Home > Servers > Rack and Tower Servers > Intel > Guides > Design Guide—VMware Cloud Foundation on PowerEdge Servers and Unity Storage > Design configuration and specifications
Ready Stack for VMware Cloud Foundation offers flexibility to address various virtualization use cases and workloads. Sizing a physical infrastructure for all virtualized workloads requires knowledge of all the individual workloads and their compute, memory, storage, and network performance requirements. After you create one or more VM profiles that meet the Ready Stack requirements, approximate the physical infrastructure that is required to support VMs and account for expected future growth. When finalizing sizing, ensure that you also consider server and storage maintenance requirements and virtualization features such as high availability. If an approximation is not sufficient, we recommend a site survey.
The following table details a medium-size configuration of Ready Stack for VMware Cloud Foundation. The configuration is based on a balanced VM profile of 2 vCPUs, 6 GB of memory, a 60 GB virtual disk, and 50 IOPS.
Table 3. Ready Stack sample configuration
Configuration |
Number of VMs |
Number of vCPUs |
vRAM size |
vDisk size |
IOPS |
Enterprise Medium |
240 |
480 |
1.44 TB |
14.4 TB |
12,000 |
The balanced VM profile totals for VMs, vCPUs, vRAM, vDisk, and IOPS are based on an Intel SP Skylake generation processor configuration of 10 cores per CPU and a 2:1 virtual-to-physical CPU utilization ratio. Depending on the VM profile, the required compute resource values might be different from the values that are shown in the preceding table. For more information about tuning the Ready Stack product configuration and counts to meet infrastructure requirements, consult your Dell EMC Sales representative.
The following table lists the component specifications for a sample Ready Stack configuration.
Table 4. Sample configuration: Component specifications1
Component |
Details |
|
Virtualization hosts in workload domain |
6 x PowerEdge R740 servers |
|
|
Processor |
2 x Intel Xeon Gold 6126 2.6 GHz, 12C/24T, 10.4 GT/s, 19.25 MB Cache, Turbo, HT (125 W) DDR4-2666 |
|
Memory |
384 GB, 12 x 32 GB RDIMM, 2,666 MT/s, dual rank |
|
Storage adapter |
PERC H330 |
|
Caching tier |
2 X 400 GB SSD SAS write-intensive 12 Gb/s 512n 2.5 in. hot-plug drive, PX05SM, 10 DWPD, 7,300 TBW |
|
Local storage: Capacity tier |
8 x 1.8 TB 10K RPM SAS 12 Gb/s 512e 2.5 in. hot-plug hard drive |
|
Boot device |
BOSS controller card + with 2 M.2 Sticks 120 GB (RAID 1), FH or Internal SD Module with 2 x 16 GB SD card |
|
Network |
BOSS controller card + with 2 M.2 Sticks 120 G (RAID 1), FH or Internal SD Module with 2 x 16 GB SD card |
|
HBA |
QLogic 2692 dual-port FC PCIe card |
Hypervisor |
VMware vSphere 6.7u1 |
|
Management hosts in workload domain |
4 x PowerEdge R640 servers |
|
|
Processor |
2 x Intel Xeon Gold 6126 2.6 GHz,12C/24T,10.4 GT/s, 19.25 MB Cache, Turbo, HT (125 W) DDR4-2666 |
|
Memory |
384 GB: 12 x 32 GB DDR4 RDIMMs |
|
Storage adapter |
PERC H330 |
|
Local storage: Caching tier |
2 X 400 GB SSD SAS write-intensive 12 Gb/s 512n 2.5 in. hot-plug drive, PX05SM, 10 DWPD, 7,300 TBW |
|
Local storage: Capacity tier |
8 x 1.8 TB 10K RPM SAS 12 Gb/s 512e 2.5 in. hot-plug hard drive |
|
Boot Device |
BOSS controller card + with 2 M.2 Sticks 120 GB (RAID 1), FH or Internal SD Module with 2 x 16 GB SD Card |
|
Network |
Intel X710 quad-port 10 GbE, Base-T, PCIe adapter, low profile |
|
Hypervisor |
VMware vSphere 6.7u1 |
Storage array for secondary storage for servers/VMs in workload domain |
Dell EMC Unity 450F with 25 x 3.84 TB SSDs (RAID 5, 6, 10) |
|
OOB |
1 x Dell EMC Networking S4148T-ON switch |
|
ToR |
2 x Dell EMC Networking S5248-ON switches |
|
SAN fabric |
2 x Connectrix DS-6620B 32 Gb/s FC switches |
|
|
iDRAC9 Enterprise—1 per PowerEdge server |
|
|
||
|
||
OpenManage Integration for VMware vCenter2—1 per PowerEdge server |
1Specifications are for a minimum configuration.
2 3-year license.
Note: Ensure that you have enough VMware licenses for the VMware Cloud Foundation package being installed and for the number of servers, CPUs, VMs, and vCenter instances that are planned for the environment. Work with your local Dell EMC or VMware sales team to find the most appropriate VMware Cloud Foundation package for your solution.