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.