About Liquid Web Dedicated VMware

Powered by VMware and NetApp, Dedicated VMware delivers all the benefits of a traditional public cloud with the power, performance, and security of an isolated infrastructure on dedicated hardware.

Whether you’re considering your first move from on-premises infrastructure to the cloud, looking for secure elasticity for your development team, or are already in a VMware hosted environment but not getting the support you deserve, we have a managed Dedicated VMware solution to fit for your needs.

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Licensing

VMware Licensing

VMware ESXi licensing is leased through Liquid Web and installed during provisioning. For Managed Dedicated VMware, customers cannot provide their own VMware licensing. For Unmanaged Dedicated VMware, we are able to provide an unmanaged ESXi server for custom licensing to be used. If the customer provides their own licensing, they must do so during the sale itself so that the server can be built with it.

Windows licensing

Customers can provide their own Windows OS and SQL licensing or lease Liquid Web-provided Windows licenses. If the customer provides their own Windows licensing, they must do so during the sale itself so that the server can be built with it.

Roles and Responsibilities

A Dedicated VMware environment powered by VMware may be made up of Managed and Unmanaged components. The table below breaks down the roles, responsibilities, and access of both Liquid Web and the customer.

Virtualization	Customer	Liquid Web
Management of underlying virtualization infrastructure		X
VM Image troubleshooting		X
Patching VMware environment		X
Virtual Machines	Customer	Liquid Web
Deploy new virtual machines		X
Delete virtual machines		X
VM resource allocation change		X
Remote administration of VMs	X	X (1)
Hardware	Customer	Liquid Web
Manage deployment of equipment		X
Maintain inventory for repairs		X
Managed storage infrastructure		X
High availability failover configuration, testing, and support		X
vMotion configuration and support		X
Operating Systems	Customer	Liquid Web
Deploy Liquid Web Managed operating systems (MS Windows Server and Linux)		X
Ensure OS licensing compliance	X (2)	X
Patch operating systems		X
SSL installation/troubleshooting	X	X
Backups (when subscribed)	X	X
Monitoring	Customer	Liquid Web
Monitor virtual machine operating system		X
Configure monitoring for virtual machine OS		X
Respond to monitoring alerts for virtual machine OS		X
Configure and respond to infrastructure monitoring alerts (such as ping and port alerts)		X
Configure and respond to vCenter monitoring alerts		X
Network	Customer	Liquid Web
Manage firewalls		X
Manage load balancers		X
Monitor bandwidth consumption		X
Troubleshoot network connectivity		X
Manage firewall rules	X	X
Manage DNS	X	X (3)

1. Liquid Web upon request by customer
2. Customer is responsible for maintaining licensing compliance when using their own.
3. When using Liquid Web Name Servers

Maintenance

Scheduling certain maintenances or other change requests in advance reduces interruption of service and ensures full team staffing at Liquid Web so that the customer has all the help they need.

Scheduling is based on the maintenance calendar availability of all teams involved and is reserved on a first-come, first-served basis. However, if this maintenance is urgent or if there is a limited timeline in which to execute it, customers can contact their account team to see what accommodations can be made.

Getting Started with Liquid Web Dedicated VMware

This guide contains the following sections:

Liquid Web Dedicated VMware Architecture
Liquid Web Dedicated VMware Virtualization Features

Liquid Web Dedicated VMware Architecture

An architecture diagram of Liquid Web Dedicated VMware powered by VMWare.
diagram of vm architecture

Liquid Web Dedicated VMware Virtualization Features

Overview of features that are available to you as a Liquid Web Dedicated VMware customer, based upon your configuration and subscriptions.

Features	Description
vMotion®	VMware vMotion allows live migrations of workloads to take place between hosts. Applications will continue to run and will continue to be accessible to the system during the migration, resulting in migrations with zero downtime.
Storage vMotion®	Much like vMotion allows live migrations of workloads between hosts, Storage vMotion allows live migrations of VMs between different disks/storage media with zero downtime.
vSwap®	The vSwap feature allows VMs to use host memory instead of disk for their swap to improve performance in memory constrained workloads.
vSphere High Availability (HA)	VMware HA automatically fails over to a different host and restarts virtual machines in the event of a hardware failure.
VMware Snapshots	Snapshots allow changes to be committed safely. Saving a snapshot of a VM prior to a change allows for a VM to be rolled back if needed.
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)	Automatically move VMs between hosts in a cluster to make sure resources are balanced.
Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC )	Allows an easier upgrade path, allowing VMs to work across CPU generations by allowing you to set what CPU is showing to a VM.
Thin Disk Provisioning	Save resources on the Private Cloud. Virtual machines will only use the amount of disk space they actually need to store their data, regardless of how much disk is provisioned. This prevents disk space from being wasted, and makes managing and moving VMs faster.

Liquid Web Dedicated VMware User Manual

With Liquid Web Dedicated VMware, customers have access to vCenter to view VM’s, start and stop VM’s and console into VM’s.

Ordering Virtual Machines
Cloning Virtual Machines
Managing Virtual Machines
Viewing Hypervisor and Virtual Machine Performance
Migrating Workloads to Liquid Web Private Cloud
Resource Minimums for Supported Images

Ordering Virtual Machines

Upon initial order, a Solutions Representative will work with the customer to have the initial required virtual machines deployed. After the environment is deployed, the customer will be able to order additional virtual machines by contacting the assigned Account Manager and providing the required specifications for virtual machine(s).
– If this request falls outside of normal business hours, support is able to deploy the required virtual machine(s).

Cloning Virtual Machines

If the customer would like to clone an existing VM, this can be done by opening a case with the support team who will handle all the details of cloning the virtual machine in question. This is one of the perks of having a Managed Private Cloud, to let the Helpful Humans do the heavy lifting.

Managing Virtual Machines

Virtual Machines can be built with the industry standard cPanel web administration interface to make managing sites and servers easier and faster. Or by using a core managed VM, the customer can control the resource usage and tweak the environment to fit their needs more specifically.

Viewing Hypervisor and Virtual Machine Performance

With access to the dedicated vCenter server, customers are able to see current resource usage, as well as trends over time for all of their virtual machines and hypervisors. Track resources like CPU, memory, and disk usage over time to identify busy periods and improve performance.

Migrating Workloads to Liquid Web Private Cloud

There are a few different routes for migrating existing workloads over to Liquid Web’s Dedicated VMware. Below are the details for the options available.

Customers are able to self migrate their workloads.
Liquid Web is able to provide free migration services. There are specific requirements that need to be met in order to qualify for this. This is assessed by a customer contacting their Solution Team Representative to see if the migration qualifies.
If the customer is unable to self migrate or qualify for Liquid Web’s free migration service, there are other options as well. Solution Representatives will be able to assist in providing a migration solution to fit the customer’s needs.