policies and lock out or disable an account.
Default policies do not require modification. You may have to modify policies or accounts if regulations require different policies or when troubleshooting a problem.
The 3-Tier Platform supports the VMware SSO to integrate the following multiple identity sources:
The following services run separately: VMware vCenter Server, Inventory, Vsphere Client, VMware SSO, VMware Core Dump Collector, and VMware vCenter Lifecycle Manager. You can configure each service to use a dedicated service account depending on the security and directory services requirements.
VMware vSphere supports Enhanced Link Mode (ELM) in the vCenter Server.
Multisystem management uses an ELM configuration with a single VMware Single Sign-on (SSO) domain to provide an authentication interface for all VMware vCenter Servers to manage the local workload and 3-Tier Platform.
The VMware ring topology allows the Management solution to support up to 15 vCenter Servers in a single VMware SSO domain. following figure shows this topology:
Figure 21. VMware ring topology