On-premises operating model - AWS Prescriptive Guidance
Provisioning and configuration teamOperational health teamLifecycle management teamCapacity management teamAvailability and continuity teamSecurity teamBAU core IT processes teamBAU resource management team

On-premises operating model

VMware on-premises operations are typically handled by eight teams: provisioning and configuration, operational health, lifecycle management, capacity management, availability and continuity, security, business as usual (BAU) core IT, and BAU resource management teams. These are described in the sections that follow.

Provisioning and configuration team

This team focuses on installing the operating system for the guest and the host, creating configurations based on guidelines, and patching infrastructure components. Specifically:

  • Operating system configuration and installation – Configuration of the guest operating system, installing and updating the operating system when there are updates available

  • Configuring network and security for management and compute clusters

  • Storage provisioning and configuration – Provisioning new logical unit numbers (LUNs) and storage when certain thresholds are met

  • Hardware provisioning – racking and stacking of hardware

  • Patching infrastructure stack – Patching network components, storage components, and hypervisors

  • Configuration management – Managing continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines and tools

Operational health team

This team sets up monitoring and logging for virtual machines (VMs) and hypervisors. They also set up all security-related configurations for VMs. The operational health team is responsible for the following:

  • Monitoring and logging for the guest operating system – Installing monitoring and logging agents on the guest operating system, which then can be used to monitor the health of the system

  • Infrastructure monitoring and logging – Setting up monitoring and logging on all infrastructure components, including hypervisor, physical networking devices, and storage

  • Antivirus – Installing agents on the guest operating system to secure the system and applications

  • Hardware failure monitoring – Setting up thresholds on hardware to monitor failures and replace hardware upon failure

  • VM encryption

Lifecycle management team

This team focus on operating system and application patching to incorporate updates, including critical security updates, bug fixes, and patches that are released by vendors for the following:

  • Operating system patching

  • Application software and components

  • Networking (VMware NSX)

  • Storage (VMware vSAN)

  • Compute virtualization (VMware vSphere)

Capacity management team

This team focuses on resource forecasting, which includes understanding the rate of growth in the current infrastructure and using tools to predict future requirements. Based on requirements, this team orders the hardware to host more VMs in the future, as a time-bound activity. The capacity management team is responsible for the following:

  • Resource capacity intake – Determining the resources that should always be available in the data center

  • Resource forecasting – Using tools and past utilization metrics; forecasting the resource to purchase to meet future demand

Availability and continuity team

This team is responsible for setting up, testing, and maintaining high availability and disaster recovery, including VM and hypervisor failures. Specifically:

  • Operating system and application backup – Setting up backup and restore functionality, and making sure that backups don’t fail

  • Recovery – Installing and configuring recovery tools

  • High availability

  • Disaster recovery – Configuring tools such as VMware Site Recovery Manager

  • Business continuity

Security team

The security team focuses on maintaining the security posture of the infrastructure by setting up permissions on vCenter and configuring infrastructure security, including Secure Shell (SSH) access and connectivity to vCenter. This team is responsible for:

  • Roles and permissions – Managing the authentication and authorization of users

  • Infrastructure security – Setting up infrastructure security for the data center

  • Data protection in flight and at rest

  • Firewall and VPN setup

  • Incident response – Determining the steps to follow when a security incident occurs

  • Managing vulnerabilities for the operating system and application

BAU core IT processes team

This team is responsible for:

  • Change management

  • Change workflow automation

  • Incident management

  • Problem management

BAU resource management team

This team manages:

  • Software licensing – Managing licenses for the operating system and application

  • Software inventory

  • Managing the configuration management database (CMDB)

  • VMware licensing – Licensing core Infrastructure components such as VMware ESXi, vSAN, vCenter, and NSX