VMware vSphere and vCenter Introduction

Logical view of vCenter/vSphere/ESX implementation

[edit] Background

Benefits of virtual machines:

• Freedom from physical hardware constraints (various OS's running across different hardware)

• Backup and recovery with little or no down-time

• Greater resource utilization (multiple virtual machines run on same physical server and can manage resources)

vCenter Server- manages multiple host servers that run multiple virtual machines

• Allows creation of new server virtual machines and create a library of virtual machine templates

• Allows migration of running VMs between host servers so that you can perform hardware maintenance with minimal downtime

• Allows you to balance VM workloads across hosts and manage VMs for high availability disaster recovery

• Single point of control for data center

• Runs on top of a windows server to manage VMware ESX/ESXi hosts and provide access control, performance monitoring, and configuration

• Unifies resources from individual hosts to be shared among VMs in the entire data center

• Performs all vSphere activities

vSphere Client- interfaces with vCenter to manage virtual infrastructure

• Primary interface for creating, managing, and monitoring VMs, their resources, and their hosts.

• Multiple vSphere clients can connect to a vCenter Server

Inventory views- provide a view of all objects that the vCenter Server manages, such as data centers, resource pools, clusters, networks, data stores, templates, hosts, and VMs.

• Left panel in vSphere shows entire inventory

Four inventory views:

• Hosts and Clusters- displays hierarchy of all inventory objects except templates, networks, and data stores

• VMs and Templates- displays list of VMs and templates

• Networks- displays list of networks

• Data stores- displays list of data stores

[edit] Virtualization Terminology

Datacenter- primary container of inventory objects such as hosts, VMs, resource pools, and clusters. From the datacenter you can typically complete tasks such as adding hosts, folders, and clusters.

• vCenter can contain multiple datacenters

Host- a computer that uses ESX or ESXi to provide CPU and memory resources that the VMs will use and give VMs access to storage on the networks.

VM- a software computer that has the same functionality as a hardware computer. They run on hosts or clusters.

• You can use VMware Converter to convert a physical machine to a VM template

Template- a master image of a VM that you can use to create and provision new VMs. Image typically includes an OS, applications and VM configuration that defines a full set of VM hardware. To create a template convert an existing VM to a template, clone a VM to a template, or clone existing templates.

Inventory>Virtual Machine> Template > Convert to Template

Inventory>Virtual Machine> Template > Clone to Template

Inventory>Template>Clone

Folder- a container to further refine the object within you inventory.

• Organize VMs and templates based on function.

• You can group: Datacenters, VMs (and templates), Computer resources (including hosts/clusters)

Cluster- a group of hosts that share resources and a management interface. Cluster manages resources of all hosts within it.

• Clusters enable the VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) and HA (High Availability) solutions.

• DRS continuously balances VM workloads across all ESX/ESXi servers in a cluster.

• HA allows virtual machines running on ESX/ESXi hosts to automatically recover from host failures

Resource Pool- provides a way to divide the resources of a stand-alone host or a cluster into smaller pools. Configured with a set of CPU and memory resources that the VMs that run in the resource pool share.

• You can combine multiple physical servers into a single resource pool that aggregates CPU and memory

• Using resource pools you can:

• Allocate processor and memory resources to VMs running on the same cluster

• Establish minimum, maximum, and proportional resource shares for CPU and memory

• Modify allocations while VMs are running

• Enable applications to dynamically acquire more resources to accommodate peak performance

Inventory>Cluster>New Resource Pool

Datastore- a logical container that holds VM files and other files necessary for VM operations.

• Can exist on different types of physical storage, including local storage, iSCSI, Fibre Channel SAN, or NFS. A datastore can be VMFS-based or NFS-based

• Create a new datastore by formatting LUNs or by mounting NFS volumes to an existing host.

• Use Add Storage command to create and configure a new datastore

• Every VM uses a virtual hard disk to store its OS, program files, and other data associated with its activities.

• Virtual disk files are stored on dedicated storage space on a variety of physical storage systems, including internal and external devices of a host, or networked storage, dedicated to the specific tasks of storing and protecting data.