The Business Ready Configurations for Dell PowerEdge™ blade servers, Dell EqualLogic™ SAN, and VMware Infrastructure™ provides a detailed reference architecture for deploying and using VMware virtualization on Dell blades and iSCSI storage environments. Based on extensive engineering work in architectural design and certification, customers can quickly and confidently deploy these engineering proven architectures into production environments, thereby helping to eliminate much of the costly and time consuming trial and error often encountered during complex infrastructure design and implementation. The solution is optimally configured to run virtualized workloads and is designed to provide redundancy with no single point-of-failure, as well as scalability and manageability. It includes the network architectures, storage configurations, and best practices necessary for deploying and configuring the solution. The solution will help customers achieve the full benefits of VMware Infrastructure, Dell PowerEdge blade servers, and Dell EqualLogic PS Series arrays.

The intended audience for this white paper is IT administrators, IT managers, and channel partners who are planning to deploy VMware virtualization using Dell blade servers and Dell EqualLogic SAN. This white paper provides an overview of the recommended servers, storage, software, and services. It can be used to plan, scope, and procure the required components to set up a virtualization infrastructure.

This white paper provides reference architecture and best practices for deploying and configuring Dell’s 11th generation blade server – M610, Dell EqualLogic PS6000 Series arrays, and VMware Infrastructure 3. The solution uses iSCSI as the storage environment. Fibre Channel is not discussed in this white paper. The solution is designed to be standalone, with the storage device directly connecting to the blade enclosure. Guidelines are provided to connect the storage to existing infrastructure. Based on customer requirements, further customization of the recommended architecture may be required.