VMware Validated Design is a family of solutions for data center designs that span compute, storage, networking, and management, serving as a blueprint for your Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) implementation. The documentation of VMware Validated Design consists of succeeding deliverables for all stages of the SDDC life cycle.
All our documentation also comes in PDF, which you can access by selecting the PDF download icon while reading a page or viewing a search result.
This page covers the following topics:
- Guided Documentation Map
- Overview of Documentation Delivery
- What's New in VMware Validated Design 6.0.x
- Documentation for VMware Validated Design 6.0.x
- Guided Documentation Map for VMware Validated Design 5.1.x and Earlier
- Documentation for VMware Validated Design 5.1.1 and Earlier
- Documentation for VMware Cloud Foundation 3.x
- Learn More About VMware Validated Design
- Hands-on Labs for the SDDC
Guided Documentation Map
The documentation of VMware Validated Design implements a sequence which reflects the stages for implementing and maintaining an SDDC.
Update guidance from VMware Validated Design 6.0 to VMware Validated Design 6.0.1 is available in the release notes. See VMware Validated Design 6.0.1 Release Notes.
Overview of Documentation Delivery
The VMware Validated Design documentation is published in several iterations. At the release date, the core documents that introduce VMware Validate Design and provide guidance on the SDDC design, planning, and deployment become available live. The remaining documents are updated in groups until the entire set is compliant with the Bill of Materials of the VMware Validated Design release.
What's New in VMware Validated Design 6.0.x
See VMware Validated Design 6.0 Release Notes and VMware Validated Design 6.0.1 Release Notes.
Documentation for VMware Validated Design 6.0.x
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Introducing VMware Validated Designs | VMware Validated Design 6.0.x |
| Planning and Preparation Workbook | |
| Architecture and Design for the Management Domain | |
| Deployment of the Management Domain in the First Region | |
| Architecture and Design for a Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain | |
| Deployment of a Virtual Infrastructure Workload Domain | |
| Architecture and Design for a vSphere with Kubernetes Workload Domain | |
| Deployment of a vSphere with Kubernetes Workload Domain | |
| Architecture and Design for Cloud Operations and Automation | |
| Deployment of Cloud Operations and Automation | |
| Architecture and Design for a Red Hat OpenShift Workload Domain | VMware Validated Design 6.0.1 |
| Deployment of a Red hat OpenShift Workload Domain |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Operational Verification | VMware Validated Design 6.0 |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Design Decisions Checklist | VMware Validated Design 6.0 |
| Visio Diagrams |
Guided Documentation Map for VMware Validated Design 5.1.x and Earlier
The documentation of VMware Validated Design implements a sequence which reflects the stages for implementing and maintaining an SDDC.
VMware Validated Design supports three SDDC implementations - Standard SDDC, ROBO SDDC, and Consolidated SDDC. See SDDC Architectures.
After you deploy the SDDC, VMware Validated Design provides several types of post-deployment guidance:
- Operational guidance
- Security and compliance guidance
- Scenarios for using the system according to an IT use case, such as workload provisioning and intelligent monitoring
- Guidance on adding workload domains with an architecture for VMware software that is additional to the list of required products.
You can also use technical notes to adjust your system to a certain network and data center setup.
For information on the document types, see VMware Validated Design Documentation Structure and Audience. For information on Standard SDDC, Consolidated SDDC, and ROBO SDDC architectures, see VMware Validated Design SDDC Architectures.
Documentation for VMware Validated Design 5.1.x and Earlier
Use the following documents, available for the latest or earlier release of VMware Validated Design, to design and implement a validated SDDC.
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Introducing VMware Validated Designs | VMware Validated Design 5.1.1 |
| Architecture and Design | |
| Planning and Preparation | |
| Deployment of Region A | |
| Deployment of Region B | |
| Deployment for Multiple Availability Zones |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Upgrade from 5.1 to 5.1.1 | VMware Validated Design 5.1.1 |
| Upgrade from 5.0.x to 5.1 | VMware Validated Design 5.1 |
| Monitoring and Alerting | VMware Validated Design 5.1.1 |
| Operational Verification | |
| Backup and Restore | |
| Site Protection and Recovery | |
| Certificate Replacement |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Architecture and Design for Consolidated SDDC | VMware Validated Design 5.1.1 |
| Planning and Preparation for Consolidated SDDC | |
| Deployment for Consolidated SDDC | |
| Certificate Replacement |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Architecture and Design for VMware NSX-T Workload Domains | VMware Validated Design 5.1.1 |
| Deployment of VMware NSX-T Workload Domains | |
| Architecture and Design for VMware NSX-T for Workload Domains with Multiple Availability Zones | VMware Validated Design 5.1.2 |
| Deployment of VMware NSX-T for Workload Domains with Multiple Availability Zones | |
| Architecture and Design for VMware Enterprise PKS with VMware NSX-T Workload Domains | VMware Validated Design 5.1 |
| Deployment of VMware Enterprise PKS with VMware NSX-T Workload Domains |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Introducing Security and Compliance | Version-independent |
| Security and Compliance Configuration for NIST 800-53 | VMware Validated Design 5.1.1 |
| Compliance Kit for NIST 800-53 | |
| Security and Compliance Configuration for PCI | |
| Compliance Kit for PCI |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Architecture and Design for Extending VMware Validated Design to VMware Cloud on AWS | VMware Validated Design 5.x |
| PDF Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Migrating to VMware Validated Design | Version-independent |
| Deploying VMware Validated Design Using OSPF Dynamic Routing | |
| Extending VMware Validated Design with Multiple Regions | |
| Scaling Up and Scaling Out VMware Validated Design |
| Deliverable | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Design Decisions Checklist | VMware Validated Design 5.1.x |
| Visio Diagrams |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Architecture and Design for ROBO SDDC | VMware Validated Design 4.3 |
| Planning and Preparation | |
| Deployment | |
| Certificate Replacement |
| Online Documentation | Latest Available Version |
|---|---|
| Scenarios for IT Automating IT | VMware Validated Design 4.3 |
| Scenarios for Intelligent Operations |
Documentation for VMware Cloud Foundation 3.x
The following documents extend the portfolio of VMware Cloud Foundation.
| Online Documentation | Last Available Version |
|---|---|
| Deployment of VMware vRealize Suite 2019 on VMware Cloud Foundation 3.10 | VMware Cloud Foundation 3.10 |
| VMware Cloud Foundation 3.9.1 Site Protection and Recovery | VMware Cloud Foundation 3.9.1 |
| Using Hosts with Multiple Physical NICs with VMware Cloud Foundation 3.x | VMware Cloud Foundation 3.10 |
| Deployment of VMware NSX-T Workload Domains with Multiple Availability Zones for VMware Cloud Foundation | VMware Cloud Foundation 3.9 |
|
Learn More About VMware Validated Design
Hands-on Labs for the SDDC
For hands-on experience with the SDDC, try the Software-Defined Data Center hands-on labs.