Cloud Infrastructure Purchase Advisor
VMware
Find a Reseller
Email Sales
Initial Questions >
Refining Questions >
Results
Infrastructure:
Are you interested in virtualizing your corporate data center or remote sites/branch offices?
Remote sites, such as regional offices, retail stores, branch offices, and manufacturing sites, present unique IT challenges from a traditional centralized corporate data center. Both are great candidates for virtualization, but each has its own specific requirements.
Remote sites/branch offices and corporate data centers typically have very different IT needs. If you are interested in virtualizing both your datacenter and Remote sites/branch offices, we recommend you complete the questionnaire independently for both use cases.
Number of Branch Offices:
How many branch offices do you have or planning to have in the near future?
Branch offices include remote sites, retail stores, manufacturing plants, distribution centers, bank branches, regional offices, and other distributed IT centers.
Number of Workloads:
How many workloads will run in your virtualized environment now or in the near future?
How many workloads will run in each virtualized branch office now or in the near future?
VMware vSphere environments can run both existing workloads (consolidated from physical servers) and new workloads. Typically each workloads and its OS are encapsulated inside a
virtual machine. Select the range that best represents the total number of virtual machines that will be concurrently running at any given time in your environment, taking into consideration room for future growth.
Availability Level:
What is the required level of availability for the most critical service to be virtualized?
Features in more advanced editions of vSphere are able to decrease downtime and increase reliability for all applications running in a virtual machine, regardless of operating system or underlying hardware configuration. Third party clustering software can be used with or without these features. Select the option that best describes your present or anticipated service level requirements.
Shared Storage:
Do you have, or plan to have, a shared storage environment?
Do you have, or plan to have, a shared storage environment in your branch offices?
vSphere's advanced features dramatically improve availability and uptime of applications. Many of these
featuresrequire shared storage such as fibre channel SAN, iSCSI SAN, NAS, and vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA). Select "Unsure" if you currently do not have a shared storage system but may consider one in the future.
Greater than 2 CPUs per server:
Will any physical servers have more than 2 sockets/processors?
vSphere is able to run on servers with multiple processors. However some editions of vSphere designed for small IT environments are restricted to two-socket servers. Indicate below whether servers with more than two sockets/processors will be used. Select "unsure" if you do not want this to limit the recommended vSphere edition.
More than 8 vCPU:
Do you need to run high performance applications that require more than 8 processors?
Some applications need a great deal of processing power, and require more than eight processors. vSphere is able to present applications running in virtual machines with up to 64 virtual processors. Indicate below whether any such applications will be run in vSphere. Select "unsure" if you do not want this to influence the recommended edition of vSphere.
More than 32 vCPU:
Do you need to run high performance applications that require more than 32 processors?
Some applications need a great deal of processing power, and require more than thirty-two processors. vSphere is able to present applications running in virtual machines with up to 64 virtual processors. Indicate below whether any such applications will be run in vSphere. Select "unsure" if you do not want this to influence the recommended edition of vSphere.
Automated Load Balancing:
Do you want your IT infrastructure to dynamically allocate and balance computing resources to optimize performance or power consumption?
Available in certain editions of vSphere, vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) provides automated load balancing that intelligently allocates resources to virtual machines according to policy.
Virtual Distributed Switch:
Do you want to simplify virtual machine networking with a centralized interface or extend familiar physical network features and controls to your virtual networks using a third party virtual switch?
Certain editions of vSphere provide a virtual distributed switch that acts as a central point of control to manage virtual machine networking across many servers and maintain network runtime state for virtual machines when they live migrate from server to server. This also enables the use of (optional) third party virtual switches such as the Cisco Nexus 1000v* to extend familiar physical network features and controls to virtual networks.
* The Cisco Nexus 1000v is not included with vSphere
Third-party Multipathing:
Do you want to enhance performance and reliability of your storage network using multipathing?
vSphere provides the option to use either the native storage multipathing module provided by VMware or third party multipathing extensions modules. Multipathing extensions modules from VMware storage partners can offer additional functionality for enhanced performance and availability as well as optimizations for specific storage arrays. (Check with your storage vendor to determine if they provide a multipathing extensions module for vSphere.)
Infrastructure as a Service:
Do you need to deliver IT services to end-users in one day or less?
VMware vCloud Suite extends beyond vSphere to deliver a complete, integrated
cloud infrastructure. vCloud Suite contains VMware Cloud Director. Cloud Director accelerates intelligent virtual machine provisioning across VMware vSphere clusters with on-demand access.
Operations Management and Application Provisioning:
What elements of operations management and application provisioning do you require?
VMware vCloud Suite extends beyond vSphere to deliver a complete, integrated
cloud infrastructure. vCloud Suite contains VMware vRealize Operations and vFabric Application Director. These components provide performance and capacity management, compliance and configuration management, and application provisioning. Select all the requirements that apply to your situation, taking into consideration future growth.
Virtual Infrastructure Networking and Security:
What level of networking and security do you need for your virtual infrastructure?
VMware vCloud Suite extends beyond vSphere to deliver a complete, integrated
cloud infrastructure. vCloud Suite contains VMware vCloud Networking and Security. vCloud Networking and Security provides software-defined networking and integrated security for private clouds. Select the option that best describes your present or anticipated service level requirements.
Disaster Recovery and Planned Migration:
Do you need to make your infrastructure fully resilient to planned and unplanned downtime?
VMware vCloud Suite extends beyond vSphere to deliver a complete, integrated
cloud infrastructure. vCloud Suite contains VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM). vCenter SRM helps your infrastructure avoid downtime by providing centralized management of disaster recovery plans, enabling non-disruptive testing, and automating site recovery and migration processes.
Please answer the question before proceeding.
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
- You can purchase vSphere 5.1 Standard as individual licenses or as part of a bundle discount called an Acceleration Kit. The VMware vSphere 5.1 Standard Acceleration Kit includes a number of licenses and one instance of VMware vCenter Server.
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
- You can purchase vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus as individual licenses or as part of a bundle discount called an Acceleration Kit. The VMware vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Plus Acceleration Kit includes six vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses, one instance of VMware vCenter Server, and one instance of vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA ).
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
- You can purchase vSphere 5 Enterprise as individual licenses or as part of a bundle discount called an Acceleration Kit. The VMware vSphere 5.1 Enterprise Acceleration Kit includes six vSphere Enterprise licenses, one instance of VMware vCenter Server, and one instance of vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA).
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines).
- You can purchase vSphere 5.1 Standard as individual licenses or as part of a bundle discount called an Acceleration Kit. The VMware vSphere 5.1 Standard Acceleration Kit includes six vSphere Standard licenses, one instance of VMware vCenter Server, and one instance of vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA).
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
- VMware vCloud Suite requires shared storage such as fibre channel SAN, iSCSI SAN and NAS
Know Before You Buy:
- This edition is a self-contained solution designed for small IT environments with fewer than 20 physical servers.
- May not be decoupled or combined with other vSphere or vCenter editions.
- Limited to use with up to three physical servers, each with up to two processors.
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
- You can purchase vSphere 5.1 Standard as individual licenses or as part of a bundle discount called an Acceleration Kit. The VMware vSphere 5.1 Standard Acceleration Kit includes six vSphere Standard licenses, one instance of VMware vCenter Server, and one instance of vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA )
- VMware vCloud Suite requires shared storage such as fibre channel SAN, iSCSI SAN and NAS
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
- VMware vCloud Suite requires shared storage such as fibre channel SAN, iSCSI SAN and NAS
Know Before You Buy:
- This edition is a self-contained solution designed for small IT environments with fewer than 20 physical servers per site.
- May not be decoupled or combined with other vSphere or vCenter editions.
- Limited to use with up to three physical servers, each with up to two processors.
Know Before You Buy:
- A separate purchase of VMware vCenter Server is required. (A single instance of vCenter Server 5.1 manages up to 1,000 hosts and 10,000 virtual machines.)
- You can purchase vSphere 5.1 Standard as individual licenses or as part of a bundle discount called an Acceleration Kit. The VMware vSphere 5.1 Standard with Operations Management Acceleration Kit includes six vSphere Standard with Operations Management licenses, one instance of VMware vCenter Server, and one instance of vSphere Storage Appliance (VSA ).