Mumbai University >Information Technology>Sem7>Cloud Computing

Marks: 3 M

• Build your virtual environment. During this phase, install servers, load your chosen virtualization hypervisor (ESX Server or Hyper-V, for example), load the centralized management platform (Microsoft SCVMM or VMware vCenter) and add the virtual hosts to the management platform.

• Configure your virtual environment. During this phase, configure servers with their static IP addresses and correct network settings and configure network VLANs if necessary.

• Secure your virtual environment. During this phase, set a complex root password on all virtual hosts, create a group in Windows Active Directory, and add authorized VMware administrators to this group, authorize that group to be administrators in VMware vCenter and remove domain admin. If you have other kinds of users administering their virtual machines (i.e., SQL admins and developers), consider using additional groups and roles.

• Populate your virtual environment. During this phase, add new virtual machines to the virtual infrastructure by creating fresh VMs and installing a clean OS.

• Maintain your virtual environment. Maintenance may be simple and involve a single virtual host and a handful of VMs. But as your infrastructure grows, you will need maintenance tools.

• Back up your virtual environment. Just as with physical servers, proper backup of virtual servers is paramount. When you virtualize physical servers, valid backups must be conducted from day one. While backups can be performed using the existing backup agents already on physical servers, this method isn't optimal for virtual machine backup. Troubleshoot your virtual environment. Hopefully you won't encounter issues with your newly deployed virtual infrastructure. But if you do, you should have documentation and diagrams of your environment. You should also have support information and a support contract (which is recommended) for your servers, SAN, network, storage and virtualization software.

• Educate and document. While this final phase isn't included on Siebert's list, education and documentation is a crucial step. Part of any good deployment plan includes the education of other admins at your company and the documentation of the new virtual infrastructure and common administrative tasks.