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Vbl oc k Sol uti on for Trus ted M ulti-Tenanc y: D esign Guide
Tabl e of C ontents
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VBLOCK SOLUTION FOR TRUSTED

MULTI-TENANCY: DESIGN GUIDE
Version 2.0
March 2013
2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Copy right 2013 VCE Company , LLC. All Rights Reserv ed.
VCE believ es the inf ormation in this publication is accurate as of its publication date. The inf ormation is subject to
change without notice.
THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDE D "AS IS." VCE MAKES NO

REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND WITH RESPE CT TO THE INFORMATION IN
THIS PUBLICATION, AND SPECIFI CALLY DISCLAIMS IMPLIED WARRA NTIES OR
MERCHA NTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
Contents
Introduction ......................................................................................................................................... 7
About this guide................................................................................................................................. 7
Audience ............................................................................................................................................ 8
Scope ................................................................................................................................................. 8
Feedback ........................................................................................................................................... 8
Trusted m ulti-tenancy foundational elements .............................................................................. 9
Secure s eparation ...........................................................................................................................10
Service assurance...........................................................................................................................10
Security and compliance ................................................................................................................11
Availability and data pr otection ......................................................................................................11
Tenant management and control...................................................................................................11
Service provider management and control ...................................................................................12
Technology overview .......................................................................................................................13
Management....................................................................................................................................14
Advanced Management Pod ......................................................................................................14
EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provis ioning...........................................................14
Compute technologies ....................................................................................................................15
Cisco Unified Computing System ...............................................................................................15
VMw are vSphere .........................................................................................................................15
VMw are vCenter Server ..............................................................................................................15
VMw are vCloud Director..............................................................................................................15
VMw are vCenter Char geback.....................................................................................................16
VMw are vShield ...........................................................................................................................16
Storage technologies ......................................................................................................................16
EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering ......................................................................................16
EMC FA ST Cache .......................................................................................................................17
EMC Pow er Path/V E ....................................................................................................................17
EMC Unified Storage...................................................................................................................17
EMC Unisphere Management Suite...........................................................................................17
EMC Unisphere Quality of Service Manager .............................................................................18
Netw ork technologies......................................................................................................................18
Cisco Nex us 1000V Series .........................................................................................................18
Cisco Nex us 5000 Series ............................................................................................................18
Cisco Nex us 7000 Series ............................................................................................................18
Cisco MDS....................................................................................................................................18
Cisco Data Center Netw ork Manager ........................................................................................19
Security technologies ......................................................................................................................19

RSA Archer eGRC .......................................................................................................................19
RSA enV ision ...............................................................................................................................19
Design fram ework.............................................................................................................................20
End-to-end topology ........................................................................................................................20
Virtual machine and c loud resources layer ................................................................................21
Virtual access layer/v Sw itch .......................................................................................................22
Storage and SA N layer ................................................................................................................22
Compute layer ..............................................................................................................................22
Netw ork layers .............................................................................................................................23
Logical topology ..............................................................................................................................23
Tenant traffic flow representation ...............................................................................................26
VMw are vSphere logical framew ork overview ...........................................................................28
Logical design..................................................................................................................................32
Cloud management cluster logical des ign .................................................................................32
vSpher e cluster specifications ....................................................................................................33
Host logical design specifications for cloud management c luster ...........................................33
Host logical configuration for resource groups ..........................................................................34
VMw are vSphere cluster host des ign specification for resource groups ................................34
Security .........................................................................................................................................35
Tenant anatomy overview ..............................................................................................................35
Design considerations for m anagement and orchestration.....................................................37
Configur ation ...................................................................................................................................39
Enabling services ............................................................................................................................40
Creating a service offering ..........................................................................................................41
Pr ovisioning a service..................................................................................................................41
Design considerations for com pute..............................................................................................42
Design cons iderations for secure separation................................................................................43
Cisco UCS ....................................................................................................................................43
VMw are vCloud Director .............................................................................................................52
Design cons iderations for service assurance ...............................................................................58
Cisco UCS ....................................................................................................................................58
Design cons iderations for security and compliance .....................................................................62
Cisco UCS ....................................................................................................................................62
VMw are vCenter Server ..............................................................................................................67
Design cons iderations for availability and data protection...........................................................67

Cisco UCS ....................................................................................................................................68
Virtualization.................................................................................................................................69
Design cons iderations for tenant management and contr ol ........................................................73
Design cons iderations for service prov ider management and contr ol........................................74
Virtualization.................................................................................................................................74
Design considerations for storage................................................................................................78
Design cons iderations for secure separation................................................................................78
Segmentation by VSA N and zoning...........................................................................................78
Separation of data at rest............................................................................................................80
Address space separation...........................................................................................................80
Separation of data access...........................................................................................................83
Design cons iderations for service assurance ...............................................................................89
Dedication of runtime r esources .................................................................................................89
Quality of service control .............................................................................................................89
EMC V NX FA ST V P ....................................................................................................................90
EMC FA ST Cache .......................................................................................................................92
EMC Unisphere Management Suite...........................................................................................92
Design cons iderations for security and compliance .....................................................................93
Authentication w ith LDA P or Active Directory ...........................................................................93
VNX and RSA enV ision...............................................................................................................96
Design cons iderations for availability and data protection...........................................................97
High availability ............................................................................................................................97
Local and remote data protection ...............................................................................................99
Design cons iderations for service prov ider management and contr ol......................................101
Design considerations for netw orking .......................................................................................102
Design cons iderations for secure separation..............................................................................102
VLANs .........................................................................................................................................102
Virtual routing and forw arding...................................................................................................103
Virtual dev ice context ................................................................................................................105
Access control list ......................................................................................................................105
Design cons iderations for service assurance .............................................................................106
Design cons iderations for security and compliance ...................................................................108
Data center firew alls ..................................................................................................................109
Services layer .............................................................................................................................112
Cisco Application Control Engine .............................................................................................112
Cisco Intrusion Pr evention System ..........................................................................................114
Cisco A CE, Cisco ACE Web Applic ation Firew all, Cisco IPS traffic flow s............................117
Access layer ...............................................................................................................................118
Security recommendations .......................................................................................................123
Thr eats mitigated .......................................................................................................................124
Vblock Systems secur ity features .........................................................................................124
Design cons iderations for availability and data protection.........................................................125
Physical redundancy design cons ideration .............................................................................125
Design considerations for additional security technologies .................................................130
Design cons iderations for secure separation..............................................................................131
RSA Archer eGRC .....................................................................................................................131
RSA enV ision .............................................................................................................................131
Design cons iderations for service assurance .............................................................................131
RSA Archer eGRC .....................................................................................................................131
RSA enV ision .............................................................................................................................132
Design cons iderations for security and compliance ...................................................................133
RSA Archer eGRC .....................................................................................................................133
RSA enV ision .............................................................................................................................134
Design cons iderations for availability and data protection.........................................................134
RSA Archer eGRC .....................................................................................................................134
RSA enV ision .............................................................................................................................135
Design cons iderations for tenant management and contr ol ......................................................135
RSA Archer eGRC .....................................................................................................................135
RSA enV ision .............................................................................................................................135
RSA Archer eGRC .....................................................................................................................136
RSA enV ision .............................................................................................................................136
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................................137
Next steps ........................................................................................................................................139
Acronym glossary ..........................................................................................................................140
Introduction
The Vblock Solution for Trusted Multi-Tenancy (TMT) Design Guide describes how Vblock
Systems allow enterprises and service providers to rapidly build virtualized data centers that support
the unique challenges of provisioning Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) to multiple tenants.
The trusted multi-tenancy solution comprises six foundational elements that address the unique
requirements of the IaaS cloud service model:
Secure separation
Service assurance
Security and compliance
Availability and data protection
Tenant management and control
Service provider management and control
The trusted multi-tenancy solution deploys compute, storage, network, security, and management
Vblock System components that address each element while offering service providers and tenants
numerous benefits. The following table summarizes these benefits.
Provider benefits
Tenant benefits
Lowe r cost-to-serv e
Cost sav ings transf erred to tenants
Standardi zed off erings
Faster incident resolution with standardized serv ices
Easier growth an d scale using standard

inf rastructures
Secure isolation of resources and data
More pre dictable planni ng aroun d capacity and

workloads
Usage-based serv ices model, such as backup and

storage
About this guide

This design guide explains how service providers can use specific products in the compute, network,
storage, security, and management component layers of Vblock Systems to support the six
foundational elements of trusted multi-tenancy. By meeting these objectives, Vblock Systems offer
service providers and enterprises an ideal business model and IT infrastructure to securely provision
IaaS to multiple tenants.
This guide demonstrates processes for:
Designing and managing Vblock Systems to deliver infrastructure multi-tenancy and service
multi-tenancy
Managing and operating Vblock Systems securely and reliably
The specific goal of this guide is to describe the design of and rationale behind the solution. The guide
looks at each layer of the Vblock System and shows how to achieve trusted multi-tenancy at each
layer. The design includes many issues that must be addressed prior to deployment, as no two
environments are alike.
Audience
The target audience for this guide is highly technical, including technical consultants, professional
services personnel, IT managers, infrastructure architects, partner engineers, sales engineers, and
service providers deploying a trusted multi-tenancy environment with leading technologies from VCE.
Scope
Trusted multi-tenancy can be used to offer dedicated IaaS (compute, storage, network, management,
and virtualization resources) or leverage single instances of services and applications for multiple
consumers. This guide only addresses design considerations for offering dedicated IaaS to multiple
tenants.
While this design guide describes how Vblock Systems can be designed, operated, and managed to
support trusted multi-tenancy, it does not provide specific configuration information, which must be
specifically considered for each unique deployment.
In this guide, the terms Tenant and Consumer refer to the consumers of the services provided by a
service provider.
Feedback
To suggest documentation changes and provide feedback on this paper, send email to
docfeedback@vce.com. Include the title of this paper, the name of the topic to which your comment
applies, and your feedback.
Trusted multi-tenancy foundational elements

The trusted multi-tenancy solution comprises six foundational elements that address the unique
requirements of the IaaS cloud service model:
Secure separation
Service assurance
Figur e 1. Six ele ments of the Vblock Solution for Trusted Multi-Tenancy
Secure separation
Secure separation refers to the effective segmentation and isolation of tenants and their assets within
the multi-tenant environment. Adequate secure separation ensures that the resources of existing
tenants remain untouched and the integrity of the applications, workloads, and data remains
uncompromised when the service provider provisions new tenants. Each tenant might have access to
different amounts of network, compute, and storage resources in the converged stack. The tenant
sees only those resources allocated to them.
From the standpoint of the service provider, secure separation requires the systematic deployment of
various security control mechanisms throughout the infrastructure to ensure the confidentiality,
integrity, and availability of tenant data, services, and applications. The logical segmentation and
isolation of tenant assets and information is essential for providing confidentiality in a multi-tenant
environment. In fact, ensuring the privacy and security of each tenant becomes a key design
requirement in the decision to adopt cloud services.
Service assurance
Service assurance plays a vital role in providing tenants with consistent, enforceable, and reliable
service levels. Unlike physical resources, virtual resources are highly scalable and easy to allocate
and reallocate on demand. In a multi-tenant virtualized environment, the service provider prioritizes
virtual resources to accommodate the growth and changing business needs of tenants. Service level
agreements (SLA) define the level of service agreed to by the tenant and service provider. The
service assurance element of trusted multi-tenancy provides technologies and methods to ensure that
tenants receive the agreed-upon level of service.
Various methods are available to deliver consistent SLAs across the network, compute, and storage
components of the Vblock System, including:
Quality of service in the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and Cisco Nexus platforms
EMC Symmetrix Quality of Service tools
EMC Unisphere Quality of Service Manager (UQM)
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
Without the correct mix of service assurance features and capabilities, it can be difficult to maintain
uptime, throughput, quality of service, and availability SLAs.
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Security and compliance refers to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of each tenants
environment at every layer of the trusted multi-tenancy stack. Trusted multi-tenancy ensures security
and compliance using technologies like identity management and access control, encryption and key
management, firewalls, malware protection, and intrusion prevention. This is a primary concern for
both service provider and tenant.
The trusted multi-tenancy solution ensures that all activities performed in the provisioning,
configuration, and management of the multi-tenant environment, as well as day-to-day activities and
events for individual tenants, are verified and continuously monitored. It is also important that all
operational events are recorded and that these records are available as evidence during audits.
As regulatory requirements expand, the private cloud environment will become increasingly subject to
security and compliance standards, such as Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards (PCIDSS), HIPAA, Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX), and Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (GLBA). With the proper tools,
achieving and demonstrating compliance is not only possible, but it can often become easier than in a
non-virtualized environment.

Resources and data must be available for use by the tenant. High availability means that resources
such as network bandwidth, memory, CPU, or data storage are always online and available to users
when needed. Redundant systems, configurations, and architecture can minimize or eliminate points
of failure that adversely affect availability to the tenant.
Data protection is a key ingredient in a resilient architecture. Cloud computing imposes a resource
trade-off from high performance. Increasingly robust security and data classification requirements are
an essential tool for balancing that equation. Enterprises need to know what data is important and
where it is located as prerequisites to making performance cost-benefit decisions, as well as ensuring
focus on the most critical areas for data loss prevention procedures.

In every cloud services model there are elements of control that the service provider delegates to the
tenant. The tenants administrative, management, monitoring, and reporting capabilities need to be
restricted to the delegated resources. Reasons for delegating control include convenience, new
revenue opportunities, security, compliance, or tenant requirement. In all cases, the goal of the trusted
multi-tenancy model is to allow for and simplify the management, visibility, and reporting of this
delegation.
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Tenants should have control over relevant portions of their service. Specifically, tenants should be
able to:
Provision allocated resources
Manage the state of all virtualized objects
View change management status for the infrastructure component
Add and remove administrative contacts
Request more services as needed
In addition, tenants taking advantage of data protection or data backup services should be able to
manage this capability on their own, including setting schedules and backup types, initiating jobs, and
running reports.
This tenant-in-control model allows tenants to dynamically change the environment to suit their
workloads as resource requirements change.

Another goal of trusted multi-tenancy is to simplify management of resources at every level of the
infrastructure and to provide the functionality to provision, monitor, troubleshoot, and charge back the
resources used by tenants. Management of multi-tenant environments comes with challenges, from
reporting and alerting to capacity management and tenant control delegation. The Vblock System
helps address these challenges by providing scalable, integrated management solutions inherent to
the infrastructure, and a rich, fully developed application programming interface (API) stack for adding
additional service provider value.
Providers of infrastructure services in a multi-tenant environment require comprehensive control and
complete visibility of the shared infrastructure to provide the availability, data protection, security, and
service levels expected by tenants. The ability to control, manage, and monitor resources at all levels
of the infrastructure requires a dynamic, efficient, and flexible design that allows the service provider to
access, provision, and then release computing resources from a shared pool quickly, easily, and
with minimal effort.
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Technology overview
The Vblock System from VCE is the world's most advanced converged infrastructureone that
optimizes infrastructure, lowers costs, secures the environment, simplifies management, speeds
deployment, and promotes innovation. The Vblock System is designed as one architecture that spans
the entire portfolio, includes best-in-class components, offers a single point of contact from initiation
through support, and provides the industry's most robust range of configurations.
Vblock Systems provide production ready (fully tested) virtualized infrastructure components, including
industry-leading technologies from Cisco, EMC, and VMware. Vblock Systems are designed and built
to satisfy a broad range of specific customer implementation requirements. To design trusted multitenancy, you need to understand each layer (compute, network, and storage) of the Vblock System
architecture. Figure 2 provides an example of Vblock System architecture.
Figur e 2. Exa mple of Vblock System architecture

Note: Cisco Nexus 7000 is not part of the Vblock System architecture.
This section describes the technologies at each layer of the Vblock System addressed in this guide to
achieve trusted multi-tenancy.
13
Management
Management technologies include Advanced Management Pod (AMP) and EMC Ionix Unified
Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning (UIM/P) (optional).
Advanced Management Pod

Vblock Systems include an AMP that provides a single management point for the Vblock System. It
enables the following benefits:
Monitors and manages Vblock System health, performance, and capacity
Provides fault isolation for management
Eliminates resource overhead on the Vblock System
Provides a clear demarcation point for remote operations
Two versions of the AMP are available: a mini-AMP and a high-availability version (HA AMP). A highavailability AMP is recommended.
For more information on AMP, refer to the Vblock Systems Architecture Overview documentation
located at www.vce.com/vblock.
EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager/Pr ovisioning

EMC Ionix UIM/P can be used to provide automated provisioning capabilities for the Vblock System in
a trusted multi-tenancy environment by combining provisioning with configuration, change, and
compliance management. With UIM/P, you can speed service delivery and reduce errors with policybased, automated converged infrastructure provisioning. Key features include the ability to:
Easily define and create infrastructure service profiles to match business requirements
Separate planning from execution to optimize senior IT technical staff
Respond to dynamic business needs with infrastructure service life cycle management
Maintain Vblock System compliance through policy-based management
Integrate with VMware vCenter and VMware vCloud Director for extended management
capabilities
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Compute technologies
Within the computing infrastructure of the Vblock System, multi-tenancy concerns at multiple levels
must be addressed, including the UCS server infrastructure and the VMware vSphere Hypervisor.
Cisco Unified Computing System

The Cisco UCS is a next-generation data center platform that unites network, compute, storage, and
virtualization into a cohesive system designed to reduce total cost of ownership and increase business
agility. The system integrates a low-latency, lossless, 10 Gb Ethernet (GbE) unified network fabric with
enterprise class x86 architecture servers. The system is an integrated, scalable, multi-chassis platform
in which all resources participate in a unified management domain. Whether it has only one server or
many servers with thousands of virtual machines (VM), the Cisco UCS is managed as a single
sy stem, thereby decoupling scale from complexity.
Cisco UCS Manager provides unified, centralized, embedded management of all software and
hardware components of the Cisco UCS across multiple chassis and thousands of virtual machines.
The entire UCS is managed as a single logical entity through an intuitive graphical user interface
(GUI), a command-line interface (CLI), or an XML API. UCS Manager delivers greater agility and
scale for server operations while reducing complexity and risk. It provides flexible role- and policybased management using service profiles and templates, and it facilitates processe s based on IT
Infrastructure Library (ITIL) concepts.
VMw are vSphere

VMware vSphere is a complete, scalable, and powerful virtualization platform, delivering the
infrastructure and application services that organizations need to transform their information
technology and deliver IT as a service. VMware vSphere is a host operating system that runs directly
on the Cisco UCS infrastructure and fully virtualizes the underlying hardware, allowing multiple virtual
machine guest operating systems to share the UCS physical resources.
VMw are vCenter Server

VMware vCenter Server is a simple and efficient way to manage VMware vSphere. It provides unified
management of all the hosts and virtual machines in your data center from a single console with
aggregate performance monitoring of clusters, hosts and virtual machines. VMware vCenter Server
gives administrators deep insight into the status and configuration of clusters, hosts, virtual machines,
storage, the guest operating system, and other critical components of a virtual infrastructure. It plays a
key role in helping achieve secure separation, availability, tenant management and control, and
service provider management and control.
VMw are vCloud Director

VMware vCloud Director gives customers the ability to build secure private clouds that dramatically
increase data center efficiency and business agility. With VMware vSphere, VMware vCloud Director
delivers cloud computing for existing data centers by pooling virtual infrastructure resources and
delivering them to users as catalog-based services.
15
VMw are vCenter Char geback

VMware vCenter Chargeback is an end-to-end metering and cost reporting solution for virtual
environments that enables accurate cost measurement, analysis, and reporting of virtual machines
using VMware vSphere. Virtual machine resource consumption data is collected from VMware
vCenter Server. Integration with VMware vCloud Director also enables automated chargeback for
private cloud environments.
VMw are vShield

The VMware vShield family of security solutions provides virtualization-aware protection for virtual
data centers and cloud environments. VMware vShield products strengthen application and data
security, enable trusted multi-tenancy, improve visibility and control, and accelerate IT compliance
efforts across the organization.
VMware vShield products include vShield App and vShield Edge. vShield App provides firewall
capability between virtual machines by placing a firewall filter on every virtual network adapter. It
allows for easy application of firewall policies. vShield Edge virtualizes data center perimeters and
offers firewall, VPN, Web load balancer, NAT, and DCHP services.
Storage technologies
The features of multi-tenancy offerings can be combined with standard security methods such as
storage area network (SAN) zoning and Ethernet virtual local area networks (VLAN) to segregate,
control, and manage storage resources among the infrastructure tenants.
EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering

EMC Fully Automated Storage Tiering (FAST) automates the movement and placement of data
across storage resources as needed. FAST enables continuous optimization of your applications by
eliminating trade-offs between capacity and performance, while simultaneously lowering cost and
delivering higher service levels.
EMC VNX FAS T VP
EMC VNX FAST VP is a policy-based auto-tiering solution that efficiently utilizes storage tiers by
moving slices of colder data to high-capacity disks. It increases performance by keeping hotter slices
of data on performance drives.
In a VMware vCloud environment, FAST VP enables providers to offer a blended storage offering,
reducing the cost of a traditional single-type offering while allowing for a wider range of customer use
cases. This helps accommodate a larger cross-section of virtual machines with different performance
characteristics.
16
EMC FA ST Cache
EMC FAST Cache is an industry-leading feature supported by Vblock Systems. It extends the EMC
VNX arrays read-write cache and ensures that unpredictable I/O spikes are serviced at enterprise
flash drive (EFD) speeds, which is of particular benefit in a VMware vCloud Director environment.
Multiple virtual machines on multiple virtual machine file system (VMFS) data stores spread across
multiple hosts can generate a very random I/O pattern, placing stress on both the storage processors
as well as the DRAM cache. FAST Cache, a standard feature on all Vblock Systems, mitigates the
effects of this kind of I/O by extending the DRAM cache for reads and writes, increasing the overall
cache performance of the array, improving l/O during usage spikes, and dramatically reducing the
overall number of dirty pages and cache misse s.
Because FAST Cache is aware of EFD disk tiers available in the array, FAST VP and FAST Cache
work together to improve array performance. Data that has been promoted to an EFD tier is never
cached inside FAST Cache, ensuring that both options are leveraged in the most efficient way.
EMC Pow er Path/V E

EMC PowerPath/VE delivers PowerPath multipathing features to optimize storage access in VMware
vSphere virtual environments by removing the administrative overhead associated with load balancing
and failover. Use PowerPath/VE to standardize path management across heterogeneous physical
and virtual environments. PowerPath/VE enables you to automate optimal server, storage, and path
utilization in a dynamic virtual environment.
PowerPath/VE works with VMware vSphere ESXi as a multipathing plug-in that provides enhanced
path management capabilities to ESXi hosts. It installs as a kernel module on the vSphere host and
plugs in to the vSphere I/O stack framework to bring the advanced multipathing capabilities of
PowerPathdynamic load balancing and automatic failoverto the VMware vSphere platform.
EMC Unified Storage

The EMC Unified Storage system is a highly available architecture capable of five nines availability.
The Unified Storage arrays achieve five nines availability by eliminating single points of failure
throughout the physical storage stack, using technologies such as dual-ported drives, hot spares,
redundant back-end loops, redundant front-end and back-end ports, dual storage processors,
redundant fans and power supplies, and cache battery backup.
EMC Unisphere Management Suite

EMC Unisphere provides a simple, integrated experience for managing EMC Unified Storage through
both a storage and VMware lens. Key features include a Web-based management interface to
discover, monitor, and configure EMC Unified Storage; self-service support ecosystem to gain quick
access to realtime online support tools; automatic event notification to proactively manage critical
status changes; and customizable dashboard views and reporting.
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EMC Unisphere Quality of Service Manager

EMC Unisphere Quality of Service (QoS) Manager enables dynamic allocation of storage resources to
meet service level requirements for critical applications. QoS Manager monitors storage system
performance on an appliance-by-application basis, providing a logical view of application performance
on the storage system. In addition to displaying real-time data, performance data can be archived for
offline trending and data analysis.
Network technologies
Multi-tenancy concerns must be addressed at multiple levels within the network infrastructure of the
Vblock System. Various methods, including zoning and VLANs, can enforce network separation.
Internet Protocol Security (IPsec) also provides application-independent network encryption at the IP
layer for additional security.
Cisco Nex us 1000V Series

The Cisco Nexus 1000V is a software switch embedded in the software kernel of VMware vSphere.
The Nexus 1000V provides virtual machine-level network visibility, isolation, and security for VMware
server virtualization. With the Nexus 1000V Series, virtual machines can leverage the same network
configuration, security policy, diagnostic tools, and operational models as their physical server
counterparts attached to dedicated physical network ports. Virtualization administrators can access
predefined network policies that follow mobile virtual machines to ensure proper connectivity, saving
valuable resources for virtual machine administration.
Cisco Nex us 5000 Series

Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches are data center class, high performance, standards-based
Ethernet and Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) switches that enable the consolidation of LAN,
SAN, and cluster network environments onto a single unified fabric.
Cisco Nex us 7000 Series

Cisco Nexus 7000 Series switches are modular switching systems designed for use in the data
center. Nexus 7000 switches deliver the scalability, continuous systems operation, and transport
flexibility required for 10 GB/s Ethernet networks today. In addition, the system architecture is capable
of supporting future 40 GB/s Ethernet, 100 GB/s Ethernet, and unified I/O modules.
Cisco MDS
The Cisco MDS 9000 Series helps build highly available, scalable storage networks with advanced
security and unified management. The Cisco MDS 9000 family facilitates secure separation at the
network layer with virtual storage area networks (VSAN) and zoning. VSANs help achieve higher
security and greater stability in fibre channel (FC) fabrics by providing isolation among devices that are
physically connected to the same fabric. The zoning service within a fibre channel fabric provides
security between devices sharing the same fabric.
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Cisco Data Center Netw ork Manager

Cisco Data Center Network Manager provides an effective tool to manage the Cisco data center
infrastructure and actively monitor the SAN and LAN.
Security technologies
RSA Archer eGRC and RSA enVision security technologies can be used to achieve security and
compliance.
RSA Archer eGRC

The RSA Archer eGRC Platform for enterprise governance, risk, and compliance has the industrys
most comprehensive library of policies, control standards, procedures, and asse ssments mapped to
current global regulations and industry guidelines. The flexibility of the RSA Archer framework,
coupled with this library, provides the service providers and tenants in a trusted multi-tenant
environment the mechanism to successfully implement a governance, risk, and compliance program
over the Vblock System. This addresse s both the components and technologies comprising the
Vblock System and the virtualized services and resources it hosts.
Organizations can deploy the RSA Archer eGRC Platform in a variety of configurations, based on the
expected user load, utilization, and availability requirements. As business needs evolve, the
environment can adapt and scale to meet the new demands. Regardless of the size and solution
architecture, the RSA Archer eGRC Platform consists of three logical layers: a .NET Web-enabled
interface, the application layer, and a Microsoft SQL database backend.
RSA enV ision

The RSA enVision platform is a security information and event management (SIEM) solution that
offers a scalable, distributed architecture to collect, store, manage, and correlate event logs generated
from all the components comprising the Vblock Systemfrom the physical devices and software
products to the management and orchestration and security solutions.
By seamlessly integrating with RSA Archer eGRC, RSA enVision provides both service providers and
tenants a powerful solution to collect and correlate raw data into actionable information. Not only does
RSA enVision satisfy regulatory compliance requirements, it helps ensure stability and integrity
through robust incident management capabilities.
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Design framework
This section provides the following information:
End-to-end topology
Logical topology
Logical design details
Overview of tenant anatomy
End-to-end topology
Secure separation creates trusted zones that shield each tenants applications, virtual machines,
compute, network, and storage from compromise and resource effects caused by adjacent tenants
and external threats. The solution framework presented in this guide considers additional technologies
that comprehensively provide appropriate in-depth defense. A combination of protective, detective,
and reactive controls and solid operational processes are required to deliver protection against
internal and external threats.
Key layers include:
Virtual machine and cloud resources (VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director)
Virtual access/vSwitch (Cisco Nexus 1000V)
Storage and SAN (Cisco MDS and EMC storage)
Compute (Cisco UCS)
Access and aggregation (Nexus 5000 and Nexus 7000)
Figure 3 illustrates the design framework.
20
Figur e 3. Trusted multi-tenancy design fra mewo rk
Virtual machine and c loud resources layer

VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director are used in the cloud layer to accelerate the delivery
and consumption of IT services while maintaining the security and control of the data center.
VMware vCloud Director enables the consolidation of virtual infrastructure across multiple clusters, the
encapsulation of application services as portable vApps, and the deployment of those services ondemand with isolation and control.
21
Virtual access layer/v Sw itch

Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch acts as the virtual network access layer for the virtual
machines. Edge LAN policies such as quality of service marking and vNIC ACLs are implemented at
this layer in Nexus 1000V port-profiles.
The following table describes the virtual access layer.
Component
Description
One data center
One primary Nexus 1000V Virtual Superv isor Module (VS M)

One secondary Nexus 1000V Virtual Superv isor Module
VMware ES Xi serv ers
Each running an instance of the Nexus 1000V Virtual Ethernet Module (VE M)
Tena nt
Multiple v irtual machines, which hav e diff erent applications such as Web
serv er, database, and so f orth, for each tenant
Storage and SA N layer

The trusted multi-tenancy design framework is based on the use of storage arrays supporting fibre
channel connectivity. The storage arrays connect through MDS SAN switches to the UCS 6120
switches in the access layer. Several layers of security (including zoning, access controls at the guest
operating system and ESXi level, and logical unit number (LUN) masking within the VNX) tightly
control access to data on the storage system.
Compute layer
The following table provides an example of the components of a multi-tenant environment virtual
compute farm.
Note: A Vblock System may have more resources than what is described in the f ollowing table.
Component
Description
Three UCS 5108 chassis
11 UCS B200 servers (dual quad-core Intel Xeon X5570 CPU at

2.93 GHZ and 96 GB RAM)
Four UCS B440 serv ers (f our Intel Xeon 7500 series processors
and 32 dual in-line memory module slots with 256 GB memory)
Ten GbE Cisco VIC conv erged network adapters (CNA)

organized into a VMware ESXi cluster
Each serv er has two CNAs and are dual-attached to the UCS
6100 f abric interconnect
The CNAs provide:
15 serv ers (4 clusters)
LAN and SAN connectivity to the serv ers, which run

VMware ES Xi 5.0 hypervisor
LAN and SAN services to the hy pervisor
22
Netw ork layers

Access layer
Nexus 5000 is used at the access layer and connects to the Cisco UCS 6120s. In the Layer 2 access
layer, redundant pairs of Cisco UCS 6120 switches aggregate VLANs from the Nexus 1000V
distributed virtual switch. FCoE SAN traffic from virtual machines is handed off as FC traffic to a pair of
MDS SAN switches, and then to a pair of storage array controllers. FC expansion modules in the UCS
6120 switch provide SAN interconnects to dual SAN fabrics. The UCS 6120 switches are in N Port
virtualization (NPV) mode to interoperate with the SAN fabric.
Aggrega tion la yer
Nexus 7000 is used at the aggregation layer. The virtual device context (VDC) feature in the Nexus
7000 separates it into sub-aggregation and aggregation virtual device contexts for Layer 3 routing.
The aggregation virtual device context connects to the core network to route the internal data center
traffic to the Internet and from the Internet back to the internal data center.
Logical topology
Figure 4 shows the logical topology for the trusted multi-tenancy design framework.
23
Figur e 4. Trusted multi-tenancy logical topology
24
The logical topology represents the virtual components and virtual connections that exist within the
physical topology. The following table describes the topology.
Component
Details
Nexus 7000
Virtualized aggre gation lay er switch.

Prov ides redundant paths to the Nexus 5000 access lay er. Virtual
port channel prov ides a logically loopless topology with conv ergence
times based on EtherChannel.
Creates three v irtual dev ice contexts (VDC): WAN edge v irtual dev ice
context, sub-aggregation v irtual dev ice context, and aggregation
v irtual dev ice context. Sub-aggregation v irtual dev ice context
connects to Nexus 5000 and aggregation v irtual dev ice context by
v irtual port channel.
Nexus 5000
Unif ied access lay er switch.

Prov ides 10 GbE IP connectiv ity between the Vblock System and the
outside world. In a unif ied storage conf iguration, the switches also
connect the f abric interconnects in the compute lay er to the data
mov ers in the storage lay er. The switches also prov ide connectiv ity to
the AMP.
Two UCS 6120 f abric

interconnects
Prov ides a robust compute lay er platf orm. Virtual port channel
prov ides a topology with redundant chassis, cards, and links with
Nexus 5000 and Nexus 7000.
Each connects to one MDS 9148 to f orm its own f abric.
Four 4 GB/s FC links connect the UCS 6120 to MDS 9148.
The MDS 9148 switches connect to the storage controllers. In this
example, the storage array has two controllers. Each MDS 9148 has
two connections to each FC storage controller. These dual
connections prov ide redundancy if an FC controller f ails and the MDS
9148 is not isolated.
Connect to the Nexus 5000 access switch through EtherChannel with
dual-10 Gb E.
Three UCS chassis
Each chassis is populated with blade serv ers and Fabric Extenders
f or redundancy or aggregation of bandwidth.
UCS blade serv ers
Connect to the SAN f abric through the Cisco UCS 6120XP f abric
interconnect, which uses an 8-port 8 GB f ibre channel expansion
module to access the SAN.
Connect to LAN through the Cisco UCS 6120XP f abric interconnects.
These ports require SFP + adapters. The serv er ports of f abric
interconnects can operate at 10 GB/s and Fibre Channel ports of
f abric interconnects can operate at 2/4/8 GB/s.
EMC VN X storage
Connects to the f abric interconnect with 8 GB f ibre channel f or block.

Connects to the Nexus 5000 access switch through EtherChannel
with dual-1 0 GbE f or f ile.
25
Tenant traffic flow representation

Figure 5 depicts the traffic flow through each layer of the solution, from the virtual machine level to the
storage layer.
Figur e 5. Tenant traffic flow
26
Traffic flow in the data center is classified into the following categories:
Front-endUser to data center, Web, GUI
Back-endWithin data center, multi-tier application, storage, backup
ManagementVirtual machine access, application administration, monitoring, and so forth
Note: Front-end traffic, also called client-to-server traffic, trav erses the Nexus 7000 aggregation layer and a
select number of network-based services.
At the application layer, each tenant may have multiple vApps with applications and have different
virtual machines for different workloads. The Cisco Nexus 1000V distributed virtual switch acts as the
virtual access layer for the virtual machines. Edge LAN policies, such as quality of service marking
and vNIC ACLs, can be implemented at the Nexus 1000V. Each ESXi server becomes a virtual
Ethernet blade of Nexus 1000V, called Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM). Each vNIC connects to Nexus
1000V through a port group; each port group specifies one or more VLANs used by a virtual machine
NIC. The port group can also specify other network attributes, such as rate limit and port security. The
VM uplink port profile forwards VLANs belonging to virtual machines. The system uplink port profile
forwards VLANs belonging to management traffic. The virtual machine traffic for different tenants
traverses the network through different uplink port profiles, where port security, rate limiting, and
quality of service apply to guarantee secure separation and assurance.
VMware vSphere virtual machine NICs are associated to the Cisco Nexus 1000V to be used as the
uplinks. The network interface virtualization capabilities of the Cisco adapter enable the use of
VMware multi-NIC design on a server that has two 10 GB physical interfaces with complete quality of
service, bandwidth sharing, and VLAN portability among the virtual adapters. vShield Edge controls all
network traffic to and from the virtual data center and helps provide an abstraction of the separation in
the cloud environment.
Virtual machine traffic goes through the UCS FEX (I/O module) to the fabric interconnect 6120.
If the traffic is aligned to use the storage resources and it is intended to use FC storage, it passe s over
an FC port on the fabric interconnect and Cisco MDS, to the storage array, and through a storage
processor, to reach the specific storage pool or storage groups. For example, if a tenant is using a
dedicated storage resource with specific disks inside a storage array, traffic is routed to the assigned
LUN with a dedicated storage group, RAID group, and disks. If there is NFS traffic, it passes over a
network port on the fabric interconnect and Cisco Nexus 5000, through a virtual port channel to the
storage array, and over a data mover, to reach the NFS data store. The NFS export LUN is tagged
with a VLAN to ensure the security and isolation with a dedicated storage group, RAID group, and
disks. Figure 5 shows an example of a few dedicated tenant storage resources. However, if the
storage is designed for a shared traffic pool, traffic is routed to a specific storage pool to pull
resources.
ESXi hosts for different tenants pass the server-client and management traffic over a server port and
reach the access layer of the Nexus 5000 through virtual port channel.
Server blades on UCS chassis are allocated for the different tenants. The resource on UCS can be
dedicated or shared. For example, if using dedicated servers for each tenant, VLANs are assigned for
different tenants and are carried over the dot1Q trunk to the aggregation layer of the Nexus 7000,
where each tenant is mapped to the Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF). Traffic is routed to the
external network over the core.
27
VMw are vSphere logical framew ork overview

Figure 6 shows the virtual VMware vSphere layer on top of the physical server infrastructure.
Figur e 6. vSphere logical fra mework
The diagram shows blade server technology with three chassis initially dedicated to the VMware
vCloud environment. The physical design represents the networking and storage connectivity from the
blade chassis to the fabric and SAN, as well as the physical networking infrastructure. (Connectivity
between the blade servers and the chassis switching is different and is not shown here.) Two chassis
are initially populated with eight blades each for the cloud resource clusters, with an even distribution
between the two chassis of blades belonging to each resource cluster.
In this scenario, VMware vSphere resources are organized and separated into management and
resource clusters with three resource groups (Gold, Silver, and Bronze). Figure 7 illustrates the
management cluster and resource groups.
28
Figur e 7. Manage me nt cluster and resource groups
Cloud management clusters

A cloud management cluster is a management cluster containing all core components and services
needed to run the cloud. It is a resource group or compute cluster that represents dedicated
resources for cloud consumption. It is best to use a separate cluster outside the Vblock System
resources.
Each resource group is a cluster of VMware ESXi hosts managed by a VMware vCenter Server, and
is under the control of VMware vCloud Director. VMware vCloud Director can manage the resources
of multiple resource groups or multiple compute clusters.
Cloud management components
The following components run as minimum-requirement virtual machines on the management cluster
hosts:
Components
Number of virtual machines
vCenter Serv er
vCenter Database
vCenter Update Manager
vCenter Update Manager Database
vCloud Director Cells
2 (f or multi-cell)
vCloud Director Database
29
Components
Number of virtual machines
vCenter Chargeback Serv er
vCenter Chargeback Database
v Shield Manager
Note: A vCloud Director cluster contains one or more vCloud Director serv ers; these servers are referred to as
cells and f orm the basis of the VMware cloud. A cloud can be formed from multiple cells. The number of
vCloud Director cells depends on the size of the vCloud environment and the level of redundancy.
Figure 8 highlights the cloud management cluster.
Figur e 8. Cloud manag e ment cluster
Resources allocated for cloud use have little overhead reserved. For example, cloud resource groups
would not host vCenter management virtual machines. Best practices encourage separating the cloud
management cluster from the cloud resource groups(s) in order to:
Facilitate quicker troubleshooting and problem resolution. Management components are strictly
contained in a specified cluster and manageable management cluster.
Keep cloud management components separate from the resources they are managing.
Consistently and transparently manage and carve up resource groups.
Provide an additional step for high availability and redundancy for the trusted multi-tenancy
infrastructure.
30
Resource groups
A resource group is a set of resources dedicated to user workloads and managed by VMware vCenter
Server. vCloud Director manages the resources of all attached resource groups within vCenter
Servers. All cloud-provisioning tasks are initiated through VMware vCloud Director and passed down
to the appropriate vCenter Server instance.
Figure 9 highlights cloud resource groups.
Figur e 9. Cloud resource grou ps
Provisioning resources in standardized groupings promotes a consistent approach for scaling vCloud
environments. For consistent workload experience, place each resource group on a separate
resource cluster.
The resource group design represents three VMware vSphere High Availability (HA) Distributed
Resource Scheduler (DRS) clusters and infrastructure used to run the vApps that are provisioned and
managed by VMware vCloud Director.
31
Logical design
This section provides information about the logical design, including:
Cloud management cluster logical design
VMware vSphere cluster specifications
Host logical design specifications
Host logical configurations for resource groups
VMware vSphere cluster host design specifications for resource groups
Security
Cloud management cluster logical des ign

The compute design encompasses the VMware ESXi hosts contained in the management cluster.
Specifications are listed below.
Attribute
Specification
Number of ESXi hosts
v Sphere datacenter
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler conf iguration
Fully automated
VMware High Av ailability (HA) Enable Host Monitoring
Y es
VMware High Av ailability Admission Control Policy
Cluster tolerances 1 host f ailure (percentage

based)
VMware High Av ailability percentage
67%
VMware High Av ailability Admission Control Response
Prev ent v irtual machines f rom being powered

on if they violate av ailability constraints
VMware High Av ailability Def ault VM Restart Priority
N/A
VMware High Av ailability Host Isolation Response
Leav e v irtual machine powere d on
VMware High Av ailability Enable VM Monitori ng
Y es
VMware High Av ailability VM Monitoring Sensitiv ity
Medi um
Note: In this section, the scope is limited to only the Vblock System supporting the management component
workloads.
32
vSpher e cluster specifications

Each VMware ESXi host in the management cluster has the following specifications.
Attribute
Specification
Host ty pe and v ersion
VMware ES Xi installable v ersion 5.0
Processors
x86 compatible
Storage presented
SAN boot f or ESXi 20 GB

SAN LUN f or v irtual machines 2 TB
NFS shared LUN f or v Cloud Director cells 1 TB
Networking
Connectiv ity to all needed VLANs
Memory
Size to support all management v irtual machines. In this case, 96 GB

memory in each host.
Note: VMware v Cloud Director deployment requires storage for sev eral elements of the ov erall framework. The
first is the storage needed to house the vCloud Director management cluster. This includes the repository
for configuration information, organizations, and allocations that are stored in an Oracle database. The
second is the vSphere storage objects presented to vCloud Director as data stores accessed by ESXi
serv ers in the vCloud Director configuration. This storage is managed by the v Sphere administrator and
consumed by vCloud Director users depending on vCloud Director configuration. The third is the existence
of a single NFS data store to serv e as a staging area for vApps to be uploaded to a catalog.
Host logical design specifications for cloud management c luster

The following table identifies management components that rely on high availability and fault tolerance
for redundancy.
Management component
High availability enabled?
vCenter Serv er
Y es
vCloud Director
Y es
vCenter Chargeback Serv er
Y es
v Shield Manager
Y es
33
Host logical configuration for resource groups

The following table identifies the specifications for each VMware ESXi host in the resource cluster.
Attribute
Specification
Host ty pe and v ersion
VMware ES Xi Installable v ersion 5.0
Processors
x86 compatible
Storage presented
SAN boot f or ESXi 20 GB

SAN LUN f or v irtual machines 2 TB
Networking
Connectiv ity to all needed VLANs
Memory
Size to support v irtual machine workloads
VMw are vSphere cluster host des ign specification for resource groups
All VMware vSphere resource clusters are configured similarly with the following specifications.
Attribute
Specification
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler

conf iguration
Fully automated
VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler

Migratio n Thresh old
3 stars
VMware High Av ailability Enable Host

Monitori ng
Y es
VMware High Av ailability Admission Control

Policy
Cluster tolerances 1 host f ailure (percentage based)
VMware High Av ailability percentage
83%
VMware High Av ailability Admission Control

Response
Prev ent v irtual machines f rom being powered on if they

v iolate av ailability constraints
VMware High Av ailability Def ault VM Restart

Priority
N/A
VMware High Av ailability Host Isolation

Response
Leav e v irtual machine powere d on
34
Security
The RSA Archer eGRC Platform can be run on a single server, with the application and database
components running on the same server. This configuration is suitable for organizations:
With fewer than 50 concurrent users
That do not require a high-performance or high availability solution
For the trusted multi-tenancy framework, RSA enVision can be deployed as a virtual appliance in the
AMP. Each Vblock System component can be configured to utilize it as its centralized event manager
through its identified collection method. RSA enVision can then be integrated with RSA Archer eGRC
per the RSA Security Incident Management Solution configuration guidelines.
Tenant anatomy overview

This design guide uses three tenants as examples: Orange (tenant 1), Vanilla (tenant 2), and Grape
(tenant 3). All tenants share the same infrastructure and resources. Each tenant has its own virtual
compute, network, and storage resources. Resources are allocated for each tenant based on their
business model, requirements, and priorities. Traffic between tenants is restricted, separated, and
protected for the trusted multi-tenancy environment.
Figur e 10. Trusted multi-tenancy tenant anato my
35
In this design guide (and associated configurations), three levels of services are provided in the cloud:
Bronze, Silver, and Gold. These tiers define service levels for compute, storage, and network
performance. The following table provides sample network and data differentiations by service tier.
Bronze
Silver
Gold
Serv ices
No additional serv ices
Firewall serv ices
Firewall an d loadbalancing serv ices
Band width
20%
30%
40%
Segmentation
One VLAN per client,

single Virtual Routing
and Forwar ding (VRF)
Multiple VL ANs per client,

single VRF
Multiple VL ANs per client,

single VRF
Data Protection
None
Snap v irtual copy (local

site)
Clone mirror copy (local

site)
Disaster Recov ery
None
Remote application (with

specif ic recov ery point
objectiv e (RPO) / recov ery
time objectiv e (RTO))
Remote replication (any point-in-time recov ery )
Using this tiered model, you can do the following:
Offer service tiers with well-defined and distinct SLAs
Support customer segmentation based on desired service levels and functionality
Allow for differentiated application support based on service tiers
36
Design considerations for management and orchestration

Service providers can leverage Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning to provision the Vblock
System in a trusted multi-tenancy environment. The AMP cluster of hosts holds UIM/P, which is
accessed through a Web browser.
Use UIM/P as a domain manager to provision Vblock Systems as a single entity. UIM/P interacts with
the individual element managers for compute, storage, SAN, and virtualization to automate the most
common and repetitive operational tasks required to provision services. It also interacts with VMware
vCloud Director to automate cloud operations, such as the creation of a virtual data center.
For provisioning, this guide focuses on the functional capabilities provided by UIM/P in a trusted multitenancy environment.
As shown in Figure 11, the UIM/P dashboard gives service provider administrators a quick summary
of available infrastructure resources. This eliminates the need to perform manual discovery and
documentation, thereby reducing the time it takes to begin deploying resources. Once administrators
have resource availability information, they can begin to provision existing service offerings or create
new ones.
Figur e 11. UIM/P dashboard
37
Figur e 12. UIM/P service offerings
38
Configuration
While UIM/P automates the operational tasks involved in building services on Vblock Systems,
administrators need to perform initial task sets on each domain manager before beginning service
provisioning. This section describes both key initial tasks to perform on the individual domain
managers and operational tasks managed through UIM/P.
The following table shows what is configured as part of initial device configuration and what is
configured through UIM/P.
Device manager
Initial configuration
Operational configuration
completed with UIM/P
UCS Manager
Management conf iguration (IP and

credentials
LAN
MAC pool
Chassis discov ery
SAN
Enable ports
KVMIP pool
World Wide Name (WWN)

pool
Create VLANs
WWPN pool
Assign VLANs
VSANs
Boot policies
Serv ice templates
Select pools
Select boot policy
Serv er
UUID pool
Create service profile
Associate profile to server
Install v Sphere ESXi
Unisphere MDS/Nexus
vCenter
Management conf iguration (IP and

credentials)
Create storage group

Associate host and LUN
RAID group, storage pool, or both
Zone
Create LUNs
Aliases
Zone sets
Create Windows v irtual machine

Create database
Create data center

Create clusters
Install vCenter software
High availability policy
DRS policy
Distributed power
management (DPM) policy
Add hosts to cluster
Create data stores
Create networks
39
Enabling services
After completing the initial configurations, use the following high-level workflow to enable services.
Stage
Workflow action
Description
Vblock System discov ery
Gather data f or Vblock Sy stem dev ices, interconnectiv ity, and

external networks, and populate data in UIM database.
Serv ice planning
Collect serv ice resource requirements, including:
The number of servers and serv er attributes
Amount of boot and data storage and storage attributes
Networks to be used for connectivity between the service

resources and external networks
vCenter Server and ESXi cluster information
Serv ice prov isioning
Reserv e resources based on the serv er and storage

requirements def ined f or the serv ice during serv ice planning.
Install ESXi on the serv ers. Conf igure connectiv ity between the
cluster and external networks.
Serv ice activ ation
Turn on the sy stem, start up Cisco UCS serv ice prof iles, activ ate
network paths, and make resources av ailable f or use. The
workf low separates prov isioning and activ ation, to allow
activ ation of the serv ice as needed.
vCenter sy nchronization
Sy nchronize the ES Xi clusters with the vCenter Serv er. Once

y ou prov ision and activ ate a serv ice, the sy nchronizing process
includes adding the ES Xi cluster to the vCenter serv er data store
and registering the cluster hosts prov isioned with v Center
Serv er.
vCloud sy nchronization
Discov er vCloud and build a connection to the v Center serv ers.

The clusters created in v Center Serv er are pushed to the
appropri ate vCloud. UIM/P integrates with vCloud Director in the
same way it integrates with v Center Serv er.
40
Figure 13 describes the provisioning, activation, and synchronization process, including key sub-steps
during the provisioning process.
Figur e 13. Provisioning, activation, and synchronization process flow
Creating a service offering

To create a service offering:
1. Select the operating system.
2. Define server characteristics.
3. Define storage characteristics for startup.
4. Define storage characteristics for application data.
5. Create network profile.
Pr ovisioning a service
To provision a service:
1. Select the service offering.
2. Select Vblock System.
3. Select servers.
4. Configure IP and provide DNS hostname for operating system installation.
5. Select storage.
6. Select and configure network profile and vNICs.
7. Configure vCenter cluster settings.
8. Configure vCloud Director settings.
41
Design considerations for compute

Within the computing infrastructure of Vblock Systems, multi-tenancy concerns can be managed at
multiple levels, from the central processing unit (CPU), through the Cisco Unified Computing System
(UCS) server infrastructure, and within the VMware solution elements.
This section describes the design of and rationale behind the trusted multi-tenancy framework. The
design includes many issues that must be addressed prior to deployment, as no two environments are
alike. Design considerations are provided for the components listed in the following table.
Component
Version
Description
Cisco UCS
2.0
Core component of the Vblock System that prov ides compute

resources in the cloud. It helps achiev e secure separation,
serv ice assurance, security , av ailability , and serv ice prov ider
management in the trusted multi-tenancy f ramework.
VMware v Sphere
5.0
Foundation of underly ing cloud inf rastructure and components.

Includes:
VMware v Cloud Director
VMware v Shield
VMware v Center
Chargeback
1.5
5.0
1.6.2
VMware ES Xi hosts
VMware v Center Serv er
Resource pools
VMware High Av ailability and Distributed Resource
Scheduler
VMware v Motion
Builds on VMwar e v Sphere to prov ide a complete multi-tenant

inf rastructure. It deliv ers on-demand cloud inf rastructure so
users can consume v irtual resources with maximum agility. It
consolidates data centers and deploys workloads on shared
inf rastructure with built-in security and role-based access
control. Includes:
VMware v Cloud Director Serv er (two instances, each

installed on a Red Hat Linux virtual machine and ref erred to
as a cell)
VMware v Cloud Director Database (one instance per

clustered set of VMware vCloud Director cells)
Prov ides network security serv ices, including NAT and f irewall.
Includes:
v Shield Edge (deployed automatically on hosts as v irtual

appliances by VMware v Cloud Director to separate tenants)
v Shield App (deployed on ESXi host layer to zone and

secure v irtual machine traffic)
v Shield Manager (one instance per vCenter Server in the

cloud resource groups to manage vShield Edge and v Shield
App)
Prov ides resource metering and chargeback models. Includes:
VMware v Center Chargeback Serv er
VMware Chargeback Data Collector

VMware v Cloud Data Collector
VMware v Shield Manager Data Collector
42
Design considerations for secure separation

This section discusse s using the following technologies to achieve secure separation at the compute
layer:
Cisco UCS
VMware vCloud Director
Cisco UCS
The UCS blade servers contain a pair of Cisco Virtual Interface Card (VIC) Ethernet uplinks. Cisco
VIC presents virtual interfaces (UCS vNIC) to the VMware ESXi host, which allow for further traffic
segmentation and categorization across all traffic types based on vNIC network policies.
Using port aggregation between the fabric interconnect vNIC pairs enhances the availability and
capacity of each traffic category. All inbound traffic is stripped of its VLAN header and switched to the
appropriate destinations virtual Ethernet interface. In addition, the Cisco VIC allows for the creation of
multiple virtual host bus adapters (vHBA), permitting FC-enabled startup across the same physical
infrastructure.
Each VMware virtual interface type, VMkernel, and individual virtual machine interface connects
directly to the Cisco Nexus 1000V software distributed virtual switch. At this layer, packets are tagged
with the appropriate VLAN header and all outbound traffic is aggregated to the two Cisco fabric
interconnects.
This section contains information about the high-level UCS features that help achieve secure
separation in the trusted multi-tenancy framework:
UCS service profiles
UCS organizations
VLAN considerations
VSAN considerations
UCS serv ice profiles

Use UCS service profiles to ensure secure separation at the compute layer. Hardware can be
presented in a stateless manner that is completely transparent to the operating system and the
applications that run on it. A service profile creates a hardware overlay that contains specific
information sensitive to the operating system:
MAC addresses
WWN values
UUID
BIOS
Firmware versions
43
In a multi-tenant environment, the service provider can define a service profile giving access to any
server in a predefined server resource with specific processor, memory, or other administrator-defined
characteristics. The service provider can then provision one or more servers through service profiles,
which can be used for an organization or a tenant. Service profiles are particularly useful when
deployed with UCS Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), which provides granular administrative
access control to UCS system resources based on administrative roles in a service provider
environment.
Servers instantiated by service profiles start up from a LUN that is tied to the specified WWPN,
allowing an installed operating system instance to be locked with the service profile. The
independence from server hardware allows installed systems to be re-deployed between blades.
Through the use of pools and templates, UCS hardware can be quickly deployed and scaled.
The trusted multi-tenancy framework uses three distinct server roles to segregate and classify UCS
blade servers. This helps identify and associate specific service profiles depending on their purpose
and policy. The following table describes these roles.
Role
Description
Mana gement
These serv ers can be associated with a serv ice prof ile that is meant only for cloud
management or any type of serv ice prov ider inf rastructure workload.
Dedicated
These serv ers can be associated with diff erent serv ice prof iles, serv er pools, and
roles with VLAN policy ; f or example, for a specific tenant VLAN allowed access to
those serv ers that are meant only for specif ic tenants.
The trusted multi-tenancy f ramework considers a f ew tenants who strongly want to
hav e a dedicated UCS cluster to f urther segregate workloads in the v irtualization
lay er as needed. It also considers tenants who want dedicated workload throu ghput
f rom the underly ing compute inf rastructure, which maps to the VMwar e Distributed
Resource Scheduler cluster.
Mixed
These serv ers can be associated with a diff erent serv ice prof ile meant for shared
resource clusters f or the VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler cluster.
Depending on tenant requi rements, UCS can be designed to use a dedicated
compute resource or a shared resource. The trusted multi-tenancy framework uses
mixed serv ers f or shared resource clusters as an example.
These servers can be spread across the UCS fabric to minimize the impact of a single point of failure
or a single chassis failure.
44
Figure 14 shows an example of how the three servers are designed in the trusted multi-tenancy
framework.
Figur e 14. Trusted multi-tenancy fra mewo rk server design
45
Figure 15 shows an example of three tenants (Orange, Vanilla, and Grape) using three service
profiles on three different physical blades to ensure secure separation at the blade level.
Figur e 15. Secure separation at the blade level
46
UCS or ganizations
The Cisco UCS organizations feature helps with multi-tenancy by logically segmenting physical
sy stem resources. Organizations are logically isolated in the UCS fabric. UCS hardware and policies
can be assigned to different organizations so that the appropriate tenant or organizational unit can
access the assigned compute resources. A rich set of policies in UCS can be applied per organization
to ensure that the right sets of attributes and I/O policies are assigned to the correct organization.
Each organization can have its own pool of resources, including the following:
Resource pools (server, MAC, UUID, WWPN, and so forth)
Policies
Service profiles
Service profile templates
UCS organizations are hierarchical. Root is the top-level organization. System-wide policies and pools
in root are available to all organizations in the system. Any policies and pools created in other
organizations are available only to organizations below it in the same hierarchy.
The functional isolation provided by UCS is helpful for a multi-tenant environment. Use the UCS
features of RBAC and locales (a UCS feature to isolate tenant compute resources) on top of
organizations to assign or restrict user privileges and roles by organization.
Figure 16 shows the hierarchical organization of UCS clusters starting from Root. It shows three types
of cluster configurations (Management, Dedicated, and Mixed). Below that are the three tenants
(Orange, Vanilla, and Grape) with their service levels (Gold, Silver, and Bronze).
Figur e 16. UCS cluster hierarchical organi zation
47
UCS allows the creation of resource pools to ensure secure separation between tenants. Use the
following:
LAN resources
IP pool
MAC pool
VLAN pool
Management resources
KVM addresse s pool
VLAN pool
SAN resources
WWN addresses pool
VSANs
Identity resources
UUID pool
Compute resources
Server pools
Figure 17 illustrates how creating separate resource pools for the three tenants helps with secure
separation at the compute layer.
Figur e 17. Resource pools
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Figure 18 is an example of a UCS Service Profile workflow diagram for three tenants.
Figur e 18. UCS service profile workflow
VLAN considerations
In Cisco UCS, a named VLAN creates a connection to a specific management LAN and tenantspecific VLANs. The VLAN isolates traffic, including broadcast traffic, to that external LAN. The name
assigned to a VLAN ID adds a layer of abstraction that you can use to globally update all servers
associated with service profiles using the named VLAN. You do not need to reconfigure servers
individually to maintain communication with the external LAN. For example, if a service provider
wanted to isolate a group of compute clusters for a specific tenant, the specific tenant VLAN needs to
be allowed in the service profile of that tenant. This provides another layer of abstraction in secure
separation.
49
To illustrate, if Tenant Orange has dedicated UCS blades, it is recommended to allow only Tenant
Orange-specific VLANs to ensure that only Tenant Orange has access to those blades. Figure 19
shows a dedicated service profile for Tenant Orange that uses a vNIC template as Orange. Tenant
Orange VLANs are allowed to use that specific vNIC template. However, a global vNIC template can
still be used for all blades, providing the ability to allow or disallow specific VLANs from updating
service profile templates.
Figur e 19. Dedicated service profile for Tenant Orang e
VSAN considerati ons in UCS

A named VSAN creates a connection to a specific external SAN. The VSAN isolates traffic, including
broadcast traffic, to that external SAN. The traffic on one named VSAN knows that the traffic on
another named VSAN exists, but it cannot read or access that traffic.
The name assigned to a VSAN ID adds a layer of abstraction that allows you to globally update all
servers associated with service profiles that use the named VSAN. You do not need to individually
reconfigure servers to maintain communication with the external SAN. You can create more than one
named VSAN with the same VSAN ID.
In a cluster configuration, a named VSAN is configured to be accessible to only the FC uplinks on
both fabric interconnects.
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Figure 20 shows that VSAN 10 and VSAN 11 are configured in UCS SAN Cloud and uplinked to an
FC port.
Figur e 20. VSAN configuratio n in UCS
Figure 21 shows how an FC port is assigned to a VSAN ID in UCS. In this case, uplink FC Port 1 is
assigned to VSAN10.
Figur e 21. Assigning a VSAN to FC ports
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VMware vCloud Director introduces logical constructs to facilitate multi-tenancy and provide
interoperability between vCloud instances built to the vCloud API standard.
VMware vCloud Director helps administer tenantssuch as a business unit, organization, or
divisionby policy. In the trusted multi-tenancy framework, each organization has isolated virtual
resources, independent LDAP-based authentication, specific policy controls, and unique catalogs. To
ensure secure separation in a trusted multi-tenancy environment where multiple organizations share
Vblock System resources, the framework includes VMware vCloud Director along with VMware
vShield perimeter protection, port-level firewall, and NAT and DHCP services.
Figure 22 shows a logical separation of organizations in VMware vCloud Director.
Figur e 22. Organi zation separation
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A service provider may want to view all the listed tenants or organizations in vCloud Director to easily
manage them. Figure 23 shows the service providers tenant view in VMware vCloud Director.
Figur e 23. Tenant view in vCloud Di rector
Organizations are the unit of multi-tenancy within vCloud Director. They represent a single logical
security boundary. Each organization contains a collection of users, computing resources, catalogs,
and vApp workloads. Organization users can be local users or imported from an LDAP server. LDAP
integration can be specific to an organization, or it can leverage an organizational unit within the
sy stem LDAP configuration, as defined by the vCloud system administrator. The name of the
organization, specified during creation time, maps to a unique URL that allows access to the GUI for
that organization. For example, Figure 24 shows that Tenant Orange maps to a specific default
organization URL. Each tenant accesses the resource using its own URL and authentication.
Figur e 24. Organi zation uniqu e identifier URL
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The vCloud Director network provides an extra layer of separation. vCloud Director has three different
types of networking, each with a specific purpose:
External network
Organization network
vApp network
External netw ork

The external network is the connection to the outside world. An external network always needs a port
group, meaning that a port group needs to be available within VMware vSphere and the distributed
switch.
Tenants commonly require direct connections from inside the vCloud environment into the service
provider networking backbone. This is analogous to extending a wire from the network switch
containing the network or VLAN to be used, all the way through the vCloud layers into the vApp. Each
organization in the trusted multi-tenancy environment has an internal organization network and a
direct connect external organization network.
Organization netw ork
An organization network provides network connectivity to vApp workloads within an organization.
Users in an organization have no visibility into external networks and connect to outside networks
through external organization networks. This is analogous to users in an organization connecting to a
corporate network that is uplinked to a service provider for Internet access.
The following table lists connectivity options for organization networks.
Network type
Connectivity
External organi zation
Direct connection
External organi zation
NAT/routed
Internal organi zation
Isolated
A directly connected external organization network places the vApp virtual machines in the port group
of the external network. IP address assignments for vApps follow the external network IP addressing.
Internal and routed external organization networks are instantiated through network pools by vCloud
sy stem administrators. Organization administrators do not have the ability to provision organization
networks but can configure network services such as firewall, NAT, DHCP, VPN, and static routing.
Note: Organization network is meant only for the intra-organization network and is specific to an organization.
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Figure 25 shows an example of an internal and external network configuration.
Figur e 25. Internal and external organi zation networks
Service providers provision organization networks using network pools. Figure 26 shows the service
providers administrator view of the organization networks.
Figur e 26. Ad ministrator view of organization networks
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v App netw ork

A vApp network is similar to an organization network. It is meant for a vApp internal network. It acts as
a boundary for isolating specific virtual machines within a vApp. A vApp network is an isolated
segment created for a particular application stack within an organizations network to enable multi-tier
applications to communicate with each other and, at the same time, isolate the intra-vApp traffic from
other applications within the organization. The resources to create the isolation are managed by the
organization administrator and allocated from a pool provided by the vCloud administrator.
Figure 27 shows a vApp configuration for Tenant Grape.
Figur e 27. Micro-seg mentation of virtual workloads
Netw ork pools

All three network classe s can be backed using the virtual network features of the Nexus 1000V. It is
important to understand the relationship between the virtual networking features of the Nexus 1000V
and the classes of networks defined and implemented in a vCloud Director environment. Typically, a
network class (specifically, an organization and vApp) is described as being backed by an allocation of
isolated networks. For an organization administrator to create an isolated vApp network, the
administrator must have a free isolation resource to consume and use in order to provide that isolated
network for the vApp.
56
To deploy an organization or vApp network, you need a network pool in vCloud Director. Network
pools contain network definitions used to instantiate private/routed organization and vApp networks.
Networks created from network pools are isolated at Layer 2. You can create three types of network
pools in vCloud Director, as shown in the following table.
Network Pool Type
Description
v Sphere port group backed
Network pools are backed by pre-prov isioned port groups in Cisco Nexus
1000V or V Mware distributed switch.
VLAN backed
A range of pre-prov isioned VLAN IDs back network pools. This assumes
all VLANs specif ied are trunked.
vCloud Director network

isolation backed
Network pools are backed by v Cloud isolated networks, which are an

ov erlay network uniquely identif ied by a f ence ID implemented through
encapsulation techniques that span hosts and prov ide traffic isolation f rom
other networks. It requires a distributed switch. vCloud Director creates
port groups automatically on distributed switches as needed.
Figure 28 shows how network pool types are presented in VMware vCloud Director.
Figur e 28. Network pools
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Each pool has specific requirements, limitations, and recommendations. The trusted multi-tenancy
framework use s a port group backed network pool with a Cisco Nexus 1000V Distributed switch. Each
port group is isolated to its own VLAN ID. Each tenant (network, in this case) is associated with its
own network pool, each backed by a set of port groups.
VMware vCloud Director automatically deploys vShield Edge devices to facilitate routed network
connections. vShield Edge uses MAC encapsulation for NAT routing, which helps prevent Layer 2
network information from being seen by other organizations in the environment. vShield Edge also
provides a firewall service that can be configured to block inbound traffic to virtual machines
connected to a public access organization network.
Design considerations for service assurance

This section discusse s using the following technologies to achieve service assurance at the compute
layer:
Cisco UCS
Cisco UCS
The following UCS features support service assurance:
Quality of service
Port channels
Server pools
Redundant UCS fabrics
Compute, storage, and network resources need to be categorized in order to provide a differential
service model for a multi-tenant environment. The following table shows an example of Gold, Silver,
and Bronze service levels for compute resources.
Level
Compute resource
Gold
UCS B440 blades
Silv er
UCS B200 and B440 blad es
Bronze
UCS B200 blades
System classes in the UCS specify the bandwidth allocated for traffic types across the entire system.
Each system class reserve s a specific segment of the bandwidth for a specific type of traffic. Using
quality of service policies, the UCS assigns a system class to the outgoing traffic and then matches a
quality of service policy to the class of service (CoS) value marked by the Nexus 1000V Series switch
for each virtual machine.
UCS quality of service configuration can help achieve service assurance for multiple tenants. A best
practice to ensure guaranteed quality of service throughout a multi-tenant environment is to configure
quality of service for different service levels on the UCS.
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Figure 29 shows different quality of service weight values configured for different class of service
values that correspond to Gold, Silver, and Bronze service levels. This helps ensure traffic priority for
tenants associated with those service levels.
Figur e 29. Quality of service configuration
Quality of service policies assign a system class to the outgoing traffic for a vNIC or vHBA. Therefore,
to configure the vNIC or vHBA, include a quality of service policy in a vNIC or vHBA policy and then
include that policy in a service profile. Figure 30 shows how to create quality of service policies.
Figur e 30. Creating qua lity of service policy
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VMware vCloud Director provides several allocation models to achieve service levels in the trusted
multi-tenancy framework. An organization virtual data center allocates resources from a provider
virtual data center and makes them available for use by a given organization. Multiple organization
virtual data centers can take from the same provider virtual data center. One organization can have
multiple organization virtual data centers.
Resources are taken from a provider virtual data center and allocated to an organization virtual data
center using one of three resource allocation models, as shown in the following table.
Model
Description
Pay as y ou go
Resources are reserv ed and committed for v Apps only as v Apps are created.
There is no upf ront reserv ation of resources.
Allocation
A baseline amount (guara ntee) of resources f rom the prov ider v irtual data
center is reserv ed f or the organization v irtual data centers exclusiv e use. An
additional percentag e of resources are av ailable to ov ersubscribe CPU and
memory, but this taps into compute resources that are shared by other
organi zation v irtual data centers drawing f rom the prov ider v irtual data center.
Reserv ation
All resources assigned to the organization v irtual data center are reserv ed
exclusiv ely f or the organization v irtual data centers use.
With all the above models, the organization can be set to deploy an unlimited or limited number of
virtual machines. In selecting the appropriate allocation model, consider the service definition and
organizations use case workloads.
Although all tenants use the shared infrastructure, the resources for each tenant are guaranteed
based on the allocation model in place. The service provider can set the parameters for CPU,
memory, storage, and network for each tenants organization virtual data center, as shown in Figure
31, Figure 32, and Figure 33.
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Figur e 31. Organi zation virtual data center allocation configuration
Figur e 32. Organi zation virtual data center storage allocation
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Figur e 33. Organi zation virtual data center network pool allocation
Design considerations for security and compliance

This section discusse s using the following technologies to achieve security and compliance at the
compute layer:
Cisco UCS
VMware vCenter Server
Cisco UCS
The UCS Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) feature helps ensure security by providing granular
administrative access control to the UCS system resources based on administrative roles, tenant
organization, and locale.
The RBAC function of the Cisco UCS allows you to control service provider user access to the actions
and resources in the UCS. RBAC is a security mechanism that can greatly lower the cost and
complexity of Vblock System security administration. RBAC simplifies security administration by using
roles, hierarchies, and constraints to organize privileges. Cisco UCS Manager offers flexible RBAC to
define the roles and privileges for different administrators within the Cisco UCS environment.
The UCS RBAC allows access to be controlled based on the roles assigned to individuals. The
following table lists the elements of the UCS RBAC model.
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Element
Description
Role
A job f unction within the context of locale, along with the authority and
responsibility giv en to the user assigned to the role
User
A person using the UCS; users are assigned to one or more roles
Action
Any task a user can perf orm in the UCS that is subject to access control; an
action is perf ormed on a resource
Priv ilege
Permission granted or denied to a role to perf orm an action
Locale
A logical object created to manage organizations and determin e which users

hav e priv ileges to use the resources in organizatio ns
The UCS RBAC feature can help service providers segregate roles to manage multiple tenants. One
example is using UCS RBAC with LDAP integration to ensure all roles are defined and have specific
accesse s as per their roles. A service provider can leverage this feature in a multi-tenant environment
to ensure a high level of centralized security control. LDAP groups can be created for different
administration roles, such as network, storage, server profiles, security, and operations. This helps
providers keep security and compliance in place by having designated roles to configure different
parts of the Vblock System.
Figure 34 shows an LDAP group mapped to a specific role in a UCS. An Active Directory group called
ucsnetw ork is mapped to a predefined network role in UCS. This means that anyone belonging to
the ucsnetw ork group in Active Directory can perform a network task in UCS; other features are
shown as read-only.
Figur e 34. LDAP gro up ma pping in UCS
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Figure 35 illustrates how UCS groups provide hierarchy. It shows how group ucsnetw ork is laid out in
an Active Directory domain.
Figur e 35. Active Directory groups for UCS LDAP
Additional UCS security control features include the following:
Administrative access to the Cisco UCS is authenticated by using either:

- A remote protocol such as LDAP, RADIUS, or TACACS+
- A combination of local database and remote protocols
HTTPS provides authenticated and encrypted access to the Cisco UCS Manager GUI. HTTPS
uses components of the Public Key Infrastructure (PKI), such as digital certificates, to establish
secure communications between the clients browser and Cisco UCS Manager.
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Role-based and centralized user authentication through multi-party Active Directory/LDAP integration
is the best way to manage the cloud. In VMware vCloud Director, each organization represents a
collection of end users, groups, and computing resources. Users authenticate at the organization
level, using credentials validated through LDAP. Set this up based on the cloud organizations
requirements.
For example, Service ProviderVCE can have its own Active Directory infrastructure for user and
groups to authenticate to the vCloud environment. Tenant Orange can have its own Active Directory
to manage authentication to the vCloud environment. Having each organization with their own Active
Directory improves security by providing ease of integration with organization identity and access
management processe s and controls, and it ensures that only authorized users have access to the
tenant cloud infrastructure. Figure 36 and Figure 37 show both the service provider and organization
LDAP integration and the difference in LDAP server settings.
Figur e 36. Service provider LDA P integration
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Figur e 37. Organi zation LDAP integration
Each tenant has its own user and group management and provides role-based security access, as
shown in Figure 38. The users are shown only the vApps that they can access. vApps that users do
not have access to are not visible, even if they reside within the same organization.
Figur e 38. User role ma nage ment
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VMw are vCenter Server

VMware vCenter Server is installed using a local administrator account. When vCenter Server is
joined to a domain, it results in any domain administrator gaining administrative privileges to vCenter.
To remove this potential security risk, it is recommended to always create a vCenter Administrator
group in an Active Directory and assign it to the vCenter Server Administrator role, making it possible
to remove the local administrators group from this role.
Note: Ref er to the vSphere Security Hardening Guide at www.vmware.com for more inf ormation.
In Figure 39, in the trusted multi-tenancy framework there is a VMw are Admins group created in an
Active Directory. This group has access to the trusted multi-tenancy vCenter data center. A user
member of this group can perform the administration of vCenter.
Figur e 39. vCenter ad ministration
Design considerations for availability and data protection

Availability and Disaster Recovery (DR) focuses on the recovery of systems and infrastructure after an
incident interrupts normal operations. A disaster can be defined as partial or complete unavailability of
resources and services, including applications, the virtualization layer, the cloud layer, or the
workloads running in the resource groups.
Good practices at the infrastructure level will lead to easier disaster recovery of the cloud
management cluster. This includes technologies such as high availability, DRS, and vMotion for
reactive and proactive protection of your infrastructure.
This section discusse s using the following technologies to achieve availability and data protection at
the compute layer:
Cisco UCS
Virtualization
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Cisco UCS
Fabric interconnect clustering allows each fabric interconnect to continuously monitor the others
status. If one fabric interconnect becomes unavailable, the other takes over automatically.
Figure 40 shows how Cisco UCS is deployed as a high availability cluster for management layer
redundancy. It is configured as two Cisco UCS 6100 Series fabric interconnects directly connected
with Ethernet cables between the L1 (L1-to-L1) and L2 (L2-to-L2) ports.
Figur e 40. Fabric interconnect clustering
Service profile dynamic mobility provides another layer of protection. When a physical blade server
fails, it automatically transfers the service profile to an available server in the pool.
Virtual por t channel in UCS
With virtual port channel uplinks, there is minimal impact of both physical link failures and upstream
switch failures. With more physical member links in one larger logical uplink, there is the potential for
even better overall uplink load balancing and better high availability.
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Figure 41 shows how port channel 101 and 102 are configured with four uplink members.
Figur e 41. Virtual port channel in UCS
Virtualization
Enable overall cloud availability design for tenants using the following features:
VMware vSphere HA
VMware vCenter Heartbeat
VMware vMotion
VMware vCloud Director cells
VMw are v Sphere High Av ailability

VMware High Availability clusters enable a collection of VMware ESXi hosts to work together to
provide, as a group, higher levels of availability for virtual machines than each ESXi host could provide
individually. When planning the creation and use of a new VMware High Availability cluster, the
options you select affect how that cluster responds to failures of hosts or virtual machines.
VMware High Availability provides high availability for virtual machines by pooling the machines and
the hosts on which they reside into a cluster. Hosts in the cluster are monitored and in the event of a
failure, the virtual machines on the failed host are restarted on alternate hosts.
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In the trusted multi-tenancy framework, all VMware High Availability clusters are deployed with
identical server hardware. Using identical hardware provides a number of key advantages, including
the following:
Simplified configuration and management of the servers using host profiles
Increased ability to handle server failures and reduced resource fragmentation
VMw are v Motion

VMware vMotion enables the live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to
another with zero downtime, continuous service availability, and complete transaction integrity. Use
VMware vMotion to:
Perform hardware maintenance without scheduled downtime
Proactively migrate virtual machines away from failing or underperforming servers
Automatically optimize and allocate entire pools of resources for optimal hardware utilization and
alignment with business priorities
VMw are v Center Heartbeat

Use VMware vCenter Heartbeat to protect vCenter Server in order to provide an additional layer of
resiliency. The vCenter Heartbeat server works by replicating all vCenter configuration and data to a
secondary passive server using a dedicated network channel. The secondary server is up all the time,
with the live configuration of the active server, but an IP packet filter masks it from the active network.
Figure 42 shows a scenario when the complete hardware goes down, the operating system crashes,
or the active vCenter link is down.
Figur e 42. vCenter Hea rtbeat scenario
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VMw are v Cloud Director cells

VMware vCloud Director cells are stateless front-end processors for the vCloud. Each cell has a
variety of purposes and self-manages various functions among cells while connecting to a central
database. The cell manages connectivity to the cloud and provides both API and GUI endpoints/clients.
Figure 43 shows the trusted multi-tenancy framework using multiple cells (a load-balanced group) to
address availability and scale. This is typically achieved by load balancing or content switching this
front-end layer. Load balancers present a consistent address for services regardless of the underlying
node responding. They can spread session load across cells, monitor cell health, and add or remove
cells from the active service pool.
Figur e 43. vCloud Di rector multi-cell
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Single point of failure

To ensure successful implementation of availability, which is a crucial part of the trusted multi-tenancy
design, carefully consider each component listed in the following table.
Component
Availability options
ES Xi hosts
Conf igure all VMwar e ES Xi hosts in highly av ailable clusters with a

minimum of n+1 redundancy . This prov ides protection not only f or the
v irtual machines, but also f or the v irtual machines hosting the platf orm
portal/management applications and all of the v Shield Edge appliances.
ES Xi host network connectiv ity
Conf igure the ESXi host with a minimum of two phy sical paths to each
required net work (port group) to ensure that a single link f ailure does
not impact platf orm or v irtual machine connectivity. This should include
management and v Motion networks. The Load Based Teaming
mechanism is used to av oid ov ersubscribed network links.
ES Xi host storage connectiv ity
Conf igure ESXi hosts with a minimum of two phy sical paths to each
LUN or NFS share to ensure that a single storage path f ailure does not
impact serv ice.
vCenter Serv er
Run v Center Serv er as a virtual machine and make use of v Center

Serv er Heartbeat.
vCenter database
vCenter Heartbeat prov ides v Center database resiliency.
v Shield Manager
v Shield Manager receiv es the additional protection of VMware FT,

resulting in seamless f ailov er between hosts in the ev ent of a host
f ailure
vCenter Chargeback
Deploy vCenter Chargeback v irtual machines as a two-node, loadbalanced cluster. Deploy multiple Chargeback data collectors remotely
to av oid a single point of failure.
vCloud Director
Deploy the v Cloud Director virtual machines as a load-balanced, highly

av ailable clustered pair in an N+1 redundancy setup, with the option to
scale out when the env ironment requires this.
VMw are Site Recov ery Manager

In addition to other components, you can use VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) for disaster
recovery and availability. Site Recovery Manager accelerates recovery by automating the recovery
process, and it simplifies the management of disaster recovery plans by making disaster recovery an
integrated element of the management of your VMware virtual infrastructure. VMware Site Recovery
Manager is fully supported on the Vblock System; however, it is not supported with VMware vCloud
Director and is not within the scope of this design guide.
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Design considerations for tenant management and control

This section discusse s using VMware vCloud Director to achieve tenant management and control at
the compute layer.

VMware vCloud Director provides an intuitive Web portal (vCloud Self Service Portal) that
organization users u se to manage their compute, storage, and network resources. In general, a
dedicated group of users in a tenant manages the organization resources, such as creating or
assigning networks and catalogs and allocating memory, CPU, or storage resources to an
organization.
In Figure 44, the tenants can create the vApps or deploy them from templates. Tenants can create the
vApp network as needed from the network pool; use the browser plug-in to upload media and access
the console of the virtual machines in the vApp; and start and stop the virtual machines as needed.
For example, when Tenant Orange wants to access its virtual environment, it needs to point to the
URL https://vcd1.pluto.vcelab.net/cloud/org/orange.
Figur e 44. vApp ad ministration
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Te nant in-control configuration

The tenants can manage users and groups, policies, and the catalogs for their environment, as shown
in Figure 45.
Figur e 45. Environ ment ad mi nistration
Design considerations for service provider management and control

This section discusse s using virtualization technologies to achieve service provider management and
control at the compute layer.
Virtualization
A service provider will have access to the entire VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud environment
to flexibly manage and monitor the environment. A service provider can access and manage the
following:
vCenter with a virtual infrastructure (VI) client
Cisco UCS
vCloud with a Web browser pointing to the vCloud Director cell address
vShield Manager with a Web browser pointing to the IP or hostname
vCenter Chargeback with a Web browser pointing to the IP or hostname
Cisco Nexus 1000V with SSH to Virtual Supervisor Module
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For example, in vCloud Director, the service provider is in complete control of the physical
infrastructure. The service provider can:
Enable or disable ESXi hosts and data stores for cloud usage
Create and remove the external networks that are needed for communicating with the Internet,
backup networks, IP-based storage networks, VPNs, and MPLS networks, as well as the
organization networks and network pools
Create and remove the organization, administration users, provider virtual data center, and
organization virtual data centers
Determine which organization can share the catalog with others
Figure 46 shows how a service provider views the complete physical infrastructure in vCloud Director.
Figur e 46. Service provider view
VMw are v Center Chargeback

VMware vCenter Chargeback is an end-to-end metering and cost reporting solution for virtual
environments using VMware vSphere. It has the following core components:
Data Collectors:
- Chargeback Data Collectorresponsible for vCenter Server data collection
- vCloud Director (vCD) and vShield Manager (vSM) data collectors responsible for
utilization/allocation collection on the new abstraction layer created by vCloud Director
Load Balancer (embedded in vCenter Chargeback) receives and routes all user requests to
the application; needs to be installed only once for the Chargeback cluster
Chargeback Server and chargeback database
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Figure 47 shows a Vblock System chargeback deployment architecture model.
Figur e 47. Vblock System chargeback deploy ment architecture
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Key Vbl ock System metrics

When determining a metering methodology for trusted multi-tenancy, consider the following:
What metrics (units, components, or attributes) will be monitored?
How will the metrics be obtained?
What sampling frequency will be used for each metric?
How will the metrics be aggregated and correlated to formulate meaningful business value?
Within a Vblock System virtualized computing environment, the infrastructure chargeback details can
be modeled as fully loaded measurements per virtual machine. The virtual machine essentially
becomes the point resource allocated back to users/customers. Below are the some of the key
metrics to collect when measuring virtual machine resource utilization:
Resource
Chargeback metrics
Unit of measurement
CPU
CPU usage
GHz
Virtual CPU (v CPU)
Count
Memory usage
GB
Memory size
GB
Network
Network receiv ed/transmitted usage
GB
Disk
Storage usage
GB
Disk read/write usage
GB
Memory
For more information, see Guidelines for Metering and Chargeback Using VMware vCenter
Chargeback on www.vce.com.
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Design considerations for storage

Multi-tenancy features can be combined with standard security methods, such as storage area
network (SAN) zoning and Ethernet VLANs, to segregate, control, and manage storage resources
among the infrastructures tenants. Multi-tenancy offerings include data-at-rest encryption; secure
transmission of data; and bandwidth, cache, CPU, and disk drive isolation.
This section describes the design of and rationale behind storage technologies in the trusted multitenancy framework. The design includes many issues that must be addressed prior to deployment.

The fundamental principle that makes multi-tenancy secure is that no tenant can access anothers
data. Secure separation is essential to reaching this goal. At the storage layer, secure separation can
be divided into the following basic requirements:
Segmentation of path by VSAN and zoning
Separation of data at rest
Address space separation
Separation of data access
Segmentation by VSA N and zoning

To extend secure separation to the storage layer, consider the isolation mechanisms available in a
SAN environment.
Cisco MDS storage area networks (SAN) offer true segmentation mechanisms, similar to VLANs in
Ethernet. These mechanisms, called VSANs, work with fibre channel zones; however, VSANs do not
tie into the virtual host bus adapter (HBA) of a virtual machine. VSANs and zones associate to a host
rather than a virtual machine. All virtual machines running on a particular host belong to the same
VSAN or zone. Since it is not possible to extend SAN isolation to the virtual machine, VSANs or FC
zones are used to isolate hosts from each other in the SAN fabric.
To keep management overhead low, we do not recommend deploying a large number of VSANs.
Instead, the trusted multi-tenancy design leverages fibre channel soft zone configuration to isolate the
storage layer on a per-host basis. It combines this method with zoning through WWN/device alias for
administrative flexibility.
Fibre channel zones
SAN zoning can restrict visibility and connectivity between devices connected to a common fibre
channel SAN. It is a built-in security mechanism available in an FC switch that prevents traffic leaking
between zones.
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Design scenarios of VSAN and z oning

VSANs and zoning are two powerful tools within the Cisco MDS 9000 family of products that aid the
cloud administrator in building robust, secure, and manageable storage networking environments
while optimizing the use and cost of storage switching hardware. In general, VSANs are used to divide
a redundant physical SAN infrastructure into separate virtual SAN islands, each with its own set of
fibre channel fabric services. Having each VSAN support an independent set of fibre channel services
enables a VSAN-enabled infrastructure to house numerous applications without risk of fabric resource
or event conicts between the virtual environments. Once the physical fabric is divided, use zoning to
implement a security layout that is tuned to the needs of each application within each VSAN. Figure
48 illustrates the VSAN physical topology.
Figur e 48. VSAN physical topology
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VSANs are rst created as isolated fabrics within a common physical topology. Once VSANs are
created, apply individual unique zone sets as necessary within each VSAN. The following table
summarizes the primary differences between VSANs and zones.
Characteristic
VS ANs
Zoning
Maximum per switch/f abric
1024 per switch
1000+ zones per f abric (VSAN)
Membershi p criteria
Phy sical port
Phy sical port, WWN
Isolation enf orcement method
Hardwar e
Hardwar e
Fibre channel serv ice model
New set of serv ices per VSAN
Same set of serv ices for entire

f abric
Traff ic isolation method
Hardwar e-based taggin g
Implicit using hardware ACLs
Traff ic accounting
Y es per VSAN
No
Separate manage ability
Y es per VSAN (f uture)
No
Traff ic engineering
Y es per VSAN
No
Note: Note that UIM supports only one VSAN f or each fabric.
Separation of data at rest

Today, most deployments treat physical storage as a shared infrastructure. However, in multi-tenancy,
it is sometimes necessary to ensure that a specific dataset does not share spindles with any other
dataset. This separation could be required between tenants or even within a single tenants dataset.
Business reasons for this include competitive companies using the same shared service, and
governance/regulatory requirements.
EMC VNX provides flexible RAID and volume configurations that allow spindles to be dedicated to
LUNs or storage pools. VNX allows the creation of tenant-specific storage pools that can be used to
dedicate specified spindles to particular tenants.
Address space separation

In some situations, each tenant is completely unaware of the other tenants. However, without proper
mitigation there is the potential for address space overlap. Fibre channel World Wide Names (WWN)
and iSCSI device names are globally unique, with no possibility of contention in either area. IP
addresses, however, are not globally unique and may conflict.
To remedy this situation, the service provider can assign infrastructure-wide IP addresses within a
service offering. Each X-Blade or VNX storage processor supports one IP address space. However,
an X-Blade can support multiple logical IP interfaces and both storage processors and X-Blades
support VLAN tagging. VLAN tagging allows multiple networks to access resources without the risk of
traversing address spaces. In the event of an IP address conflict, the server log file reports any
duplicate address warnings. IP addressing conflicts can be addressed in higher layers of the stack.
This is most easily accomplished at the compute layer.
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Figure 49 is a graphical representation of how VMware vSphere can be used to separate each
tenants address space.
Figur e 49. Address space separation with VMware vSphere
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Virtual machine data store separation

VMware uses a cluster file system called a virtual machine file system (VMFS). An ESXi host
associates a VMFS volume, which is made up of a larger logical unit. Each virtual machine directory is
stored in the Virtual Machine Disk (VMDK) sub-directory in the VMFS volume. While a virtual machine
is in operation, the VMFS volume locks those files to prevent other ESXi servers from updating them.
One VMDK directory is associated with a single virtual machine; multiple virtual machines cannot
access the same VMDK directory.
We recommend implementing LUN masking (that is, storage groups) to assign storage to ESXi
servers. LUN masking is an authorization process that makes a LUN available only to specific hosts
on the EMC SAN as further protection against misbehaving servers corrupting disks belonging to
other servers. This complements the use of zoning on the MDS, effectively extending zoning from the
front-end port on the array to the device on which the physical disk resides.
Virtual data mov er on VNX
VNX provides a multinaming domain solution for a data mover in the UNIX environment by
implementing an NFS server per virtual data mover (VDM). A data mover hosting several VDMs can
serve UNIX clients that are members of different LDAP or NIS domains, assuming that each VDM
works for a unique naming domain. Several NFS servers are emulated on the data mover in order to
serve the file system resources of the data mover for different naming domains. Each NFS server is
assigned to one or more data mover network interfaces.
The VDMs loaded on a data mover use the network interfaces configured on the data mover. You
cannot duplicate an IP address for two VDM interfaces configured on the same data mover. Once a
VDM interface is assigned, you can manage NFS exports on a VDM. CIFS and NFS protocols can
share the same network interface; however, only one NFS endpoint and CIFS server is addressed
through a particular logical network interface.
The multinaming domain solution implements an NFS server per VDM-named NFS endpoint. The
VDM acts as a container that includes the file systems exported by the NFS endpoint and/or the CIFS
server. These VDM file systems are visible through a subset of data mover network interfaces
attached to the VDM. The same network interface can be shared by both CIFS and NFS protocols on
that VDM. The NFS endpoint and CIFS server are addressed through the network interfaces attached
to that particular VDM. This allows users to perform either of the following:
Move a VDM, along with its NFS and CIFS exports and configuration data (LDAP, net groups,
and so forth), to another data mover
Back up the VDM, along with its NFS and CIFS exports and configuration data
This feature supports at least 50 NFS VDMs per physical data mover and up to 25 LDAP domains.
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Figure 50 shows a physical data mover with VDM implementation.
Figur e 50. Physical data mover with VDM i mple mentation

Note: VDM f or NFS is available on VNX OE for File Version 7.0.50.2. Y ou cannot use Unisphere to configure
VDM f or NFS.
Refer to Configuring Virtual Data Movers on VNX for more information (Powerlink access required).
Separation of data access

Separation of data access ensures that a tenant cannot see or access any other tenants data. The
data access protocol in use determines how this is accomplished. Protocols for how tenant data traffic
flows inside EMC VNX are:
CIFS
NFS
iSCSI
Fibre Channel over Ethernet/Fibre Channel (FCoE/FC)
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Figure 51 displays the access protocols and the respective protocol stack that can be used to access
data residing on a unified system.
Figur e 51. Protocol stack
CIFS stack
The following table summarizes how tenant data traffic flows inside EMC VNX for the CIFS stack.
Secure separation is maintained at each layer throughout the CIFS stack.
CIFS stack component
Description
VLAN
The secure separation of data access starts at the bottom of the CIFS
stack on the IP network with the use of Virtual Local Area Networks
(VLAN) to separate indiv idual tenants.
IP Interf ace VLAN Tagged
The VLAN-tag ging model extends into the unif ied sy stem by VLAN
tagging the indiv idual IP interf aces so they understand and honor the
tags being used.
IP Packet Ref lection
IP packet ref lection guarantees that any traff ic sent from the storage
sy stem in response to a client request will go out ov er the same phy sical
connection and VLAN on which the request was receiv ed.
Virtual Data Mov er
The v irtual data mov er is a logical conf iguration container that wraps
around a CIFS f ile-sharing instance.
CIFS Serv er
The v irtual data mov er resides on the CIFS serv er.
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CIFS stack component
Description
CIFS Share
CIFS shares are built upon the CIFS serv ers.
ABE
At the top of the stack is a Windows f eature called Access Based

Enumeration (AB E). ABE shows a user only the f iles that he/she has
permission to access, thus extending the separation all the way to end
users if desired.
NFS stack
The following table summarizes how tenant data traffic flows inside EMC VNX for the NFS stack.
NFS stack component
Description
VLAN
The secure separation of data access starts at the bottom of the NFS
stack on the IP network, using VLANs to separate indiv idual tenants.
IP Interf ace VLAN tagged
The VLAN taggin g model extends into the unif ied system by VLAN
tags being used.
IP packet ref lection
IP packet ref lection guarantees that any traff ic sent from the storage
sy stem in response to a client request will go out ov er the same phy sical
connection and VLAN on which the request was receiv ed.
NFS export VLAN tagged
NFS exports can be associated with specif ic VLANs.
NFS export hiding
NFS export hiding tightly controls which users access the NFS exports. It
enhances standard NFS serv er behav ior by prev enting users f rom
seeing NFS exports f or which they do not hav e access-lev el permission.
It will appear to each tenant that they hav e their own indiv idual NFS
serv er.
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Figure 52 shows an NFS export and how a specific subnet has access to the NFS share.
Figur e 52. NFS export configuration
In this example, VLAN 112 and VLAN 111 subnet has access to the /nfs1 share. VNX also provides
granular access to the NFS share. An NFS export can be presented to a specific tenant subnet or
specific host or group of hosts in the network.
iSCSI stack
The following table summarizes how tenant data traffic flows inside EMC VNX for the iSCSI stack.
iSCSI stack component
Description
VLAN
The secure separation of data access starts at the bottom of the iSCSI
stack on the IP network with the use of VLAN to separate indiv idual
tenants.
IP Interf ace VLAN tagged
The VLAN-tag ging model extends into the unif ied sy stem by VLAN
tags being used.
iSCSI Portal
Target
LUN
Access then f lows through an iSCSI portal to a target dev ice, where it is
ultimately addressed to a LUN.
LUN Masking
LUN masking is a f eature f or block-based protocols that ensures that

LUNs are v iewed and accessed only by those SAN clients with the
appropri ate permissions.
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Support for VLAN tagging in iSCSI

VLAN is supported for iSCSI data ports and management ports on VNX storage systems. In addition
to better performance, ease of management, and cost benefits, VLANs provide security advantages
since devices configured with VLAN tags can see and communicate with each other only if they
belong to the same VLAN. Therefore, you can:
Set up multiple virtual ports on the VNX and segregate hosts into different VLANs based on your
security policy
Restrict sensitive data to one VLAN
VLANs make it more difficult to sniff traffic, as they require sniffing across multiple networks. This
provides extra security.
Figure 53 shows the iSCSI port properties for a port with VLANs enabled and two virtual ports
configured.
Figur e 53. iSCSI Port Properties with VLAN taggin g enabled
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Fibre Channel ov er Ethernet/fibre channel stack

The lower layers of the fibre channel stack look quite different because it is not an IP-based protocol.
The following table summarizes how tenant data traffic flows inside EMC VNX for the FCoE/FC stack.
FCoE/FC stack component
Description
FC Zone
FC zoning controls which FC/Fibre Channel ov er Ethernet (FCoE)

interf aces can communicate with each other within the f abric.
VSAN
Virtual Storage Area Networks can be used to f urther subdiv ide

indiv idual zones without the need f or phy sical separation.
Target
LUN
Access flows to a target dev ice, where it is ultimately addressed to a

LUN.
LUN Masking
LUN masking is a f eature f or block-based protocols that ensures that

LUNs are v iewed and accessed only by those SAN clients with the
appropri ate permissions.
Figure 54 and Figure 55 show how a 20 GB FC boot LUN and 2 TB LUN map to each host in VNX. It
ensures each LUN presented to the ESXi host is properly masked and granted access to the specific
LUN and spread out in different RAID groups.
Figur e 54. Boot LUN and host mapping
Figur e 55. Data LUN and host map ping
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Once you achieve secure separation of each tenants data and path to that data, the next priority is
predictable and reliable access that meets the tenants SLA. Furthermore, in a service provider
chargeback environment, it may be important that tenants do not receive more performance than they
paid for simply because there is no contention for shared storage resources.
Service assurance ensures that SLAs are met at appropriate levels through the dedication of runtime
resources and quality of service control.
Additionally, storage tiering with FAST lowers overall storage costs and simplifies management while
allowing different applications to meet different service-level requirements on distinct pools of storage
within the same storage infrastructure. FAST technology automates the dynamic allocation and
relocation of data across tiers for a given FAST policy, based on changing application performance
requirements. FAST helps maximize the benefits of preconfigured tiered storage by optimizing cost
and performance requirements to put the right data on the right tier at the right time.
Dedication of runtime r esources

Each VNX data mover has dedicated CPUs, memory, front-end, and back-end networks. A data
mover can be dedicated to a single tenant or shared among several tenants. To further ensure the
dedication of runtime resources, data movers can be clustered into active/standby groupings. From a
hardware perspective, dedicating pools, spindles, and network ports to a specific tenant or application
can further ensure adherence to SLAs.
Quality of service control

EMC has several software tools available that organize the dedication of runtime resources. At the
storage layer, the most powerful of these is Unisphere Quality of Service Manager (UQM), which
allows VNX resources to be managed based on service levels.
UQM utilizes policies to set performance goals for high-priority applications, set limits on lower-priority
applications, and schedules policies to run on predefined timetables. These policies direct the
management of any or all of the following performance aspects:
Response time
Bandwidth
Throughput
UQM provides a simple user interface for service providers to control policies. This control is invisible
to tenants and can ensure that the activity of one tenant does not impact that of another. For example,
if a tenant requests a dedicated disk, storage groups, and spindles for its storage resources, apply
these control policies to get optimum storage I/O performance.
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Figure 56 shows how you can create policies with a specific set of I/O class to ensure that SLAs are
maintained.
Figur e 56. EMC VNX Qo S configuration
EMC V NX FA ST V P
With standard storage tiering in a non-FAST VP enabled array, multiple storage tiers are typically
presented to the vCloud environment, and each offering is abstracted out into separate provider virtual
data centers (vDC). A provider may choose to provision an EFD [SSD/Flash] tier, an FC/SAS tier, and
a SATA/NL-SAS tier, and then abstract these into Gold, Silver, and Bronze provider virtual data
centers. The customer then chooses resources from these for use in their organizational virtual data
center.
This provisioning model is limited for a number of reasons, including the following:
VMware vCloud Director does not allow for a non-disruptive way to move virtual machines from
one provider virtual data center to another. This means the customer must provide for downtime
if the vApp needs to be moved to a more appropriate tier.
For workloads with a variable I/O personality, there is no mechanism to automatically migrate
those workloads to a more appropriate disk tier.
With the cost of enterprise flash drives (EFD) still significant, creating an entire tier of them can
be prohibitively expensive, especially with few workloads having an I/O pattern that takes full
advantage of this particular storage medium.
One way in which the standard storage tiering model can be beneficial is when multiple arrays are
used to provide different kinds of storage to support different I/O workloads.
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EMC FAS T VP storage tiering

There are ways to provide more flexibility and a more cost-effective platform when compared with a
standard tiering model. Instead of using a single disk type per provider virtual data center,
organizations can blend both the cost and performance characteristics of multiple disk types. The
following table shows examples of this approach.
Create a FAST VP pool
containing
As this type of tier
For
20% EFD and 80%

FC/SAS disks
Perf ormance tier
Customers who might need the perf ormance of

EFD at certain times, but do not want to pay f or
that perf ormance all the time
50% FC/SAS disks and

50% SA TA disks
Production tier
Most standard enterprise applications to take

adv antage of the standard FC/SAS perf ormance,
y et hav e the ability to de-stage cold data to SATA
disk to lower the ov erall cost of storage per GB
90% SA TA disks and 10%

FC/SAS disks
Archiv e tier
Storing mostly nearline data, with the FC/SAS

disks used f or those instances where the
customer needs to go to the archiv e to recov er
data, or f or customers who are dumping a
signif icant amount of data into the tier.
Tiering policies
EMC FAST VP offers a number of policy settings to determine how data is placed, how often it is
promoted, and how data movement is managed. In a VMware vCloud Director environment, the
following policy settings are recommended to best accommodate the types of I/O workloads
produced.
Policy
Default setting
Recommended setting
Data Relocation Schedule
Set to migrate data sev en day s a

week, betwee n 11pm and 6am,
ref lecting the standard business
day .
In a v Cloud Director env ironment,

open up the Data Relocation windo w
to run 24 hours a day.
Set to use a Data Relocation Rate

of Medium, which can relocate
300-400 G B of data per hour.
FAST VP-e nable d
LUNs/Pools
Set to use the Auto- Tier,

spreading data ev enly across all
tiers of disks.
Reduce the Data Relocation Rate to

Low. This allows f or constant
promotion and demotion of data, yet
limits the impact on host I/O.
In a v Cloud Director env ironment,
wher e customers are generally pay ing
f or the lower tier of storage but
lev eraging the ability to promote
workloads to higher- perf orming disk
when ne eded, the recommendation is
to use the Lowest Available Tier
policy . This places all data onto the
lower tier of disk initially , keeping the
higher tier of disk f ree f or data that
needs it.
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EMC FA ST Cache
In a VMware vCloud Director environment, VCE recommends a minimum of 100 GB of EMC FAST
Cache, with the amount of FAST Cache increasing as the number of virtual machines increases.
The combination of FAST VP and FAST Cache allows the vCloud environment to scale better,
support more virtual machines and a wider variety of service offerings, and protect against I/O spikes
and bursting workloads in a way that is unique in the industry. These two technologies in tandem are
a significant differentiator for the Vblock System.
EMC Unisphere Management Suite

EMC Unisphere provides a simple, integrated experience for managing EMC Unified Storage through
both a storage and VMware lens. It is designed to provide simplicity, flexibility, and automation, which
are all key requirements for using private clouds.
Unisphere includes a unique self-service support ecosystem that is accessible with one-click,
taskbased navigation and controls for intuitive, context-based management. It provides customizable
dashboard views and reporting capabilities that present users with valuable storage management
information.

A provider virtual data center is a resource pool consisting of a cluster of VMware ESXi servers that
access a shared storage resource. The provider virtual data center can contain one of the following:
Part of a data store (shared by other provider virtual data centers)
All of a data store
Multiple data stores
As storage is provisioned to organization virtual data centers, the shared storage pool for the provider
virtual data center is seen as a single pool of storage with no distinction of storage characteristics,
protocol, or other characteristics differentiating it from being a single large address space.
If a provider virtual data center contains more than one data store, it is considered best practice that
those data stores have equal performance capability, protocol, and quality of service. Otherwise, the
slower storage in the collective pool will impact the performance of that provider virtual data storage
pool. Some virtual data centers might end up with faster storage than others.
To gain the benefits of different storage tiers or protocols, define separate provider virtual data
centers, where each provider virtual data center has storage of different protocols or differing qualityof-service storage. For example, provision the following:
A provider virtual data center built on a data store backed by 15K RPM FC disks with loads of
cache in the disk for the highest disk performance tier
A second provider virtual data center built on a data store backed by SATA drives and not much
cache in the array for a lower tier
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When a provider virtual data center shares a data store with another provider virtual data center, the
performance of one provider virtual data center may impact performance of the other provider virtual
data center. Therefore, it is considered best practice to have a provider virtual data center that has a
dedicated data store such that isolation of the storage reduces the chances of introducing different
quality-of-service storage resources in a provider virtual data center.

This section provides information about:
Authentication with LDAP or Active Directory
EMC VNX and RSA enVision
Authentication w ith LDA P or Active Directory

VNX can authenticate users against an LDAP directory, such as Active Directory. Authentication
against an LDAP server simplifies management because you do not need a separate set of
credentials to manage VNX storage systems. It is also more secure, as enterprise password policies
can be enforced for the storage environment.
Figure 57 shows LDAP integration in VNX.
Figur e 57. LDAP configuratio n in VNX
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Role mapping
Once communications are established with the LDAP service, give specific LDAP users or groups
access to Unisphere by mapping them to Unisphere roles. The LDAP service merely performs the
authentication. Once authenticated, a users authorization is determined by the assigned Unisphere
role. The most flexible configuration is to create LDAP groups that correspond to Unisphere roles. This
allows you to control access to Unisphere by managing the members of the LDAP groups.
For example, Figure 58 shows two LDAP groups: Storage Admins and Storage Monitors. It shows
how you can map specific LDAP groups into specific roles.
Figur e 58. Mapping LDAP groups
Component access control

Component access control settings define access to a product by external and internal systems or
components.
CHAP co mponent authentication
SCSI's primary authentication mechanism for iSCSI initiators is the Challenge Handshake
Authentication Protocol (CHAP). CHAP is an authentication protocol used to authenticate iSCSI
initiators at target login and at various random times during a connection. CHAP security consists of a
username and password. You can configure and enable CHAP security for initiators and for targets.
The CHAP protocol requires initiator authentication. Target authentication (mutual CHAP) is optional.
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LUN masking component authorization

A storage group is an access control mechanism for LUNs. It segregates groups of LUNs from access
by specific hosts. When you configure a storage group, you identify a set of LUNs that will be used by
only one or more hosts. The storage system then enforces access to the LUNs from the host. The
LUNs are presented to only the hosts in the storage group. The hosts can see only the LUNs in the
group.
IP filtering
IP filtering adds another layer of security by allowing administrators and security administrators to
configure the storage system to restrict administrative access to specified IP addresse s. These
settings can be applied to the local storage system or to the entire domain of storage systems.
Audi t loggi ng
Audit logging is intended to provide a record of all activities, so that the following can occur:
Checks for su spicious activity can be performed periodically.
The scope of suspicious activity can be determined.
Audit logs are especially important for financial institutions that are monitored by regulators.
Audit information for VNX storage systems is contained within the event log on each storage
processor. The log also contains hardware and software debugging information and a time-stamped
record for each event. Each record contains the following information:
Event code
Description of event
Name of the storage system
Name of the corresponding storage processor
Hostname associated with the storage processor
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VNX and RSA enV ision

VNX storage systems are made even more secure by leveraging the continuous collecting,
monitoring, and analyzing capabilities of RSA enVision. RSA enVision performs the functions listed in
the following table.
RSA function
Description
Collects logs
Can collect ev ent log data f rom ov er 130 ev ent sourcesf rom firewalls to
databases. RSA enVision can also collect data f rom custom, proprietary
sources using standard transports such as Syslog, OBDC, SNMP, SFTP,
OPSEC, or WMI.
Securely stores logs
Compresses and encry pts log data so it can be stored f or later analy sis,
while maintaini ng log conf identiality and integrity .
Analy zes logs
Analy zes data in real time to check f or anomalous behav ior requiring an
immediate alert and response. RSA enVision proprietary logs are also
optimized f or later reporting and f orensic analysis. Built-in reports and
alerts allow administrators and auditors quick and easy access to log data.
Figure 59 provides a detailed look at storage behavior in RSA enVision.
Figur e 59. RSA enVisio n storage behavior
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Netw ork encryption

The Storage Management server provides 256-bit symmetric encryption of all data passed between it
and the administrative client components that communicate with it, as listed under Port Usage (Web
browser, Secure CLI), as well as all data passed between Storage Management servers. The
encryption is provided through SSL/TLS and uses the RSA encryption algorithm, providing the same
level of cryptographic strength as is employed in e-commerce. Encryption protects the transferred
data from prying eyeswhether on the local LANs behind the corporate firewalls, or if the storage
sy stems are being remotely managed over the Internet.

Availability goes hand in hand with service assurance. While service assurance directs resources at
the tenant level, availability secures resources at the service provider level. Availability ensures that
resources are available for all tenants utilizing a service providers infrastructure, by meeting the
requirements of high availability and local and remote data protection.
High availability
In the storage layer, the high availability design is consistent with the high availability model
implemented at other layers in the Vblock System, comprising physical redundancy and path
redundancy. These are listed in the following types of redundancies:
Link redundancy
Hardware and node redundancy
Link redundancy
Pending the availability of FC port channels on UCS FC ports and FC port trunking, multiple individual
FC links from the 6120 fabric interconnects are connected to each SAN fabric, and VSAN
membership of each link is explicitly configured in the UCS. In the event of an FC (NP) port link failure,
affected hosts will re-logon in a round-robin manner using available ports. FC port channel support,
when available, means that redundant links in the port channel will provide active/active failover
support in the event of a link failure.
Multipathing software from VMware or EMC PowerPath software further enhances high availability,
optimizing use of the available link bandwidth and enhancing load balancing across multiple active
host adapter ports and links with minimal disruption in service.
Hardw are and node redundanc y
The Vblock System trusted multi-tenancy design leverages best practice methodologies for SAN high
availability, prescribing full hardware redundancy at each device in the I/O path from host to SAN. In
terms of hardware redundancy this begins at the server, with dual port adapters per host. Redundant
paths from the hosts feed into dual, redundant MDS SAN switches (that is, with dual supervisors) and
then into redundant SAN arrays with tiered, RAID protection. RAID 1 and 5 were deployed in this
particular design as two more commonly used levels; however the selection of a RAID protection level
depends on a balancing of cost versus the critical nature of the data to be stored.
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The ESXi hosts are protected by the VMware vCenter high availability feature. Storage paths can be
protected using EMC PowerPath/VE. Figure 60 shows the storage path protection.
Figur e 60. Storage path protection
Virtual machines and application data can be protected using EMC Avamar, EMC Data Domain, and
EMC Replication Manager. However these are not within the scope of this guide.
Single point of failure
High availability (HA) systems are the foundation upon which any enterprise-class multi-tenancy
environment is built. High availability systems are designed to be fully redundant with no single point
of failure (SPOF). Additional availability features can be leveraged to address single point of failure in
the trusted multi-tenancy design. The following are some high-level SPOF entity needs to consider:
Dual-ported drives
Redundant FC loops
Battery-backed mirrored write cache dual storage processors
Asymmetric Logical Unit Access (ALUA) dual paths to storage
N+M X-Blade failover clustering
Network link aggregation
Fail-safe network
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Local and remote data protection

It is important to ensure that data is protected for the entirety of its lifecycle. Local replication
technologies, such as snapshots and clones, allow users to roll back to recent points in time in the
event of corruption or accidental deletion. Local replication technologies include SnapSure and
SnapView for VNX. Use Network Data Management Protocol (NDMP) backup to deeply efficient
storage platforms, such as Data Domain, for restoration of data from a point further back in time.
Remote replication is key to protecting user data from site failures. EMC RecoverPoint and MirrorView
software enable remote replication between EMCs Unified Storage systems. Use Replication
Manager to ease the management of replication and ensure consistency between replicas.
Below are some key points for each of these products; however, they are not within the scope of this
guide.
SnapSure
Use SnapSure to create and manage checkpoints on thin and thick file systems. Checkpoints are
point-in-time, logical images of a file system. Checkpoints can be created on file systems that use pool
LUNs or traditional LUNs.
SnapView
For local replication, SnapView snapshots and clones are supported on thin and thick LUNs.
SnapView clones support replication between thick, thin, and traditional LUNs. When cloning from a
thin LUN to a traditional LUN or thick LUN, the physical space of the traditional/thick LUN must equal
the host-visible capacity of the thin LUN. This results in a fully allocated thin LUN if the traditional
LUN/thick LUN is reverse-synchronized. Cloning from traditional/thick to thin LUN results in a fully
allocated thin LUN as the initial synchronization will force the initialization of all the subscribed
capacity.
For more information, refer to EMC SnapView for VNX (Powerlink access required).
Recov erPoint
Replication is also supported through RecoverPoint. Continuous data protection (CDP) and
continuous remote replication (CRR) support replication for thin LUNs, thick LUNs, and traditional
LUNs. When using RecoverPoint to replicate to a thin LUN, only data is copied; unused space is
ignored so the target LUN is thin after the replication. This can provide significant space savings when
replicating from a non-thin volume to a thin volume. When using RecoverPoint, we recommend that
you not use journal and repository volumes on thin LUNs.
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MirrorView
When mirroring a thin LUN to another thin LUN, only consumed capacity is replicated between the
storage systems. This is most beneficial for initial synchronizations. Steady state replication is similar,
since only new writes are written from the primary storage system to the secondary system.
When mirroring from a thin LUN to a traditional or thick LUN, the thin LUNs host-visible capacity must
be equal to the traditional LUNs capacity or the thick LUNs user capacity. Any failback scenario that
requires a full synchronization from the secondary to the thin primary image causes the thin LUN to
become fully allocated. When mirroring from a thick LUN or traditional LUN to a thin LUN, the
secondary thin LUN is fully allocated.
With MirrorView, if the secondary image LUN is added with the no initial synchronization option, the
secondary image retains its thin attributes. However, any subsequent full synchronization from the
traditional LUN or thick LUN to the thin LUN, as a result of a recovery operation, causes the thin LUN
to become fully allocated.
For more information on using pool LUNs with MirrorView, see MirrorView Knowledgebook (Powerlink
access required).
Pow erPath Migration Enabler
EMC PowerPath Migration Enabler (PPME) is a host-based migration tool that enables non-disruptive
or minimally disruptive data migration between storage systems or between logical units within a
single storage system. The Host Copy technology in PPME works with the host operating system to
migrate data from the source logical unit to the target. With PPME 5.3, the Host Copy technology
supports migrating virtually provisioned devices. When migrating to a thin target, the targets thindevice capability is maintained.
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EMC Unisphere includes a unique self-service support ecosystem that is accessible through one-click,
task-based navigation and controls for intuitive, context-based management. It provides customizable
dashboard views and reporting capabilities that present users with valuable storage management
information.
EMC Unisphere, a unified element management interface for NAS, SAN, replication, and more, offers
a single point of control from which a service provider can manage all aspects of the storage layer.
Service providers can use Unified Infrastructure Manager/Provisioning to manage the entire stack
(compute, network, and storage).
These two products mark a paradigm shift in the way infrastructure is managed.
Figure 61 shows a service provider view of the Unisphere dashboard and shows a connected vCenter
with all the ESXi hosts.
Figur e 61. EMC Unisphere dashboa rd
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Design considerations for networking

Various methods, including zoning and VLANs can enforce network separation. Internet Protocol
Security (IPsec) provides application-independent network encryption at the IP layer for additional
security.
This section describes the design of and rationale behind the trusted multi-tenancy framework for
Vblock System network technologies. The design includes many issues that must be addressed prior
to deployment, as no two environments are alike. Design considerations are provided for each trusted
multi-tenancy element.

This section discusse s using the following technologies to achieve secure separation at the network
layer:
VLANs
Virtual Routing and Forwarding
Virtual Device Context
Access Control List
VLANs
VLANs provide a Layer 2 option to scale virtual machine connectivity, providing application tier
separation and multitenant isolation. In general, Vblock Systems have two types of VLANs:
Routed Include management VLANs, virtual machine VLANs, and data VLANs; will pass
through Layer 2 trunks and be routed to the external network
Internal Carry VMkernel traffic, such as vMotion, service console, NFS, DRS/HA, and so forth
This design guide uses three tenants: Tenant Orange, Tenant Vanilla and Tenant Grape. Each tenant
has multiple virtual machines for different applications (such as Web server, email server, and
database), which are associated with different VLANs. It is always recommended to separate data
and management VLANs.
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The following table lists example VLAN categories used in the Vblock System trusted multi-tenancy
design framework.
VLAN type
VLAN name
VLAN number
Mana gement VLANs (routed)
Core Inf ra management
100
C200_ES X_mgt
101
C299_ES X_v motion
102
UCS_mgt and KVM
103
Vblock_ES X_mgt
104
Vblock_ES X_v motion
105
Vblock_ES X_ build
106
Vblock_N1k_pkg
107
Vblock_N1k_control
108
Vblock_NFS
111
Fcoe_USC_to_storageA
109
Fcoe_UCS_to_storageB
110
Vblock_VMNet work
112
Tena nt 1_VMNet work
113
Tena nt-2_V MNetwork
118
Tena nt-3_V MNetwork
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Internal VLANs (local to Vblock System)
Data VLANs (routed VLAN)
Configure VLAN (both Layer 2 and Layer 3) in all network devices supported in the trusted multitenancy infrastructure to ensure that management, tenant, and Vblock System internal VLANs are
isolated from each other.
Note: Serv ice providers may need additional VLANs for scalability, depending on size requirements.
Virtual routing and forw arding

Use Virtual Routing and Forwarding (VRF) to virtualize each network device and all its physical
interconnects. From a data plane perspective, the VLAN tags can provide logical isolation on each
point-to-point Ethernet link that connects the virtualized Layer 3 network device.
Cisco VRF Lite uses a Layer 2 separation method to provide path isolation for each tenant across a
shared network link. Using VRF Lite in the core and aggregation layers enables segmentation of
tenants hosted on the common physical infrastructure. VRF Lite completely isolates the Layer 2 and
Layer 3 control and forwarding planes of each tenant, allowing flexibility in defining an optimum
network topology for each tenant.
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The following table summarizes the benefits that the Cisco VRF Lite technology provides a trusted
multi-tenancy environment.
Benefit
Description
Virtual replication of phy sical

inf rastructure
Each v irtual network represents an exact replica of the underly ing

phy sical inf rastructure. This eff ect results f rom VRF Lites per hop
technique, which requir es ev ery network dev ice and its interconnections
to be v irtualized.
True routin g and f orwarding

separation
Dedicated data and control planes are def ined to handle traff ic belonging
to groups with v arious requirements or policies. These groups represent
an additional lev el of segregation and security as no communication is
allowed among dev ices belonging to different VRFs unless explicitly
conf igured.
Network separation at Layer 2 is accomplished using VLANs. Figure 62 shows how the VLANs
defined on each access layer device for each tenant are mapped to the same tenant VRF at the
distribution layer.
Figur e 62. VLAN to VRF mappin g
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Use VLANs to achieve network separation at Layer 2. While VRFs are used to identify a tenant,
VLAN-IDs provide isolation at Layer 2.
Tenant VRFs are applied on the Cisco Nexus 7000 Series Switch at the aggregation and core layer,
which are mapped with unique VLANs. All VLANs are carried over the 802.1Q trunking ports.
Virtual dev ice context

The Layer 2 VLANs and Layer 3 VRF features help ensure trusted multi-tenancy secure separation at
the network layer. You can also use the Virtual Device Context (VDC) feature on the Nexus 7000
Series Switch to virtualize the device itself, presenting the physical switch as multiple logical devices.
A virtual device context can contain its own unique and independent set of VLANs and VRFs. Each
virtual device context can be assigned to its physical ports, allowing for the hardware data plane to be
virtualized as well.
Access control list

Access control list (ACL), VLAN access control list (VACL), and port security can be applied in trusted
multi-tenancy Layer 2 and Layer 3 to allow only the desired traffic for an expected destination within
the same tenant domain or among different tenants. This is shown in the following table.
Device name
ACL supported
Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switch
Y es
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series Switch
Y es
Y es
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Service assurance is a core requirement for shared resources and their protection. Network, compute,
and storage resources are guaranteed based on service level agreements. Quality of service enables
differential treatment of specific traffic flows, helping to ensure that in the event of congestion or failure
conditions, critical traffic is provided with a sufficient amount of available bandwidth to meet throughput
requirements.
Figure 63 shows the traffic flow types defined in the Vblock System trusted multi-tenancy design.
Figur e 63. Traffic flow types
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The traffic flow types break down into three traffic categories, as shown in the following table.
Traffic Category
Description
Inf rastructure
Comprises management and control traff ic and v Motion communication.

This is ty pically set to the highest priority to maintain administrativ e
communications during periods of instability or high CPU utilization.
Tena nt
Storage
Diff erentiated into Gold, Silv er, and Bronze serv ice lev els; may include v irtual
machine-to-v irtual machine, virtual machine-to-storage, and/or v irtual machineto-tenant traff ic.
Gold tenant traffic is highest priority, requiring low latency and high bandwidth
guarantees
Silv er traffic requires medium latency and bandwidth guarantees

Bronze traffic is delay -tolerant, requiring low bandwidth guarantees
The Vblock Sy stem trusted multi-tenancy design incorporates both FC and IPattached storage. Since these traff ic ty pes are treated diff erently throughout the
network, storage requires two subcategories:
FC traffic requires a no drop policy

NFS data store traffic is sensitiv e to delay and loss
QoS service assurance for Vblock Systems has been introduced at each layer. Consider the following
features for service assurance at the network layer:
Quality of service tenant marking at the edge
Traffic flow matching
Quality of service bandwidth guarantee
Quality of service rate limit
Traffic originates from three sources:
ESXi hosts and virtual machines
External to data center
Networked-attached devices
Consider traffic classification, bandwidth guarantee with queuing, and rate limiting based on tenant
traffic priority for networking service assurance.
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Trusted multi-tenancy infrastructure networks require intelligent services, such as firewall and load
balancing of servers and hosted applications. This design guide focuses on the Vblock System trusted
multi-tenancy framework, in which a firewall module and other load balancers are the external devices
connected to the Vblock System. A multi-tenant environment consists of numerous service and
infrastructure devices, depending on the business model of the organization. Often, servers, firewalls,
network intrusion prevention systems (IPS), host IPSs, switches, routers, application firewalls, and
server load balancers are used in various combinations within a multi-tenant environment.
The Cisco Firewall Services Module (FWSM) provides Layer 2 and Layer 3 firewall inspection,
protocol inspection, and network address translation (NAT). The Cisco Application Control Engine
(ACE) module provides server load balancing and protocol (IPSec, SSL) off-loading. Both the FWSM
and ACE module can be easily integrated into existing Cisco 6500 Series switches, which are widely
deployed in data center environments.
Note: To use the Cisco ACE module, you must add a Cisco 6500 Series switch.
To succesfully achive trusted multi-tenancy, a service provider needs to adopt each key component
as discussed below. As shown in Figure 3, the trusted multi-tenancy framework has the following key
components:
Component
Description
Core
Prov ides a Lay er 3 routing module f or all traff ic in and out of the serv ice prov ider
data center.
Aggregatio n
Serv es as the Lay er 2 and Lay er 3 boundary for the data center inf rastructure. In
this design, the aggregation lay er also serv es as the connection point f or the
primary data center f irewalls.
Serv ices
Deploy s serv ices such as serv er load balancers, intrusion prev ention sy stems,
application-based f irewalls, network analy sis modules, and additional f irewall
serv ices.
Access
The data center access lay er serv es as a connection point f or the serv er f arm.
The v irtual access lay er ref ers to the virtual network that resides in the phy sical
serv ers when conf igured f or v irtualization.
With this framework, you can add components as demand and load increase.
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The following table describes the high-level security functions for each layer of the data center.
Data center layer
Security component
Purpose
Aggregatio n
Data center f irewalls
Initial f ilter f or data center ingress and egress traff ic.

Virtual context is used to split policies f or serv er-toserv er filtering.
Inf rastructure security
Inf rastructure security features are enabled to protect

dev ice, traff ic plane, and control plane.
Virtual data center prov ides internal/external
segmentation.
Serv ice
Security serv ices
Additional f irewall serv ices f or serv er farmspecif ic

protection.
Serv er load balancing masks serv ers and applications.
Application f irewall mitigates XSS-, HTTP-, SQL-, and
XML- based attacks.
Data center serv ices
IPS/IDS prov ide traffic analy sis and f orensics.

Network analy sis prov ides traff ic monitoring and data
analy sis.
XML Gate way protects and optimizes Web-based
serv ices.
Access
ACLs, CISC, port security, quality of serv ice, CoPP, VN

tag
Virtual access
Lay er 2 security f eatures are av ailable within the

phy sical serv er f or each virtual machine. Features
include ACLs, CISF, port security , Netflow ERSPAN,
quality of serv ice, CoPP, VN tag.
Data center firew alls

The aggregation layer provides an excellent filtering point and the first layer of protection for the data
center. It provides a building block for deploying firewall services for ingress and egress filtering. The
Layer 2 and Layer 3 recommendations for the aggregation layer also provide symmetric traffic
patterns to support stateful packet filtering.
Because of the performance requirements, this design uses a pair of Cisco ASA firewalls connected
directly to the aggregation switches. The Cisco ASA firewalls meet the high-performance data center
firewall requirements by providing 10 GB/s of stateful packet inspection.
The Cisco ASA firewalls are configured in transparent mode, which means the firewalls are configured
in a Layer 2 mode and will bridge traffic between interfaces. The Cisco ASA firewalls are configured
for multiple contexts using the virtual context feature, which allows the firewall to be divided into
multiple logical firewalls, each supporting different interfaces and policies.
Note: The modular aspect of this design allows additional firewalls to be deploy ed at the aggregation lay er as the
serv er f arm grows and perf ormance requirements increase.
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The firewalls are configured in an active-active design, which allows load sharing across the
infrastructure based on the active Layer 2 and Layer 3 traffic paths. Each firewall is configured for two
virtual contexts:
Virtual context 1 is active on ASA1
Virtual context 2 is active on ASA2
This corresponds to the active Layer 2 spanning tree path and the Layer 3 Hot Standby Routing
Protocol (HSRP) configuration.
Figure 64 shows an example of each firewall connection.
Figur e 64. Cisco ASA virtual contexts and Cisco Nexus 7000 virtual device contexts
Virtual context details

The context details on the firewall provide different forwarding paths and policy enforcement,
depending on the traffic type and destination. Incoming traffic that is destined for the data center
services layer (ACE, WAF, IPS, and so on) is forwarded over VLAN 161 from VDC1 on the Cisco
Nexus 7000 to virtual context 1 on the Cisco ASA. The inside interface of virtual context 1 is
configured on VLAN 162. The Cisco ASA filters the incoming traffic and then, in this case, bridges the
traffic to the inside interface on VLAN 162. VLAN 162 is carried to the services switch where traffic has
additional services applied. The same applies to virtual context 2 on VLANs 151 and 152. This context
is active on ASA2.
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Deployment recommenda tions

Firewalls enforce access policies for the data center. A best practice is to create a multilayered
security model to protect the data center from internal or external threats.
The firewall policy will differ, based on the organizational security policy and the types of applications
deployed.
Regardless of the number of ports and protocols allowed either to and from the data center, or from
server to server, there are some baseline recommendations that serve as a starting point for most
deployments. The firewalls should be hardened in a similar fashion to the infrastructure devices. The
following configuration notes apply:
Use HTTPS for device access. Disable HTTP access.
Configure authentication, authorization, and accounting.
Use out-of-band management and limit the types of traffic allowed over the management
interface(s).
Use Secure Shell (SSH). Disable Telnet.
Use Network Time Protocol (NTP) servers.
Depending on traffic types and policies, the goal might not be to send all traffic flows to the services
layer. Some incoming application connections, such as those from a DMZ or client batch jobs (such
as backup), might not need load balancing or additional services. An alternative is to deploy another
context on the firewall to support the VLANs that are not forwarded to the services switches.
Cav eats
Using transparent mode on the Cisco ASA firewalls requires that an IP address be configured for each
context. This is required to bridge traffic from one interface to another and to manage each Cisco ASA
context. While in transparent mode, you cannot allocate the same VLAN across multiple interfaces for
management purposes. A separate VLAN is used to manage each context. The VLANs created for
each context can be bridged back to the primary management VLAN on an upstream switch if
desired.
Note: This prov ides a workaround and does not require allocating new network-wide management VLANs and
IP subnets to manage each context.
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Services layer
Data center security services can be deployed in a variety of combinations. The goal of these designs
is to provide a modular approach to deploying security by allowing additional capacity to be added
easily for each service. Additional Web application firewalls, intrusion prevention systems (IPS),
firewalls, and monitoring services can all be scaled without requiring an overall redesign of the data
center.
Figure 65 illustrates how the services layer fits into the data center security environment.
Figur e 65. Data center security and the services layer
Cisco Application Control Engine

This design features the Cisco Application Control Engine (ACE) service module for the Cisco
Catalyst 6500. Cisco ACE is designed as an application- and server-scaling tool, but it has security
benefits as well. Cisco ACE can mask a servers real IP address and provide a single IP address for
clients to connect over a single or multiple protocols such as HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, and so forth.
This design uses Cisco ACE to scale the Web application firewall appliances, which are configured as
a server farm. Cisco ACE distributes connections to the Web application firewall pool.
As an added benefit, Cisco ACE can store server certificates locally. This allows Cisco ACE to proxy
Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections for client requests and forward the requests in clear text to
the server.
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Cisco ACE provides a highly available and scalable data center solution from which the VMware
vCloud Director environment can benefit. Use Cisco ACE to apply a different context and associated
policies, interfaces, and resources for one vCloud Director cell and a completely different context for
another vCloud Director cell.
In this design, Cisco ACE is terminating incoming HTTPS requests and decrypting the traffic prior to
forwarding it to the Web application firewall farm. The Web application firewall and subsequent Cisco
IPS devices can now view the traffic in clear text for inspection purposes.
Note: Some compliance standards and security policies dictate that traffic be encry pted f rom client to server. It is
possible to modify the design so traffic is re-encrypted on Cisco ACE after inspection prior to being
forwarded to the serv er.
Web Application Firew all

Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall (WAF) provides firewall services for Web-based applications. It
secures and protects Web applications from common attacks, such as identity theft, data theft,
application disruption, fraud, and targeted attacks. These attacks can include cross-site scripting
(XSS) attacks, SQL and command injection, privilege escalation, cross-site request forgeries (CSRF),
buffer overflows, cookie tampering, and denial-of-service (DoS) attacks.
In the trusted multi-tenancy design, the two Web application firewall appliances are considered as a
cluster and are load balanced by Cisco ACE. Each Web application firewall cluster member can be
seen in the Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall Management Dashboard.
The Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall acts as a reverse proxy for the Web servers it is configured
to protect. The Virtual Web Application creates a virtual URL that intercepts incoming client
connections. You can configure a virtual Web application based on the protocol and port as well as
the policy you want applied.
The destination server IP address is Cisco ACE. Because the Web application firewall is being load
balanced by Cisco ACE, it is configured as a one-armed connection to Cisco ACE to send and receive
traffic.
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Cisco ACE and Web Application Firew all design

Cisco ACE Web Application Firewall is deployed in a one-armed design and is connected to Cisco
ACE over a single interface.
Figur e 66. Cisco ACE module an d We b Application Fir ewall integration
Cisco Intrusion Pr evention System

The Cisco Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) provides deep packet and anomaly inspection to protect
against both common and complex embedded attacks.
The IPS devices used in this design are Cisco IPS 4270s with 10 GbE modules. Because of the
nature of IPS and the intense inspection capabilities, the amount of overall throughput varies
depending on the active policy. Default IPS policies were used in the examples presented in this
design guide.
In this design, the IPS appliances are configured for VLAN pairing. Each IPS is connected to the
services switch with a single 10 GbE interface. In this example, VLAN 163 and VLAN 164 are
configured as the VLAN pair.
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The IPS deployment in the data center leverages EtherChannel load balancing from the service
switch. This method is recommended for the data center because it allows the IPS services to scale to
meet the data center requirements. This is shown in Figure 67.
Figur e 67. IPS ECLB in the services layer
A port channel is configured on the services switch to forward traffic over each 10 GB link to the
receiving IPS. Since Cisco IPS does not support Link Aggregate Control Protocol (LACP) or Port
Aggregation Protocol (PAgP), the port channel is set to on to ensure no negotiation is necessary for
the channel to become operational.
It is very important to ensure all traffic for a specific flow goes to the same Cisco IPS. To best
accomplish this, it is recommended to set the hash for the port channel to source and destination IP
address. Each EtherChannel supports up to eight ports per channel.
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This design can scale up to eight Cisco IPS 4270s per channel. Figure 68 illustrates Cisco IPS
EtherChannel load balancing.
Figur e 68. Cisco IPS EtherChan nel load bala ncing
Cav eats
Spanning tree plays an important role in IPS redundancy in this design. Under normal operating
conditions traffic, a VLAN always follows the same active Layer 2 path. If a failure occurs (a service
switch failure or a service switch link failure), spanning tree converges, and the active Layer 2 traffic
path changes to the redundant service switch and Cisco IPS appliances.
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Cisco A CE, Cisco ACE Web Applic ation Firew all, Cisco IPS traffic flow s
The security services in this design reside between the VDC1 and VDC2 on the Cisco Nexus 7000
Series Switch. All security services are running in a Layer 2 transparent configuration. As traffic flows
from VDC1 to the outside Cisco ASA context, it is bridged across VLANs and forwarded through each
security service until it reaches the inside VDC2, where it is routed directly to the correct server or
application.
Figure 69 shows the service flow for client-to-server traffic through the security services in the red
traffic path. In this example, the client is making a Web request to a virtual IP address (VIP) defined on
the Cisco ACE virtual context.
Figur e 69. Security service traffic flow (client to server)
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The following table describes the stages associated with Figure 69.
Stage
What happens
Client is directed through Cisco Nexus 7000-1 VDC1 to the activ e Cisco ASA v irtual context
transparently bridging traff ic between VDC1 and VDC2 on the Cisco Nexus 7000.
The transpare nt Cisco ASA v irtual context forwards traffic from VLAN 161 to VLAN 162 towards
Cisco Nexus 7000-1 VDC2.
VDC2 shows spanning tree root f or VLAN 162 through connection to serv ices switch SS1. SS1
shows spanning tree root f or VLAN 162 through the Cisco ACE transparent v irtual context.
The Cisco ACE transparent v irtual context applies an input serv ice policy on VLAN 162. This
serv ice policy , named AGGREGA TE_S LB, has the v irtual IP def inition. The v irtual IP rules
associated with this policy enf orce SSL-termination serv ices and load-balancing serv ices to a
Web application f irewall serv er farm.
HTTP -based prob es determine the state of the Web application f irewall serv er f arm. The
request is f orwarded to a specif ic Web application f irewall appli ance def ined in the Cisco ACE
serv er farm. The client IP address is inserted as an HTTP header by Cisco ACE to maintain the
integrity of serv er-based logging within the f arm. The source IP address of the request
f orwarded to the Web application f irewall is that of the originating clientin this example,
10.7.54.34.
In this example, the Web application f irewall has a v irtual Web application def ined named Crack
Me. The Web app lication f irewall appliance receiv es on port 81 the HTTP requ est that was
f orwarded f rom Cisco ACE. The Web application f irewall applies all relev ant security policies f or
this traffic and proxies the request back to a VIP (10.8.162.200) located on the same v irtual
Cisco ACE context on VLAN interf ace 190.
Traff ic is f orwarded f rom the Web application f irewall on VLAN 163. A port channel is
conf igured to carry VLAN 163 and VLAN 164 on each member trunk interf ace. Cisco IPS
receiv es all traff ic on VLAN 163, perf orms inline inspection, and f orwards the traff ic back ov er
the port channel on VLAN 164.
Access layer
In this design, the data center access layer provides Layer 2 connectivity for the server farm. In most
cases the primary role of the access layer is to provide port density for scaling the server farm. Figure
70 shows the data center access layer.
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Figur e 70. Data center access layer
Recommenda tions
Security at the access layer is primarily focused on securing Layer 2 flows. Best practices include:
Using VLANs to segment server traffic
Associating access control lists (ACL) to prevent any undesired communication
Additional security mechanisms that can be deployed at the access layer include:
Private VLANs (PVLAN)
Catalyst Integrated Security features, which include Dynamic Address Re solution Protocol
(ARP) inspection, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Snooping, and IP Source
Guard
Port security can also be used to lock down a critical server to a specific port.
The access layer and virtual access layer serve the same logical purpose. The virtual access layer is
a new location and a new footprint of the traditional physical data center access layer. These features
are also applicable to the traditional physical access layer.
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Virtual access layer security

Server virtualization is creating new challenges for security deployments. Visibility into virtual machine
activity and isolation of server traffic becomes more difficult when virtual machinesourced traffic can
reach other virtual machines within the same server without being sent outside the physical server.
When applications reside on virtual machines and multiple virtual machines reside within the same
physical server, it may not be necessary for traffic to leave the physical server and pass through a
physical access switch for one virtual machine to communicate with another. Enforcing network
policies in this type of environment can be a significant challenge. The goal remains to provide in this
new virtual access layer many of the same security services and features as are used in the traditional
access layer.
The virtual access layer resides in and across the physical servers running virtualization software.
Virtual networking occurs within these servers to map virtual machine connectivity to that of the
physical server. A virtual switch is configured within the server to provide virtual machine port
connectivity. How each virtual machine connects, and to which physical server port it is mapped, are
configured on this virtual switching component. While this new access layer resides within the server,
it is really the same concept as the traditional physical access layer. It is just participating in a
virtualized environment.
Figure 71 illustrates the deployment of a virtual switching platform in the context of this environment.
Figur e 71. Cisco Nexus 1000V data center deploy ment
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When a network policy is defined on the Cisco Nexus 1000V, it is updated in the virtual data center
and displayed as a port group. The network and security teams can configure a predefined policy and
make it available to the server administrators using the same methods they use to apply policies
today. Cisco Nexus 1000V policies are defined through a feature called port profiles.
Policy enforcement
Use port profiles to configure network and security features under a single profile that can be applied
to multiple interfaces. Once you define a port profile, you can inherit that profile and any setting
defined on one or more interfaces. You can define multiple profilesall assigned to different
interfaces.
This feature provides multiple security benefits:
Network security policies are still defined by network and security administrators and are applied
to the virtual switch in the same way as on physical access switches.
Once the features are defined in a port profile and assigned to an interface, the server
administrator need only pick the available port group and assign it to the virtual machine. This
alleviates the chances of misconfiguration and overlapping, or of non-compliant security policies
being applied.
Visibility
Server virtualization brings new challenges for visibility into what is occurring at the virtual network
level. Traffic flows can occur within the server between virtual machines without needing to traverse a
physical access switch. Although vCloud Director and vShield Edge restrict vApp traffic inside the
organization, if there is a specific situation where dedicated tenant environment virtual machines are
available and a tenant-specific virtual machine is infected or compromised, it may be more difficult for
administrators to spot the problem without the traffic forwarding through security appliances.
Encapsulated Remote Switched Port Analyzer (ERSPAN) is a useful tool for gaining visibility into
network traffic flows. This feature is supported on the Cisco Nexus 1000V. ERSPAN can be enabled
on the Cisco Nexus 1000V and traffic flows can be exported from the server to external devices. See
Figure 72.
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Figur e 72. Cisco Nexus 1000V and E RSP AN IDS and NAM at services switch
The following table describes what happens in Figure 72.

Stage
What happens
ERSPAN f orwards copies of the v irtual machine traffic to the Cisco IPS appliance and the
Cisco Network Analy sis Module (NA M). Both the Cisco IPS and Cisco NAM are located at the
serv ice lay er in the serv ice switch.
A new v irtual sensor (VS1) has been created on the existing Cisco IPS appliances to prov ide
monitoring f or only the ERSPAN session f rom the serv er. Up to f our v irtual sensors can be
conf igured on a single Cisco IPS appliance and they can be conf igured in either intrusion
prev ention system or instruction detection sy stem (IDS) mode. In this case the new v irtual
sensor VS1 has been set to IDS or monitor mode. It receiv es a copy of the v irtual machine
traffic ov er the ERSPAN session f rom the Cisco Nexus 1000V.
Two ERSPAN sessions hav e been created on the Cisco Nexus 1000V:
Session 1 has a destination of the Cisco NAM

Session 2 has a destination of the Cisco IPS appliance
Each session terminates on the 6500 serv ice switch.
122
Using a different ERSPAN-id for each session provides isolation. A maximum of 66 source and
destination ERSPAN sessions can be configured per switch.
Cav eats
ERSPAN can affect overall system performance, depending on the number of ports sending data and
the amount of traffic being generated. It is always a good idea to monitor system performance when
you enable ERSPAN to verify the overall effects on the system.
Note: Y ou must permit protocol type header 0x88BE f or ERSPAN Generic Routing Encapsulation (GRE)
connections.
Security recommendations
The following are some best practice security recommendations:
Harden data center infrastructure devices and use authentication, authorization, and accounting
for role-based access control and logging.
Authenticate and authorize device access using TACACS+ to a Cisco Access Control Server
(ACS).
Enable local fallback if the Cisco ACS is unreachable.
Define local usernames and secrets for user accounts in the ADMIN group. The local username
and secret should match that defined in the TACACS server.
Define the ACLs to limit the type of traffic to and from the device from the out-of-band
management network.
Enable network time protocol (NTP) on all devices. NTP synchronizes timestamps for all logging
across the infrastructure, which makes it an invaluable tool for troubleshooting.
For detailed infrastructure security recommendations and best practices, see the Cisco Network
Security Baseline and the following URL:
www.cisco.com/en/US/docs/solutions/Enterprise/Security/Baseline_Security/securebasebook.html
123
Thr eats mitigated

The following table indicates the threats mitigated with the data security design described in this guide.
Cisco
AS A
Firewall
Cisco IPS
Authorized access
Y es
Y es
Mal ware, v iruses, worms,

DoS
Y es
Y es
Application attacks (XSS,

SQL injection, directory
transv ersal, and so f orth)
Y es
Y es
Tunn eled attacks
Y es
Y es
Visibility
Y es
Y es
Cisco
ACE
Cisco
ACE W AF
RSA
enVision
Infrastructure
protection
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Y es
Vblock Systems secur ity features

Within the Vblock System, the following security features can be applied to the trusted multi-tenancy
design framework:
Port security
ACLs
Port security
Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches provide port security features that reject intrusion attempts and
report these intrusions to the administrator.
Typically, any fibre channel device in a SAN can attach to any SAN switch port and access SAN
services based on zone membership. Port security features prevent unauthorized access to a switch
port in the Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switch.
ACLs
A router ACL (RACL) is an ACL that is applied to an interface with a Layer 3 address assigned to it. It
can be applied to any port that has an IP address, including the following:
Routed interfaces
Loopback interfaces
VLAN interfaces
The security boundary is to permit or deny traffic moving between subnets or networks. The RACL is
supported in hardware and has no effect on performance.
124
A VLAN access control list (VACL) is an ACL that is applied to a VLAN. It can be applied only to a
VLANno other type of interface. The security boundary is to permit or deny moving traffic between
VLANs and permit or deny traffic within a VLAN. The VLAN ACL is supported in hardware.
A port access control list (PACL) entry is an ACL applied to a Layer 2 switch port interface. It cannot
be applied to any other type of interface. It works in only the ingress direction. The security boundary
is to permit or deny moving traffic within a VLAN. The PACL is supported in hardware and has no
effect on performance.

Availability is defined as the probability that a service or network is operational and functional as
needed at any point in time. Cloud data centers offer IaaS to either internal enterprise customers or
external customers of service providers. The services are controlled using SLAs, which can be stricter
in service provider deployments than in enterprise deployments. A highly available data center
infrastructure is the foundation of SLA guarantee and successful cloud deployment.
Physical redundancy design cons ideration

To build an end-to-end resilient design, hardware redundancy is the first layer of protection that
provides rapid recovery from failures. Physical redundancy must be enabled at various layers of the
infrastructure, as described in the following table.
Physical redundancy method
Details
Node redunda ncy
Redundant pair of dev ices
Hardwar e redund ancy within the node
Dual superv isors

Distributed port-channel across line cards
Redundant line cards per v irtual dev ice context
Link redundancy
Distributed port-channel across line cards

Virtual port channel
Figure 73 shows the overall network availability for each layer.
125
Figur e 73. Network availability for each layer
In addition to physical layer redundancy, the following logical redundancy features help provide a
highly reliable and robust environment that will guarantee the customers service with minimum
interruption during the network failure or maintenance:
Hot standby router protocol
Nexus 1000V and Mac pinning
Nexus 1000V VSM redundancy
126
Virtual por t channel

A virtual port channel (vPC) is a port-channeling concept extending link aggregation to two separate
physical switches. It allows links that are physically connected to two Cisco Nexus devices to appear
as a single port channel to any other device, including a switch or server. This feature is transparent to
neighboring devices. A virtual port channel can provide Layer 2 multipathingwhich creates
redundancy through increased bandwidthto enable multiple active parallel paths between nodes and
to load balance traffic where alternative paths exist. The following devices support virtual port
channels:
Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switch
Cisco UCS 6120 fabric interconnect
Hot sta ndby router pr otocol

Hot Standby Router Protocol (HSRP) is Cisco's standard method of providing high network availability
by providing first-hop redundancy for IP hosts on an IEEE 802 LAN configured with a default gateway
IP address. HSRP routes IP traffic without relying on the availability of any single router. It enables a
set of router interfaces to work together to present the appearance of a single virtual router or default
gateway to the hosts on a LAN.
When HSRP is configured on a network or segment, it provides a virtual Media Access Control (MAC)
address and an IP address that is shared among a group of configured routers. HSRP allows two or
more HSRP-configured routers to use the MAC address and IP network address of a virtual router.
The virtual router does not exist; it represents the common target for routers that are configured to
provide backup to each other. One of the routers is selected to be the active router and another to be
the standby router, which assumes control of the group MAC and IP address should the designated
active router fail.
Figure 74 shows active and standby HSRP routers configured on Switch 1 and Switch 2.
127
Figur e 74. Active and standby HSRP routers
Virtual port channel is used across the trusted multi-tenancy network between the different layers.
HSRP is configured at the Nexus 7000 sub-aggregation layer, which provides the backup default
gateway if the primary default gateway fails.
Cisco Nexus 1000V and MAC pinni ng
The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series Switch uses the MAC pinning feature to provide more granular loadbalancing methods and redundancy. Virtual machine NICs can be pinned to an uplink path using port
profiles definitions. Using port profiles, an administrator defines the preferred uplink path to use. If
these uplinks fail, another uplink is dynamically chosen. If an active physical link goes down, the Cisco
Nexus 1000V Series Switch sends notification packets upstream of a surviving link to inform upstream
switches of the new path required to reach these virtual machines. These notifications are sent to the
Cisco UCS 6100 Series fabric interconnect, which updates its MAC address tables and sends
gratuitous ARP messages on the uplink ports so the data center access layer network can learn the
new path.
Nexus 1000V VSM redundanc y
Define one Virtual Supervisor Module (VSM) as the primary module and the other as the secondary
module. The two VSMs run as an active-standby pair, similar to supervisors in a physical chassi s, and
provide high-availability switch management. The Cisco Nexus 1000V Series VSM is not in the data
path, so even if both VSMs are powered down, the Virtual Ethernet Module (VEM) is not affected and
continues to forward traffic. Each VSM in an active-standby pair is required to run on a separate
VMware ESXi host. This setup helps ensure high availability if even one VMware ESXi server fails.
128

The Cisco Data Center Network Manager infrastructure can actively monitor the SAN and LAN. With
DCNM, many features of Cisco NX-OSincluding Ethernet switching, physical ports and port
channels, and ACLscan be configured and monitored.
Integration of Cisco Data Center Network Manager and Cisco Fabric Manager provides overall uptime
and reliability of the cloud infrastructure and improves business continuity.
Nexus 5000 Series switches provide many management features to help provision and manage the
device, including:
CLI-based console to provide detailed out-of-band management
Virtual port channel configuration synchronization
SSHv2
Authentication, authorization, and accounting
Authentication, authorization, and accounting with RBAC
129
Design considerations for additional security technologies

Security and compliance ensures the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of each tenants
environment at every layer of the trusted multi-tenancy stack using technologies like identity
management and access control, encryption and key management, firewalls, malware protection, and
intrusion prevention. This is a primary concern for both service provider and tenant. The ability to have
an accurate, clear picture of the security and compliance posture of the Vblock System is vital to the
success of the service provider in ensuring a trusted, multi-tenant environment; and for the tenants to
adopt the converged resources in alignment with their business objectives.
The trusted multi-tenancy design ensures that all activities performed in the provisioning,
configuration, and management of the multi-tenant environment, as well as day-to-day activities and
events for individual tenants, are verified and continuously monitored. It is also important that all
operational events are recorded and that these records are available as evidence during audits.
The security and compliance element of trusted multi-tenancy encircles the other elements. It is the
verify component of the maximTrust, but verifyin that all configurations, technologies, and
solutions must be auditable and their status verifiable in a timely manner. Governance, Risk, and
Compliance (GRC), specifically IT GRC, is the foundation of this element.
The IT GRC domain focuses on the management of IT-related controls. This is vital to the converged
infrastructure provider, as surveys indicate that security ranks highest among the concerns for using
cloud-based solutions. The ability to ensure oversight and report on security controls such as firewalls,
hardening configurations, and identity access management; and non-technical controls such as
consistent use of processe s, background checks for employees, and regular review of policies is
paramount to the success of the provider in ensuring the security and compliance objectives
demanded by their customers. Key benefits of a robust IT GRC solution include:
Creating and distributing policies and controls and mapping them to regulations and internal
compliance requirements
Assessing whether the controls are actually in place and working, and remediating those that
are not
Easing risk assessment and mitigation
130

This section discusse s using RSA Archer eGRC and RSA enVision to achieve secure separation.
RSA Archer eGRC

With respect to secure separation, the RSA Archer eGRC Platform is a multi-tenant software platform,
supporting the configuration of separate instances in provider-hosted environments. These individual
instances support data segmentation, as well as discrete user experiences and branding. By utilizing
inherited record permissions and role-based access controls built into the platform, both service
providers and tenants are provided secure and separate spaces within a single installation of RSA
Archer eGRC.
Based upon tenant requirements, it is also possible to provision a discrete RSA Archer eGRC
instance per tenant. Unless a larger number of concurrent users will be accessing the instance or a
high-availability solution is required, this deployment can run within a single virtual machine with the
application and database components running on the same server.
RSA enV ision

Deploying separate instances of RSA enVision for the service provider and the tenants results in a
discrete and secure separation of the collected and stored data. For the service provider, an RSA
enVision instance centrally collects and stores event information from all the Vblock System
components separately from each tenants data.

This section discusse s using RSA Archer eGRC and RSA enVision to achieve service assurance.
RSA Archer eGRC

The RSA Archer eGRC Platform supports the trusted multi-tenancy element of service assurance by
providing a clear and consistent mechanism for providing metric and service level agreement data to
both service providers and tenants through robust reporting and dashboard views. Through integration
with RSA enVision and engagements with RSA Professional Services, these reports and dashboards
can be automated using data points from the element managers and products using RSA enVision.
Figure 75 shows an example RSA Archer eGRC dashboard.
131
Figur e 75. Sa mpl e RSA Arche r eGRC dashb oard
RSA enV ision

RSA enVision integrates with RSA Archer eGRC in the RSA Security Incident Management Solution
to complete and streamline the entire lifecycle for security incident management. By capturing all
event and alert data from the Vblock System components, service providers are able to establish
baselines and then be automatically alerted to anomaliesfrom an operational and security
perspective.
The correlation capabilities allow for seemingly innocent information from separate logs to identify real
events when read holistically. This allows for quick responses to those events in the environment, their
resolution, and subsequent root cause analysis and remediation. From the tenant point of view, this
provides for a more stable and reliable solution for business needs.
132

This section discusse s using RSA Archer eGRC and RSA enVision to achieve security and
compliance.
RSA Archer eGRC

The RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance for RSA Archer eGRC enables user
organizations and service providers to orchestrate and visualize the security of their virtualization
infrastructure and physical infrastructure from a single console. The solution extends the Enterprise,
Compliance, and Policy modules within the RSA Archer eGRC Platform with content from the Archer
Library, dashboard views, and questionnaires to provide a solution based on cloud security and
compliance.
The RSA Solution for Cloud Security and Compliance provides the service provider the mechanism to
perform continuous monitoring of the VMware infrastructure against the more than 130 control
procedures in the library written specifically against the VMware vSphere 4.0 Security Hardening
Guide. In addition to providing the service provider the necessary means to oversee and govern the
security and compliance posture, the RSA Solution also allows for:
1. Discovery of new devices
2. Configuration measurement of new devices
3. Establishment of baselines using questionnaires
4. Remediation of compliance issues
Figur e 76. RSA Solutio n for Cloud Security and Co mpl iance
133
Using this solution gives the service provider a means to ensure and, very importantly, prove the
compliance of the virtualized infrastructure to authoritative sources such as PCI-DSS, COBIT, NIST,
HIPAA, and NERC.
RSA enV ision

RSA enVision includes preconfigured integration with all Vblock System infrastructure components,
including the Cisco UCS and Nexus components, EMC storage, and VMware vSphere, vCenter,
vShield, and vCloud Director. This ensures a consistent and centralized means of collecting and
storing the events and alerts generated by the various Vblock System components.
From the service provider viewpoint, RSA enVision provides the means to ensure compliance with
regulatory requirements regarding secure logging and monitoring.

This section discusse s using RSA Archer eGRC and RSA enVision to achieve availability and data
protection.
RSA Archer eGRC

The powerful and flexible nature of the RSA Archer eGRC Platform provides both service providers
and tenants the mechanism to integrate business critical data points and information into their
governance program. The consistent understanding of where business sensitive data is located, as
well as its criticality rating, is fundamental in making provisioning and availability decisions. Through
consultation with RSA Professional Services, it is possible to integrate workflow-managed
questionnaires to ensure consistent capturing of this information. This captured information can then
be used as data points for the creation of custom reporting dashboards and reports.
Figur e 77. Workflow questionnaire
In addition to this information classification, RSA Archer integrates with RSA enVision as its collection
entity from sources such as data loss prevention, anti-virus, and intruder detection/prevention systems
to bring these data points into the centralized governance dashboards.
134
RSA enV ision

RSA enVision helps the service provider ensure the continued availability of the environment and the
protection of the data contained in the Vblock System. By centralizing and correlating alerts and
events, RSA enVision provides the service provider the visibility into the environment needed to
identify and act upon security events within the environment. Real-time notification provides the
means to prevent possible compromises and impact to the services and the tenants.
Design considerations for tenant management and control

This section discusse s using RSA Archer eGRC and RSA enVision to achieve tenant management
and control.
RSA Archer eGRC

The multi-tenant reporting capabilities of the RSA Archer eGRC Platform give each tenant a
comprehensive, real-time view of the eGRC program. Tenants can take advantage of prebuilt reports
to monitor activities and trends and generate ad hoc reports to access the information needed to
make decisions, address issues, and complete tasks. The cloud provider can build customizable
dashboards tailored by tenant or audience, so that users get exactly the information they need based
on their roles and responsibilities.
RSA enV ision

For tenants requiring centralized event management for their virtualized systems, dedicated instances
of RSA enVision are provisioned for their exclusive use. As a virtual appliance under the tenants
control, RSA enVision in this use case provides the mechanism for the virtualized operating systems,
applications, and services to centralize their event and logs. The tenant can use the reports and
dashboards within their RSA enVision instance, or integrate it with an instance of RSA Archer eGRC,
to ensure transparency to the operational and security events within their hosted environment.
135

This section discusse s using RSA Archer eGRC and RSA enVision to achieve service provider
management and control.
RSA Archer eGRC

Similar to providing the tenants with reporting capabilities, the RSA Archer eGRC Platform empowers
the service provider with comprehensive, real-time visibility into their governance, risk, and compliance
program. This transparency allows the provider to more effectively manage the risks to their
environment, and in turn, manage the risks to their customers hosted resources. Through the
continuous monitoring of controls and the remediation workflow capabilities, service providers can
ensure that the shared and dedicated infrastructure meets both the requirements set forth by
regulatory authorities and those agreed upon with their tenants.
Figur e 78. Sa mpl e report
RSA enV ision

Service providers in a multi-tenant environment need the complete visibility that RSA enVision
provides into their converged infrastructure environment. By consolidating the alerts and events from
all the Vblock System components, service providers can efficiently and effectively monitor, manage,
and control the environment. The realtime knowledge of what is happening in the Vblock System
empowers the service provider in the facilitation of each of the VCE elements of trusted multi-tenancy.
136
Conclusion
The six foundational elements of secure separation, service assurance, security and compliance,
availability and data protection, tenant management and control, and service provider management
and control form the basis of the Vblock System trusted multi-tenancy design framework.
The following table summarizes the technologies used to ensure trusted multi-tenancy at each layer of
the Vblock System.
Trusted multitenancy element
Secure separation
Compute
Storage
Network
Use of serv ice

prof iles f or tenants
VSAN segmentation
VLAN segmentation
Zoning
VRF
Phy sical blade

separation
Mapp ing and

masking
UCS organization al
groups
RAID groups and

pools
Cisco Nexus 7000

Virtual Dev ice
Context (VDC)
UCS RBAC, serv ice

prof iles, and serv er
pools
Virtual Data Mov er
Access Control Lists

(ACL), Nexus 1000V
port prof iles
Security
technologies
Discrete, separate
instances of RSA
Archer eGRC and
RSA enVision f or the
serv ice prov ider and
f or each tenant as
needed
VMware v Shield
Apps, Edge
UCS VLANs
UCS VSANs
VMware v Cloud
Director
Serv ice assurance
UCS quality of
serv ice
Port channels
Serv er pools
VMware v Cloud
Director
VMware High
Av ailability
EMC Unisphere
Quality of Serv ice
Mana ger
Nexus
1000/5000/70 00
quality of serv ice
EMC Fully
Automated Storage
Tierin g (FAST)
Quality of serv ice

band width control
Pools
Quality of serv ice

rate limiting
Quality of serv ice
traffic classif ication
VMware Fault
Toler ance
Robust reports and

dashboard v iews
with RSA Archer
eGRC
Audit logging and
alerting with RSA
enVision integrated
into the incident
management
lif ecycle
Quality of serv ice

queuing
VMware Distributed
Resource Scheduler
(DRS)
VMware v Sphere
Resource Pools
Security and
compliance
UCS RBAC
LDAP
vCenter
Administrator group
RADIUS or
TACACS+
Authentication with
LDAP or Activ e
Directory
ASA f irewalls
VNX User Account

Roles
Cisco Intrusion
Prev ention Sy stem
(IPS)
VNX and RSA

enVision
IP Filtering
Cisco Application
Control Engine
Port security
ACLs
Lif ecycle and

reporting of
automated and nonautomated control
compliance with
RSA Archer eGRC
Regulatory logging
and auditing
requirements met
with RSA enVision
137
Trusted multitenancy element

Av ailability and
data protection
Compute
Storage
Network
Security
technologies
Cisco UCS High

Av ailability (dual
f abric interconnect)
High Av ailability : link

redunda ncy ,
hard ware and no de
redunda ncy
Cisco Nexus OS
v irtual port channels
(v PC)
Data classif ication

questionnaires with
RSA Archer eGRC
Cisco Hot Standby

Router Protocol
Real-time
correlations and
alerting through
integration of
sy stems with RSA
enVision
Fabric interconnect
clustering
Serv ice prof ile
dy namic mobility
Local and remote

data protection
EMC Snap Sure
VMware v Sphere
High Av ailability
EMC Snap Vie w
VMware v Motion
EMC Mir rorVie w
VMware v Center
Heartbeat
EMC Po werPath
Migratio n Enabler
EMC Recov erPoint
Cisco Nexus 1000V

and MAC pinni ng
Dev ice/Link
Redundancy
Nexus 1000V
Activ e/Standby VSM
VMware v Cloud
Director cells
VMware v Center
Site Recov ery
Mana ger (SR M)
Tena nt
management and
control
VMware v Cloud
Director
VMware v Cloud
Director
VMware v Cloud
Director
RSA enVision
Tena nt v isibility into

their security and
compliance posture
through discrete
instances of RSA
Archer eGRC
Instances of RSA
enVision to address
specif ic tenant
requirements and
regulatory needs
Serv ice prov ider

management and
control
VMware v Center
EMC Unisphere
Cisco UCS Manager
EMC Ionix UIM/P
VMware v Cloud
Director
VMware v Shield
Mana ger
VMware v Center
Chargeback
Cisco Nexus 1000V
Cisco Data Center

Network Mana ger
(DCNM)
Cisco Fabric
Mana ger (FM)
Prov ider gov ernance

and insight ov er
entire security and
compliance posture
with RSA Archer
eGRC
Centralize logg ing
and alerting to
maximize
efficiencies with
RSA enVision
EMC Ionix Unif ied

Inf rastructure
Mana ger
138
Next steps
To learn more about this and other solutions, contact a VCE representative or visit www.vce.com.
139
Acronym glossary
The following table defines acronyms used throughout this guide.
Acronym
Definition
ABE
Access based enumeration
ACE
Application Control Engine
ACL
Access control list
ACS
Access Control Serv er
AD
Activ e Directory
AMP
Adv anced Management Pod
API
Application progr amming interf ace
CDP
Continuous data protection
CHAP
Challenge Handshake Authentication Protocol
CLI
Command-line interf ace
CNA
Conv erged network adapter
CoS
Class of serv ice
CRR
Continuous remote replication
DR
Disaster recov ery
DRS
Distributed Resource Scheduler
EFD
Enterprise f lash driv e
ERSPAN
Encapsulated Remote Switched Port Analy zer
FAST
Fully Automated Storage Tiering
FC
Fibre channel
FCoE
Fibre Channel ov er Ethernet
FWSM
Firewall Serv ices Module
GbE
Gigabit Ethernet
HA
High Av ailability
HBA
Host bus adapter
HSRP
Hot standby router protocol
IaaS
Inf rastructure as a serv ice
IDS
Intrusion detection system
IPS
Intrusion prev ention system
IPsec
Internet protocol security
140
Acronym
Definition
LACP
Link aggregate control protocol
LUN
Logical unit number
MAC
Medi a access control
NAM
Network Analy sis Module
NAT
Network address translation
NDMP
Network Data Management Protocol
NPV
N port v irtualization
NTP
Network Time Protocol
PAgP
Port Aggregation Protocol
PACL
Port access control list
PCI-DSS
Pay ment card industry data security standards
PPME
Powe rPath Mi gration Enab ler
QoS
Quality of serv ice
RACL
Router access control list
RBAC
Role-based access control
SAN
Storage area net work
SLA
Serv ice lev el agreement
SPOF
Single point of f ailure
SRM
Site Recov ery Manager
SSH
Secure shell
SSL
Secure socket lay er
TMT
Trusted multi-tenancy
UIM/P
Unif ied Inf rastructure Manage r Prov isioning
UCS
Unif ied Computing System
UQM
Unisphere Quality of Serv ice Manager
VACL
VLAN access control list
vCD
vCloud Director
vDC
Virtual data center
VDC
Virtual dev ice context
VDM
Virtual data mov er
VEM
Virtual Ethernet Mod ule
vHBA
Virtual host bus adapter
141
Acronym
Definition
VIC
Virtual interf ace card
VIP
Virtual IP
VLAN
Virtual local area netwo rk
VM
Virtual machine
VMDK
Virtual machine disk
VMFS
Virtual machine f ile sy stem
vNIC
Virtual network interf ace card
v PC
VRF
Virtual routing and f orwarding
VSAN
Virtual storage area network
v SM
v Shield Manager
VSM
Virtual Superv isor Module
WAF
Web application f irewall
142
ABOUT VCE
VCE, formed by Cisco and EMC with investments from VMware and Intel, accelerates the adoption of converged infrastructure and
cloud-based computing models that dramatically reduce the cost of IT while improving time to market for our customers. VCE,
through the Vblock Systems, delivers the industry's only fully integrated and fully virtualized cloud infrastructure system. VCE
solutions are available through an extensive partner network, and cover horizontal applications, vertical industry offerings, and
application development environments, allowing customers to focus on business innovation instead of integrating, validating, and
managing IT infrastructure.
For more information, go to www.vce.com.
Copyright 2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved. Vblock and the VCE logo are registered trademarks or trademarks of VCE Company, LLC and/or its
affiliates in the United States or other countries. All other trademarks used herein are the property of their respective owners.

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VBLOCK SOLUTION FOR TRUSTED

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THE INFORMATION IN THIS PUBLICATION IS PROVIDE D "AS IS." VCE MAKES NO

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Security technologies ......................................................................................................................19

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Design cons iderations for availability and data protection...........................................................67

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Security and compliance

Availability and data protection

Tenant management and control

Service provider management and control

Cost sav ings transf erred to tenants

Standardi zed off erings

Faster incident resolution with standardized serv ices

Easier growth an d scale using standard

Secure isolation of resources and data

More pre dictable planni ng aroun d capacity and

Usage-based serv ices model, such as backup and

About this guide

Managing and operating Vblock Systems securely and reliably

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Trusted multi-tenancy foundational elements

Security and compliance

Availability and data protection

Tenant management and control

Service provider management and control

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

EMC Symmetrix Quality of Service tools

EMC Unisphere Quality of Service Manager (UQM)

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Security and compliance

Availability and data protection

Tenant management and control

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Provision allocated resources

Manage the state of all virtualized objects

View change management status for the infrastructure component

Add and remove administrative contacts

Request more services as needed

Service provider management and control

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Figur e 2. Exa mple of Vblock System architecture

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Advanced Management Pod

Monitors and manages Vblock System health, performance, and capacity

Provides fault isolation for management

Eliminates resource overhead on the Vblock System

Provides a clear demarcation point for remote operations

EMC Ionix Unified Infrastructure Manager/Pr ovisioning

Separate planning from execution to optimize senior IT technical staff

Maintain Vblock System compliance through policy-based management

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Cisco Unified Computing System

VMw are vSphere

VMw are vCenter Server

VMw are vCloud Director

2013 VCE Company, LLC. All Rights Reserved.

VMw are vCenter Char geback

VMw are vShield