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vStart 1000m for Enterprise Virtualization using Hyper-V – Reference Architecture
Dell Inc. 15
6.3 Server / Blade Storage Connectivity
In the vStart configuration, each PowerEdge M620 and PowerEdge R620 server uses an internal RAID
controller PERC H710 and is connected to two SAS HDDs configured in a RAID-1. This RAID volume hosts
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 for the hypervisor OS.
Each server also includes a dual port 8 Gbps Fibre Channel adapter for attaching to SAN volumes and
dual port 10 GbE network adapters for passing iSCSI traffic through to the guest VMs.
6.4 Server /Blade HA and Redundancy
The PowerEdge M620 blade chassis enclosure PowerEdge M1000e is designed with redundant power
supplies and redundant fans. Each PowerEdge M620 uses a PERC H710 RAID controller and two hard
drives configured in a RAID-1 which hosts the parent operating system.
The design of PowerEdge R620 servers includes high availability and redundant features such as
redundant fans and power supplies that are distributed to independent power sources. The servers also
use PERC H710 controllers with two hard disks configured with RAID-1 to prevent server crashes in the
event of single disk failures.
6.5 Management
6.5.1 Management Components
This section describes in more detail the various management components that were introduced in the
Overview section.
System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager Component (VMM 2012): VMM 2012 is Microsoft’s
Virtualization management platform. VMM 2012 provides in-depth management of both hypervisor and
VMs. It provides a system administrator the capability to create and deploy VM templates, manage
library stores of VMs, hardware profiles, and image files, and even manage VMware environments.
VMM 2012 also provides P2V (physical to virtual) functionality, thereby allowing a system administrator
to convert physical servers to virtual machines. VMM 2012 integrates with the hypervisor, VMs, and
System Center Operations Manager to provide a deep view of the system utilization.
Compellent Enterprise Manager: Compellent Enterprise Manager simplifies storage management by
providing a single, centralized console for the administration of multiple local and remote Compellent
systems. Users can configure and verify remote replication processes, monitor storage capacity and
disk utilization in real time, and generate comprehensive enterprise storage usage and performance
reports.
Dell Lifecycle Controller: This helps reduce operating costs by simplifying deployment and
management. Key features include diagnostics, self-update (UEFI, Driver Pack update), firmware
updates (BIOS, NIC FW, RAID Controllers), and hardware configuration.
Out-of-band CMC and iDRAC: The CMC provides a single, secure interface to manage the inventory,
configuration, monitoring, and alerting for chassis components (iKVM, CMC), I/O modules, servers, and
iDRAC. It also provides excellent real-time power management, monitoring, and alerting capabilities.
The Dell chassis provides users with system-level power limiting, slot-based prioritization, and dynamic
power engagement functionalities. The iDRAC on each server provides the flexibility to remotely
manage the server through Console redirection and Virtual CD-ROM/DVD/Floppy/Flash capabilities.