At today’s VMworld keynote VMware will be announcing the availability of Validated Designs for Software Defined Data Center.

As a senior consultant who works for a VMware partner ,who currently does a large portion of my work as VMware PSO and having just submitted for my second attempt for the VCDX I have  been fortunate to have access to materials and templates around almost all of VMware’s offerings. But for people who aren’t partners or maybe even more so are partners but don’t get to do “cutting edge” PSO type engagements it is hard to know where to start doing designs.

Now that the SDDC has been released and is starting to move forward, the amount of information you have to collect and go through that covers multiple reference architectures and white papers that normally have product-specific information is painful. You also come out with different outcomes and this is something VMware’s Validated Designs for Software Defined Data Center is looking to remedy.

What are VMware Validated Designs?

• Architectures & Designs created and validated by VMware experts

• Encompass the entire set of VMware’s Software-Defined Data Center products

• Standardized and streamlined design for each deployment scenario & broad use-case:
  • Datacenter Foundation
  • Single-region & Dual-region IT Automation
  • QE / Demo Cloud
  • Much much more

What’s in a VMware Validated Design?

The contents are a bit like the VMware partner Solution Enablement Toolkits but so much more they are:

• Solution Overview
• Design Objectives
• Reference Architecture Documents & Blueprints
• Final Design Specification—including specific products and versions
• Hardware Prerequisites & Preparatory Procedures
• Implementation Guides
• Operations Documentation

Reference Architectures based on the VMware Validated Designs Process

VMware are making two Reference Architectures available today based on the VMware Validated Designs Process.

• Foundation
  • The building block for all future designs
    • Focus is on datacenter, storage, and network virtualization with monitoring.
    • Uses vSphere with Operations Management (vSOM), VMware Virtual SAN, and NSX for vSphere.
• Automated provisioning with the SDDC
  • Adds provisioning and deeper monitoring to Foundation.
    • Focus is on automating common IT provisioning tasks.
    • Uses vCloud Suite, VMware Virtual SAN, NSX for vSphere and vRealize Log Insight.

Learn More & Early Access

You can sign up for the beta right now to get early access and regular updates and to also learn more about VMware Validated Designs.