vReference is by Forbes Guthrie and collects VMware reference material such as Reference Cards, Documentation Notes, and the VVD tools series, including vSphere cards, Desktop notes, a Firewall Diagram, VVD documents, and a VVD poster.

## VMware Validated Design resources

“It is probably the quickest way to understand how the VVD components are laid out and interact.” If you’re new to the Validated Designs, “take a look at the Pods box first.” It explains “the logical design for both the Management Pod” and “an example of a Compute Pod,” depicting “the high-level compute, networking and storage and a simple description of which services run on each pod type.”

“Overall, the poster is a great way to understand how each of the components are configured across regions.” You can see how VMware products within the Foundation, Ops, and CMP layers are stretched across sites, “which components have dual-site redundancy built-in (active-active), and those that failover (active-passive) when needed.”

## VVD documents

“At the heart of VVDs is the prescriptive guidance we give to design, deploy and manage your SDDC – and our primary route to delivering that guidance is through an awesome set of documentation.” The documentation is “available for FREE, for anyone to download and use,” with the full set available from the My VMware portal.

The document set includes “Introducing VMware Validated Design for Software-Defined Data Center,” the “Reference Architecture Guide,” “Planning and Preparation Guide,” and “Deployment Guides.” The Reference Architecture Guide covers “both the architecture and the detailed design of the VVD,” while the Planning and Preparation Guide is “a step-by-step guide to getting everything lined up prior to the deployment phase.”