Double-Diagram: vCloud Director Management Pod in the Public & Private Clouds!

November 3rd, 2011 | Author: Hany Michael

Those two diagrams have been sitting in my PC for ages and I thought it’s time for them to see the light. As a perfectionist by nature I think that they are probably the worst diagrams I’ve designed to date! The reason being is that I am probably missing way too many items and services. It’s a quite rich topic when it comes to the management and monitoring of the cloud (be it public or private) and to top that, VMware is coming out with something new every day that is revolutionary and game changing. Have a look at the AppDirector on YouTube for example or Google what is coming in vCenter Operations Enterprise 5.0! Mind blowing stuff!

So, that being said, those diagrams are far from being complete or perfect. Just accept them as they are and I will keep trying to adjust and complete the missing pieces.

Few notes on the diagrams:

As you notice, there are two diagrams here covering the same topic but one is focusing on the private cloud and the other on the public side.
There are many items that can overlap between the two diagrams. You can mix and match what you see relevant to your environment. The things are organized the way they are just to fit everything nicely in the limited A3 size.
I focused in the Public Cloud diagram on the portal exposure to the Internet since it’s a (somewhat) complex topic and requires proper illustration (I blogged about it in details here).
For the Private Cloud, I focused more on the management and monitoring aspect but make no mistake, these are as quite important for a Service Provider in a public cloud! Again, I’m just trying to fit so many things in so little space.

That’s it from me today.

Public Cloud Management Pod:

Private Cloud Management Pod:

Posted in Diagrams, vCloud Director

David

Hey Hany

Fantastic diagrams as usual. Can you explain the use of two vcenters for the two pods (resource and management). I can understand using VC heartbeat to keep the various vcenter services alive. Just trying to understand the benefit of doing this, considering vCenter can scale when/if required.

Thanks
David
Hany Michael

Thanks David :)

The separation of the vCenter Servers is by design and it’s a strict recommendation from VMware. Technically speaking, you can run the same setup with one vCenter (and say, two Datacenters for the MGMT & Resource Pods) but then think about the security as an example in a service provider scenario. Many (if not all) SPs do not mix their management components with the hosted customers. If you see in the example of the public cloud above, this is a real design architecture I did for one of my SP customers where they had even a strict policy not to expose the cells directly to the internet, but rather have then routed through a firewall to the internal management network.

Another reason would be to avoid unintentional administration mistakes. Imagine an administrator rebooting or shutting down the vCenter server…this will stop all the vCloud operations (like deploying VMs, provisioning networks, powering on/off vApps..etc). Or an admin who accidentally disabled DRS on a vCloud cluster? This would be catastrophic for a SP that is running hundreds of ESX hosts and thousands of VMs.

Regards
Shiv Diddee

Hany, amazing diagrams!