Knowledge Base

The VMware Knowledge Base provides support solutions, error messages and troubleshooting guides
 
Search the VMware Knowledge Base (KB)   View by Article ID
 

vCloud Director 1.5 and stretched cluster architectures (2009651)

Purpose

This article provides common use cases for implementing vCloud Director 1.5 in conjunction with stretched cluster architectures and defines the supportability of these configurations.

Resolution

Stretched clusters consist of two or more physical ESXi hosts deployed in separate sites that are less than 100 kilometers apart and are contained within a single vSphere cluster. VMware supports specific stretched cluster configurations for a vSphere environment. As vCloud Director leverages a vSphere environment to provide resources for a self-provisioning, multi-tenant cloud solution, it, in turn, supports the use of any supported vSphere configurations, including stretched clusters.

 

The use cases for utilizing stretched clusters with vCloud Director can be divided into two categories: workload mobility and disaster avoidance. 

 

Workload mobility
 
An organization may want to balance workloads between the configured sites to best utilize the resources at each site. Through the use of VMware features, such as vMotion, organizations can migrate workloads seamlessly between sites as needed. Given that the vCloud Director management components,such as vCloud Director cells and vCloud Director database, are hosted at a single site, a failure of this site would impact the ability of the cloud providers and users to administer the cloud. However, such a site failure would not impact the workloads, as they could be moved automatically to the other site through the use of vSphere HA.

 

This figure provides a visual example of a stretched cluster configuration with localized vCloud Director management modules:
 

 
 
Disaster avoidance
 
An Organization may want to obtain a level of disaster avoidance for their entire cloud environment to survive a complete site failure. In these configurations, the vCloud Director management components are deployed within a stretched cluster. Such a configuration allows for the continued management of the cloud and the cloud workloads in the event of a site failure, as the cloud management resources are moved to the alternate site.

 

Note that these configurations require additional design considerations to protect all of the vCloud Director management components. You can either choose to protect these modules using traditional clustering mechanisms (where and if applicable) or you can create a separate stretched cluster dedicated to the management modules.
 
This figure shows a visual example of a stretched cluster configuration with the vCloud Director management modules protected through a separate stretched cluster dedicated to the management modules:
 
Note: This figure does not list all modules.
 

 

Requirements

To setup a stretched cluster, ensure that all vSphere requirements are met. Also, ensure that the storage array to be used in the stretched cluster configuration is supported. For more information, see the Hardware Compatibility Guide.

Additional Information

For more information on various stretched cluster implementations, see:

See Also

Request a Product Feature

To request a new product feature or to provide feedback on a VMware product, please visit the Request a Product Feature page.

Feedback

  • 0 Ratings

Did this article help you?
This article resolved my issue.
This article did not resolve my issue.
This article helped but additional information was required to resolve my issue.
What can we do to improve this information? (4000 or fewer characters)
  • 0 Ratings
Actions
KB: