TA3195

Stateless ESXi: Scalable Rollout and Management of Virtualized Hosts

Installation, configuration, software patches, software updates, and enforcing configuration policies require a significant portion of system administrators for deployments as small 5 servers. In a virtualized setting, the administrator must first install the hypervisor on servers, configure each server, add them to a centralized management system, continuously monitor for software patches and updates, and apply them to each hypervisor. Each patching or update cycle may require a new cycle of configuration updates for each affected host.
To address these problems and improve data center efficiency, VMware ESXi 4.0 has enabled the stateless delivery of hypervisor images to each host. Unconfigured ESXi images are delivered to the host at boot time and autoconfigured using host profiles to administer the right personality to that server. Using this approach, total number of hypervisor images is reduced to potentially a single image per data center. This consolidation significantly reduces software installation, patching, and update times. Moreover, because systems are configured at boot time using a centralized authoritative source, any configuration deviations at run time are reverted to the expected state with each reboot.
This session (1) discusses the architectural design of the stateless delivery of VMware ESXi 4.0; (2) walks the users through an overview of implementing this feature; (3) provides use case examples and the benefits delivered by these use cases.

Technology & Architecture

Breakout Session

ESXi, Scalable Rollout, Management, Virtualized Hosts, stateless

1 Hour

VMware: Amir Sharif, Sr. Product Manager, Greg Hutchins, Principal Engineer, Lance Berc, Corporate Architect