One simple and scalable approach to cluster design is the building block approach that is employed by many service providers and large private cloud platforms hosted by enterprise customers. The idea is that each cluster is a standard container of resources that is provisioned consistently to provide a simple, scalable, and building block approach to compute resource provisioning. Not only does this methodology scale consistently across data centers, but it also eliminates variability, configuration drift, and the amount of operational effort involved with patch management and day-to-day operations. This approach is the simplest and most effective way to provide a flexible building block solution that meets the service provider’s requirement for elasticity. This building-block approach standardizes the configuration of the ESXi hosts, clusters, and even server cabinets to help provide a manageable and supportable infrastructure.

Standardizing not only the model, but also the physical and logical configuration of the ESXi hosts and clusters, is critical to providing a manageable and supportable infrastructure in large-scale deployments by eliminating variability. The aim is to utilize vSphere host profiles to configure additional values consistently across hosts and clusters wherever applicable, post-installation.

In the off-premises, hosted private cloud use case scenario, cluster sizing is dictated and configured according to the specific customer’s requirement, because a dedicated management stack, including vCenter Server, is mandated by the design. However, for the shared multitenanted virtual data center use case, this building block approach aligns with the service provider’s scaling and elasticity requirements.