VMWARE:

VMware Infrastructure is a full infrastructure virtualization suite that provides

comprehensive virtualization, management, resource optimization, application availability, and
operational automation capabilities in an integrated offering. VMware Infrastructure virtualizes
and aggregates the underlying physical hardware resources across multiple systems and provides
pools of virtual resources to the data center in the virtual environment.

Fig No.61 VM infrastructure

VMWARE INFRASTRUCTURE ARCHITECTURE

VMware ESX Server – A robust, production‐proven virtualization layer run on physical servers
that abstracts processor, memory, storage, and networking resources into multiple virtual
machines. Two versions of ESX Server are available:

„ 1. ESX Server 3 contains a built‐in service console. It is available as an installable CD‐ ROM
boot image.

„ 2. ESX Server 3i does not contain a service console. It is available in two forms.ESX Server 3i
Embedded and ESX Server 3i Installable. ESX Server 3i Embedded is firmware that is built into
a server’s physical hardware. ESX Server 3i Installable is software that is available as an installable
CD‐ROM boot image.

VirtualCenter Server – The central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtualized
IT environments.

VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client) – An interface that allows users to connect remotely
to the VirtualCenter Server or individual ESX Servers from any Windows PC.

VMware Infrastructure Web Access (VI Web Access) – A Web interface that allows virtual
machine management and access to remote consoles.

VMware Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) – A high‐performance cluster file system for
ESX Server virtual machines.

VMware Virtual Symmetric Multi‐Processing (SMP) – Feature that enables a single virtual
machine to use multiple physical processors simultaneously.

VMware VMotion and VMware Storage VMotion – VMware VMotion enables the live
migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another with zero down time,
continuous service availability, and complete transaction integrity. VMware Storage VMotion
enables the migration of virtual machine files from one data store to another without service
interruption.
VMware High Availability (HA) – Feature that provides easy‐to‐use, cost‐effective high
availability for applications running in virtual machines. In the event of server failure, affected
virtual machines are automatically restarted on other production servers that have spare capacity.

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) – Feature that allocates and balances
computing capacity dynamically across collections of hardware resources for virtual machines.
This feature includes distributed power management (DPM) capabilities that enable a datacenter
to significantly reduce its power consumption.

VMware Consolidated Backup (Consolidated Backup) – Feature that provides an easy‐to‐use,

centralized facility for agent‐free backup of virtual machines. It simplifies backup administration
and reduces the load on ESX Servers.

VMware Infrastructure SDK – Feature that provides a standard interface for VMware and third‐
party solutions to access the VMware Infrastructure.

PHYSICAL TOPOLOGY OF VI DATACENTER:

Typical VMware Infrastructure datacenter consists of basic physical building blocks such
as x86 computing servers, storage networks and arrays, IP networks, a management server, and
desktop clients.

Fig No.62 Physical Topology

Computing Servers

The computing servers are industry standard x86 servers that run VMware ESX Server on
the bare metal. ESX Server software provides resources for and runs the virtual machines. Each
computing server is referred to as a standalone host in the virtual environment. A number of
similarly configured x86 servers can be grouped together with connections to the same network
and storage subsystems to provide an aggregate set of resources in the virtual environment, called
a cluster.

Storage Networks and Arrays

Fiber Channel SAN arrays, iSCSI SAN arrays, and NAS arrays are widely used storage
technologies supported by VMware Infrastructure to meet different datacenter storage needs.
Sharing the storage arrays between (by connecting them to) groups of servers via storage area
networks allows aggregation of the storage resources and provides more flexibility in provisioning
them to virtual machines.
 IP Networks

Each computing server can have multiple Ethernet network interface cards (NICs) to
provide high bandwidth and reliable networking to the entire datacenter.

VirtualCenter Server

The VirtualCenter Server provides a convenient single point of control to the datacenter. It
provides many essential datacenter services such as access control, performance monitoring, and
configuration. It unifies the resources from the individual computing servers to be shared among
virtual machines in the entire datacenter. It accomplishes this by managing the assignment of
virtual machines to the computing servers and the assignment of resources to the virtual machines
within a given computing server based on the policies set by the system administrator. Computing
servers will continue to function even in the unlikely event that VirtualCenter Server becomes
unreachable (for example, the network is severed). They can be managed separately and will
continue to run the virtual machines assigned to them based on the resource assignment that was
last set. After the VirtualCenter Server becomes reachable, it can manage the datacenter as a whole
again.

Desktop Clients

VMware Infrastructure provides a selection of interfaces for datacenter management and

virtual machine access. Users can choose the interface that best meets their needs:VMware
Infrastructure Client (VI Client), Web Access through a Web browser, or terminal services (such
as Windows Terminal Services) becomes reachable, it can manage the datacenter as a whole again.

VMWARE PRODUCTS:

VMware's product line provides a sometimes-confounding array of packages and features,

which can be difficult for a virtualization administrator to navigate. This VMware products and
features overview demystifies the virtualization platform by breaking down the capabilities of
VMware's feature sets as well as how VMware bundles these features into its various virtualization
products. VMware's product line is divided into two categories.

1. Data center / server virtualization

2. Desktop virtualization

Data center / server virtualization:

1. Free ESXi edition: the free version of VMware ESX/ESXi that allows you to consolidate
servers while still using VMware's enterprise-grade hypervisor

2. vSphere 4/ESX Server: includes ESX and ESXi plus a number of features, depending
on the edition of the vSphere suite that you select. Some vSphere features are:
 VMotion: moved running virtual machines (VMs) from one server to
another

Storage VMotion (SVMotion): moves the virtual disks of a running

virtual machine from one datastore to another

VMware High Availability (or VMware HA, VMHA):

reboots running VMs on another ESX server if an ESX host goes
down

Fault Tolerance (FT): moves a running VMs from one ESX server to
another if the server they run on goes down

Distributed Power Management (DPM): when demand is low on a

virtual infrastructure, running VMs are consolidated onto fewer servers,
and unused servers are powered off

VMware Consolidated Backup (or VCB): this VMware backup tool

enables you to back up running virtual machines using an existing
backup application

vShield Zones: creates a virtual firewall within your virtual

infrastructure.

3. vCenter Server: the centralized management server that

manages all ESX servers andenables most vSphere features

4. VMware Server: a free virtualization platform that runs in an

existing Windows or Linuxoperating system.

Desktop virtualization:

1. VMware View (includes VMware VDI): used to

consolidate desktop PCs into yourvirtual infrastructure

2. VMware Workstation: allows you to run multiple operating systems on

your desktop PC. Few other products most popularly used are vSphere (

server virtualization), Horizon

View ( Desktop virtualization), ThinApp ( Application virtualization),
vCloud Director ( Cloud),vRA (Private Cloud), vCloud Air ( Public
cloud), VMware Workstation ( Type 2 virtualization), NSX ( Network
virtualization),vSan ( Storage Virtualization).

VMWARE FEATURES:
 There are some advanced features VSystems uses regularly or
has implemented within VMware that greatly increase the desirability
of a virtual infrastructure over a traditional physical server
environment. The following features work within a VMware
environment to improve performance, streamline efficiency and
improve consistency that few non-virtual environments can manage
without taking on massive resources:

- High Availability (HA) : High Availability improves the reliability

of the environment. The purpose of Highly Available servers is to
reduce downtime in case of a hardware failure. VMware vSphere
Hypervisor ESXi hosts that are arranged in clusters share resources of
the machines held within them. If a host experiences unexpected
downtime, the virtual machines on that host automatically begin
running on an alternate ESXi host within that cluster. When HA
comes into play, a machine is migrated to (and restarted on) an
alternate host. High Availability provides a method to keep virtual
machines functioning even in the case of a hardware failure. This is an
incredibly important feature for environments that cannot live with
downtime on their machines.

- Fault Tolerance (FT) : Like High Availability,Fault Tolerance

allows a virtual machine (VM) to persist through a hardware failure.

High Availability Fault Tolerance: Utilizes resources so in case of a

hardware failure VMs can be powered on from a new host

Fault Tolerance : A live shadow instance of a VM running on a

secondary host.Fault Tolerance allows the VM to continue to run,
even if a host fails suddenly, without any loss of data or connectivity
to the end user or the VM.
- vMotion : vMotion is a feature within VMware that allows the live
migration of a virtual machine from one ESXi host to another without
interrupting the services the VM provides. There is little to no
interruption in service while using vMotion to migrate a VM – usually
only a few packets are lost, and the end user should not even notice the
transition. It allows administrators to remove VMs from a host that may
be failing or not quite performing as well as it should be.

- Storage vMotion : Storage vMotion is a similar feature to vMotion,

however, it is used for migrating data to another datastore on a
connected disk. This feature performs a similar role to vMotion, but
provides administrators with the ability to manage storage issues, such
as high latency, before they become an issue within an environment.

- Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) : Distributed Resource

Scheduler (DRS) is a load- balancing feature. DRS utilizes vMotion to
automatically allow a cluster of VMware ESXi hosts to distribute the
compute workload across the environment. DRS gauges the combined
vCPU and vRAM usage amongst virtual machines running in the
environment and spreads them across the hosts in the most efficient
manner. This makes sure that the resources of an individual host are
not being overburdened, while another host is performing under a light
load.