The solution will configure the six (6) available network connections into load balanced pairs.

Configuring the six network connections into load-balanced pairs ensures that network traffic is

distributed efficiently across the available physical NICs, providing redundancy and preventing any

single network adapter from becoming a bottleneck. This aligns with the requirement to separate

and balance traffic types, ensuring that no single network adapter is overloaded.

The solution will deploy a vSphere distributed switch with three (3) uplink port groups.

Using a vSphere Distributed Switch with three uplink port groups provides a clean separation of

traffic types (management, replication, vMotion, and workload traffic). The distributed switch allows

for better scalability, visibility, and management of network traffic in a multi-NIC setup, meeting the

need to segregate network traffic and ensure redundancy at the switch level.

The solution will configure the Route Based on Physical NIC Load load balancing method.

The Route Based on Physical NIC Load load balancing method distributes traffic based on the current

load of each physical NIC, ensuring that network traffic is balanced efficiently across all available

NICs. This helps maintain optimal performance and ensures that one NIC is not overwhelmed by

traffic from different types of network operations.

To meet the requirements outlined, the architect will need to design a solution with three VMware

vCenter instances. Here's why:

Isolation of Virtual Infrastructure Management Operations: The management workloads (such as

vCenter itself, along with other virtual infrastructure management tools) should be isolated from

compute workloads. This suggests the need for a separate vCenter instance to manage the

infrastructure without impacting compute workloads.

Physical Isolation of Production and Development Workloads: Production workloads and

development workloads need to be physically isolated, which suggests the need for different vCenter

instances to maintain separation.

Support for Operational Management in the Event of a Disaster: In the event of a disaster affecting

the primary site, the secondary site should still be able to manage compute workloads. This could be

achieved by having a vCenter instance in each site (primary and secondary) to ensure continued

management in the event of a failure.

Breakdown of the three vCenter instances:

vCenter 1: Manages production workloads across both primary and secondary sites.

vCenter 2: Manages development workloads in the secondary site, ensuring isolation from

production.

vCenter 3: Manages the virtual infrastructure management workloads, ensuring isolation from

compute workloads.

Separate clusters in DC1 and DC2 provide logical isolation between the two data centers. This means

that an accidental change or misconfiguration in one cluster (e.g., DC1) will not affect the other

cluster (e.g., DC2). This isolation meets the customer's requirement to limit the impact radius of

accidental changes by administrators. By having separate clusters, the risk of cross-site or cross-

cluster disruptions is minimized, ensuring better fault tolerance and administrative control.

The customer has outlined the following requirements:

Automated deployment and lifecycle management of the vSphere platform: This requires a solution

that provides automated provisioning, management, and updates. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF)

is an integrated platform that provides automation for the lifecycle of the vSphere platform,

including updates and patch management.

Self-Service deployment of virtual machines and other objects from a central catalog: VMware Cloud

Foundation includes tools like vRealize Automation (part of VCF) that enable self-service provisioning

of virtual machines and other resources. Additionally, VCF provides centralized management for

provisioning and orchestration.

Monitoring, logging, and analytic tooling for visibility and troubleshooting: VMware Cloud

Foundation integrates with vRealize Operations and vRealize Log Insight, which provides visibility,

monitoring, and logging capabilities for the entire solution. These tools help in analytics and

troubleshooting across the entire infrastructure.

Support deployment via infrastructure-as-code methods for additional management components:

VMware Validated Solutions (such as vRealize Automation or vRealize Orchestrator) provide

infrastructure-as-code capabilities, ensuring that the solution can be deployed in a consistent,

repeatable manner, automating deployments of not just vSphere but also additional management

components.

Cost-effectiveness with a fast time to value: VMware Cloud Foundation offers an integrated solution

that is pre-configured and validated, which speeds up deployment and reduces operational

complexity. By using VMware Validated Solutions for additional management components, the

customer can leverage existing, tested solutions that are optimized for use with VCF, ensuring cost-

effectiveness while meeting requirements.

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This strategy meets the requirements because:

Keeps data locally: By selecting a partner with a global data center presence, data can remain local to

each specific location, meeting the geographical data residency requirement.

Quick scalability: The partner already has data centers in place, enabling the company to scale

quickly and be functional within one month, which meets the timeline requirement.

Utilizes current processes: The existing processes around vSphere can still be leveraged since the

partner can deploy compatible company architecture that aligns with the company's current

infrastructure and processes.

VMware licensing costs: VMware licenses would be managed as part of the partnership

arrangement, ensuring costs are aligned with the company's existing VMware infrastructure.

The customer is requesting that the solution meet security requirements, specifically around

handling sensitive information (such as credit card data). The need to mask or hash stored

information for compliance with industry standards (e.g., PCI-DSS) is a security-focused design

requirement. This ensures that sensitive data is protected and compliant with regulations, making

security the primary design quality being requested.

A clustered firewall solution must be placed at the perimeter of the hosting platform, and all ingress and egress network traffic will route via this device: This is a technical requirement because it specifies how network traffic is to be managed through a specific infrastructure element (the firewall). It outlines how the security device is implemented in the network architecture. The hosting platform's security information and event management (SIEM) system must be scalable to 20,000 events per second: This is a technical requirement because it deals with the scalability and performance of the SIEM system. It specifies how the system must handle a large volume of data, which is a technical characteristic of the infrastructure. The hosting platform's storage must be configured with data-at-rest encryption: This is also a technical requirement because it defines how the data should be stored securely, which is an implementation detail. It specifies that encryption needs to be applied to stored data, a feature related to storage infrastructure.

Given that VMware Tools 11 or higher is installed on all virtual machines and VMware PowerCLI is

available in the environment, the architect can leverage PowerCLI to interact with VMware Tools and

collect information about active services running inside the virtual machines.

VMware PowerCLI allows you to query virtual machines for information about their services by

accessing the guest operating system, provided VMware Tools is installed and running. You can use

PowerCLI cmdlets to retrieve service data, such as which services are running on the VM, their

statuses, and other details necessary for planning the migration.

This option is cost-effective since there is no budget available for additional discovery tooling, and it

aligns well with the existing tools and infrastructure already in place.

The VMware Cloud Foundation consolidated architecture model is designed to support small-scale

environments with the ability to scale as needed. In this model, management and workload domains

are deployed on the same hardware, which is suitable for environments that start small but may

need to expand later. It provides a simplified, cost-effective setup for organizations that want to

implement a software-defined data center (SDDC) with flexibility to grow in the future.

The solution will enable the Predictive DRS option to avoid host over-commitment.

Enabling Predictive DRS will allow the system to proactively adjust resource distribution based on

anticipated workload patterns. This helps ensure that workloads are redistributed dynamically to

avoid over-commitment and ensures better performance, particularly when considering workload

usage patterns.

The solution will deploy a Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) enabled cluster with sufficient

capacity to meet the workload demands.

DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) will be used to automatically redistribute workloads across the

cluster resources, ensuring balanced load distribution. It meets the requirement for automatic load

redistribution while also considering workload usage patterns. Additionally, DRS will take into

account the capacity needed to reserve resources equal to two ESXi hosts for failover in the event of

a host failure.

The solution will deploy a vSphere Distributed Power Management (DPM) enabled cluster with

sufficient capacity to meet the workload demands.

vSphere DPM enables the cluster to automatically adjust the number of active hosts based on the

workload demands, ensuring efficient resource usage. It helps meet the requirement for ensuring

capacity for failover by turning off unneeded hosts and allowing the remaining hosts to handle the

workload.