This document discusses recommended architectures and best practices for deploying Hadoop on VMware vSphere. It recommends deploying Hadoop nodes across multiple virtualization hosts with 10Gb networking for high performance. The standard deployment places data nodes on shared storage and task trackers on local disks. It also discusses planning the cluster size, hardware requirements including CPU, memory, storage and networking considerations. Configuration recommendations include using NTP, proper virtual disk settings, enabling NUMA and avoiding overcommitting resources.