Enterprise scenarios usually require a high availability level; greater than 99.99% for most workloads. Using just vSphere HA features is not enough, not for all workloads. For workloads that require a level better than 99.99%, you have to consider vSphere FT or guest clustering (building a clustered solution across VMs). Or, just design your application to provide a better resiliency and a high availability level.

Performance and scaling are also crucial, and the design needs a good initial assessment and has to consider future growth. Real-time monitoring is needed to verify the right service level, from both the availability and the performance point of view. To help in the design phase, the VVD documents provide a great example and good and validated reference architecture for most of the projects. Trying to customize too much, to adapt to specific requirements, or to deviate from the blueprints could make the design too complex and costly in terms of money or time.

In this type of project, there could also be the engagement of VMware Professional Services, at least to support the design or validate the solution.

Typically, for an enterprise, both the ESXi Enterprise Plus and vCenter Standard editions are used, but there are also specific bundles, like the vCloud suite, that include more of VMware’s products. For large environments, there are specific licenses, like the Enterprise License Agreement (ELA).

Note that there is one special case of enterprise environment—a multi-tenant environment, typical for service or cloud providers, but also needed in some big enterprises where different organizations need the flexibility of cloud computing, especially the ability to manage their resources in a self-provisioning way.

The VMware vCenter Server has some capabilities for multi user environments, using a role-based permission model, but cannot be considered a full multi tenant environment. As discussed in Chapter 1, Evolution of VMware vSphere Suite, in order to build a private cloud, you need some cloud management tools. VMware has two different products—vCloud Director for Service Providers or vRealize Automation for enterprises. For cloud service providers, there is a specific license model called VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP).