Section 1 – Create a vSphere Conceptual Design
Objective 1.2 – Gather and analyze application requirements
Gather and analyze application requirements for a given scenario.
For this exam objective, you will need to know in detail how you would gather application requirements, for example, an MSSQL cluster. Remember you can use tools such as performance counters to gather compute requirements and whitepapers to determine application-level requirements. Always consult the Vendor for best practices when virtualizing bespoke applications, specifically to ensure support will continue for the application after it is virtualized.
Reading:
Determine the requirements for a set of applications that will be included in the design.
Once an application has been included into the design you need to understand the requirements around the application. For example, MSSQL clustering will have certain storage requirements (RDMs) within a virtualized design that a traditional Virtual Machine will not require
Reading:
- Virtualizing Oracle with VMware
- Virtualizing Exchange with VMware
- Virtualize SharePoint with VMware vSphere
- Virtualizing Microsoft SQL on VMware vSphere
Collect information needed in order to identify application dependencies.
Review application stacks to determine dependencies within the application. For example, a traditional Web Service might have one or more Web Servers, load balancers, application servers and a database server. Information will be available from the Vendor and the IT team. Ensure you validate any information you receive to ensure it does not become an assumption.
Given one or more application requirements, determine the impact of the requirements on the design.
Once your design for an application is complete, you need to understand the impact it has on the rest of the design. For example, if your application requirement is to use RDMs, consider how many and if this aligns with best practice or if it could exceed configuration maximums. The knock on effect might bean you need to change the design to cater for all requirements. Remember that requirements MUST be met.