The VVD is a pre-built end-to-end SDDC cloud infrastructure designed to perform in a predictive way, to scale, and to be reliable and resilient. More importantly, it is already pre-validated, all by matching VMware’s best practices and leveraging the real-world expertise of VMware solution architects. This design is intended to be a building block for a virtual infrastructure design, valuable for large deployment, with a reduced timeframe for the implementation (and also the design phase).
Unlike specific reference architectures, which are usually focused on an individual product or purpose, the VVD gives a global overview of the full stack, with different products using a holistic approach to the design. Also, even if you don’t plan to use the product in this kind of design (for example, the storage part based on vSAN), the design itself could be very valuable and good support for your project.
The VVD documentation page provides all those documents at https://www.vmware.com/go/vvd or https://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/vmware-validated-design-pubs.html.
VVD is based on a set of different VMware products with specific versions, which are included in the VMware Customer Experience Improvement Program (CEIP). CEIP is an optional program that provides VMware with information on which products and features are used by the customers, and it’s used to improve VMware products and features. If you don’t have specific regimentation or security constraints (or concerns), you can join this program by selecting this option during product installation.
VVD is a complete multi-site and cross-cloud design, but it also supports some specific use cases. In both cases, it is optimized for integration, expansion, and Day-2 operations, as well as specific maintenance tasks like upgrades and updates.
The latest version of VDD is VMware Validated Designs 4.1 (22 Aug 2017), and already, includes:
- VMware Validated Design for SDDC
- VMware Validated Designs for Management and Workload Consolidation
For specific use cases, it includes:
- VMware Validated Design Use Cases Documentation
- VMware Validated Design for Micro-Segmentation
- VMware Validated Design for IT Automating IT
Not everything has been updated from version 4.0.x; for example, several operational aspects, such as upgrade, monitoring, backup, and so on, are still the old versions of the documents; they will probably have been updated by the time this book has been published, but be sure to check the previous document.
In the previous version, you may also find more use cases, such as, for example, VMware Validated Design for Remote Office and Branch Office 4.0.