Installation Requirements for VMware ESX Server

Perhaps you are planning to install VMware ESX in a product environment or, like many of us, we just want to find some way to test it out and learn more about it. Either way, even if you are just testing it, you need to know the installation requirements. Because ESX is such a specialized product, you cannot just install ESX on any computer, the hardware must be compatible. Let’s find out more…

Published Installation Requirements for VMware ESX Server 3.0

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My Pick for VMware ESX Server Training!
	While you may have mastered VMware’s initial virtualization products, you may need training on their newest Enterprise version. Train Signal has just released their which features topics like: Installing and Configuring VMware ESX Server Security Administration Networking Virtual Machines Check out a free sample of the VMware ESX Server Training Videos Daniel Petri, Petri IT Knowledgebase

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Yes, of course VMware has their own published installation requirements and very long lists of supported hardware. Those requirements and lists can be found at the following links:

Unlike most other Enterprise server products, VMware even goes so far as to specify the brand and model of server that you can install VMware ESX on. For example, the lowest model of Dell server that VMware supports is a Dell 1850. That server would also have to have either local SCSI drives (SAS – SCSI attached storage) or a SAN adaptor. Besides specifying the server brand & model, VMware has brand & model requirements for all hardware that will go into that server – Disk, Disk adaptor, and network adaptor.

Just like when specing out any production server, for any production environment you will need to take into account the “4 food groups” of infrastructure servers- CPU, RAM, DISK, and NETWORK. Your production server will need plenty of all 4 of these things to run the enterprise applications you will place on it.

However, you also much follow the VMware published installation requirements for any production server to ensure reliability and make sure you can get support from VMware. But what about a test server? What are our options?

VMware ESX inside a Virtual Server?

The thought crossed my mind as to why I couldn’t run VMware ESX inside, say, VMware Server 1.x or Microsoft Virtual Server. Unfortunately, this isn’t possible. VMware ESX does know the difference. You can actually load ESX on a virtual server, the installation will complete and the server will reboot. Upon rebooting, you won’t ever see the normal VMware ESX server screen showing the server’s IP address.

Recently, VMware Workstation version 6 has been released. With this release, there is an exciting new feature that makes it possible to run VMware ESX inside a VMware Workstation virtual guest operating system. Although you would want to do this only for testing due and the performance would be significantly reduced, this is still an fantastic feature for learning and testing with VMware ESX. For steps on how to do this, learn more at these links:

The Absolute Minimum Hardware Requirements for a Test server

Say that you just want to install ESX server and test it. You don’t need VMware support, high reliability,or have a SAN. You want to buy something used from Ebay or find a spare system in your company’s storage space. What are the absolute minimum hardware requirements to get ESX running?

In my experience, the most important thing I have found is that ESX WILL NOT work with SATA disk drives. This means that ESX cannot be installed on most “stock” desktop PCs and laptops today. I have been told that ESX will run on a computer with an IDE disk drive but, I haven’t tried that myself. In reality, what you should really use is a system with SCSI disk drives.

Here are two options to get ESX running on the bare minimum of hardware:

• Option 1 – find a used server on Ebay that has SCSI disk drives and use it for your ESX test server. In my case, I found a used Dell 1600SC server to use as my test VMware ESX system. These used servers run for between $200-$800 (depending on their options that are installed) and come with SCSI disk drives. However, just about any server with SCSI disk drives should work for you. So, shop around!
• Option 2 – upgrade an existing system to have SCSI disk drives. You can buy a SCSI disk controller and SCSI disk drive from Ebay for under $100. You could install the disk adaptor and drive in an existing PC and use it as a VMware ESX test server. Make sure that you get an Adaptec or LSI Logic SCSI adaptor that is on the

In my case, my used Dell server works great. It as you can see here, it is a duel processor Dell 1600SC with 2GB of RAM. It isn’t on the supported hardware list but then I wouldn’t expect VMware to support me on it either – as it is only a test system.

Summary

In summary, as the VMware ESX Virtualization operating system loads directly on the hardware, it has some more specific hardware requirements than other enterprise applications you have used in the past. Because of this, you should be aware of both the supported VMware hardware configurations for your test servers and the bare minimum hardware requirements if you want to create a VMware ESX test server.

Related articles

Recent VMware Virtualization Forum threads

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About David Davis

David Davis (CCIE #9369, CWNA, MCSE, CISSP, Linux+, CEH) has been in the IT industry for 15 years. Currently, he manages a group of systems/network administrators for a privately owned retail company and authors IT-related material in his spare time. He has written over fifty articles, eight practice tests and three video courses and has co-authored one book. His website is at

If you are looking for more training on VMware consider the

Choosing between VMware Server and ESX Server

Customers approaching today server virtualization have multiple vendors and multiple products from the same vendor to choose from.

Many adoption projects fail because companies didn’t carefully evaluate which platform best fits their needs, still unable to fully understand all implications of a choice.

A very simple project may never return on the investment because the adopted solution has a too expensive cost of ownership. On the other side a project which starts small but soon grows in complexity and involves more and more virtual machines at a fast pace, may fail because the adopted platform is not able to scale with it.

In this article we’ll approach the virtualization market leader, VMware, offering, evaluating differences between their products for enterprise deployment: the new, free Server and the popular, expensive ESX Server.

Is a free product reliable enough?

The very first thing to do is dismantle a possible preconception from virtualization newcomers about VMware Server: when a solution is free, mostly if it’s suggested for production use, it’s often considered less reliable, less performing or with less features than commercial competitors.

This habit could lead to discard VMware Server immediately when deciding which product to adopt for serious and complex virtualization projects.

In VMware Server case nothing can be further from the truth.

Before starting its huge investment to deploy virtualization in every company on the planet, VMware sold for five years previous Server versions under the name of GSX Server, with a price near the ESX Server one.

GSX Server has always been aimed at datacenter deployment as well as ESX Server and when the VMware enterprise management tool, VirtualCenter, came out it was immediately able to control both products in the same way.

At GSX Server launch in 2001 the company released an official announcement mentioning mainframe-class control and 300 worldwide known companies adhered its beta program the year before.

After releasing its first free virtualization product at the end of 2005 with VMware Player, the company decided to transform the upcoming version of GSX Server 4.0 in a free product too, renaming it Server 1.0.

Therefore after considering GSX Server a reliable product for so much time, the advent of free edition shouldn’t lower customers’ confidence in product’s capabilities.

Performances versus flexibility

Apart price, the very first difference between VMware Server and ESX Server every consultant or salesman would underline is performance achievement.

At today nobody ever published a benchmark comparison between the two platforms running the same virtual machine on the same hardware, but they way they are architected let people presume which products performs better.

While VMware Server needs an underlying operating system to be installed on, its bigger brother ESX doesn’t: it’s a bare metal solution as the industry usually calls it.

In other words part of ESX Server acts as an operating system, booting the hardware and managing it to achieve all required virtualization tasks, in the same way an appliance would do.

This difference in approach reflects a deep difference in behaviour: while Server capabilities and performances are capped by the hosting operating system, ESX Server is designed to take out the most from available hardware, with the thinnest OS layer possible.

Performing by design means ESX Server can offer customers not only better performances, but also a better consolidation ratio: the amount of concurrent running virtual machines which can be safely allocated for each CPU core in the physical host.

While VMware suggests keeping this ratio between 2 and 4 with Server, customers can reach 4 to 8 with ESX.

These values are highly dependant on expected workload on running virtual machines and on hosted applications inside: a very busy ESX Server may not allow more than three virtual machines per core while a very light Sever could easily run 10 web servers per core.

But in general they can be considered as a good reference point.

The ESX Server capability to directly control hardware components permits to improve performances also in other aspects: for example VMware developed a special file system called VMFS where to store virtual machines, which is faster and more reliable than traditional multi-purpose file systems modern operating systems offer.

Unfortunately when a virtual machine stored on VMFS needs to be migrated on another VMware product its format has to be converted.

VMware Server cannot count on VMFS and its performances depend on Windows and Linux file systems but its virtual machines can be moved on the fly on any computer with a burned DVD or a USB key, considering it just like a standard folder with a bunch of files.

But a bare metal approach brings severe limitations along with benefits: since the product itself acts as an OS, only hardware which has its drivers included will work.

So, for example, at the moment of writing VMware doesn’t include drivers for local SATA disks in ESX Server, and customers adopting it have to choose between local SCSI disks or remote storage facilities, like NAS and SANs.

Customers must also be aware that not only single equipment pieces could not be usable, but a whole machine could not as well: VMware reserves itself right to officially support only a limited amount of systems on the market, so we cannot run ESX Server on any hardware available in our datacenter and receive support for it.

The hosted approach of VMware Server instead permits to rely on underlying operating system for hardware support and drivers availability.

Anything the OS can do, like connecting a remote iSCSI disk or driving a local tape backup unit, is immediately available for Server virtual machines use.

Software availability and support is impacted as well by this difference in approach.

In ESX Server there is a limited amount of installed service utility, new installed applications could not work on it because some mandatory libraries are missing, and customers are highly discouraged to add them, to not mine reliability of the whole system.

This reduces risks but can translate in administrative pains anytime VMware didn’t implement a component needful for us.

In VMware Server environments any program can be installed on the host operating system, allowing customers to achieve tasks like disks defragmentation or backup, performance monitoring or remote management, with tools of their choice, maybe returning on an investment already done before.

Security and learning curve

Security is a hot point of difference between two products.

ESX Server has all characteristics of typical hardware solutions usually called appliances in IT Security: a black box with its own operating system, tailored for performances and minimal attack surface, with a preconfigured application on top (a firewall, an antispam, etc.).

Inside it customers find essential (and sometimes insufficient) tools for administration and vendor doesn’t support installation of any other piece of software which could introduce vulnerabilities in the system.

The appliance approach is a double edge weapon: from a point of view it cuts away the complex task of securing the environment, performing the so called hardening procedure to the operating system.

It also avoids administrators to care about system patching: when a new vulnerability on included components appears, customer just has to wait VMware to release the proper patch or a platform replacement.

For these reasons appliances, and ESX Server, are considered solutions with a lower total cost of ownership (TCO).

But from another point of view anyway, customers have few or no capability to perform an emergency operation on a vulnerable platform component.

If a system is exposed to attacks, recognized as vulnerable, but VMware is in late for a patch administrators have to mitigate risks recurring network defences where possible, or avoiding using the compromised feature.

Last but not least in some highly security environments a black box is not allowed at all, by corporate policy, for inability to fully control the platform.

In a hosted solution like VMware Server we have to face opposite problems: full control on the operating system behind the application implies notable knowledge for hardening it, time and a tremendous amount of time for finding, testing and implementing new patches.

In fact it’s not only a problem of allowing time to monitor new security bulletins, downloading patches and installing them, but more important it’s a problem testing the patch and judging it reliable before applying it to production environment.

A patch may fix security vulnerability but impact on overall system reliability. To assure this doesn’t happen a company should have a lab environment, where production systems are replicated, a valuable network traffic generator and a team handling the whole QA phase.

It’s evident this approach has huge costs which few companies can sustain, so the large majority of customers usually have only two savvy choices: use a hosted solution but maintain its OS unpatched until the application vendor (VMware in this case) doesn’t official approve the patch, or turn to a black box solution.

Less savvy customers allocate time and staff for patch management but implement OS patches without testing them. While this can be accepted on some less critical servers, it’s highly discouraged on a virtualization environment, where reliability is the first need to satisfy.

Another notable difference between VMware Server and ESX Server is the learning curve.

ESX Server has more features which obviously require more time to be mastered, but apart quantity, its adoption involves other aspects impacting on training.

For example a company only adopting Microsoft technologies may find more problems than others in studying ESX Server, because it requires some limited knowledge of Linux environment and commands.

Any delay in understanding the platform has consequences, because administrators have to learn how to interact with product, and are slower in doing troubleshooting or performance tuning.

And this delay is bigger when a company decides to not invest in qualified training.

While ESX Server lets no choices, VMware Server, being a hosted solution, can be installed both on Windows and Linux, permitting to immediately spend existing knowledge.

Boosting products with VirtualCenter

Per se differences between Server and ESX Server can be considered limited. But this changes much when they are used in conjunction with VirtualCenter.

Both products benefit some common enterprise management features like multi-host centralized monitoring console and virtual machine inventory, a template based repository for fast provisioning of new virtual machines, a granular permission system to control user access to virtual machines, and a flexible alerting service.

But ESX Server is much more integrated with VirtualCenter than Server, and can perform more complex operations like the famous VMotion: migration of a virtual machine from a physical host to another without interruption of service.

This integration is even tighter between the new ESX Server 3.0 and VirtualCenter 2.0, called together VMware Infrastructure 3, permitting more acrobatics.

The new platform for example is able to detect failures on a physical host, and restart a lost virtual machine on a different one available in the datacenter.

Another impressive capability permits to dynamically move away a running virtual machine from the physical host where it’s running if it becomes overloaded, and to place it on a less busy server. All without manual intervention and without interruption of service.

While these features are desirable by every company to drastically lower maintenance costs, they imply a huge investment in terms of hardware equipment: without a very fast network connection and an expensive SAN infrastructure behind there are no chances to implement them.

At the moment of writing VMware Server cannot benefit same advanced features, since 1.x branch can be remotely managed only by VirtualCenter 1.4, which is limited.

Future releases of VMware Server are expected to be managed by VirtualCenter 2.0 but it’s unclear if listed advanced capabilities will be unlocked for the free platform.

Until that time who decides to adopt Server will have to rely on 3rd party solutions like one provided by vizioncore to obtain some of the VMware Infrastructure 3 capabilities.

Finally VirtualCenter 1.4, despite its limitations, is not free, so customers adopting the free Server but wanting centralized capabilities have to consider the overall price before choosing.

Vital support

As already said in the first part of this article, free software can be often not perceived as fully functional, reliable or performing, and avoided for these reasons. In some corporate realities it can even be disallowed by company policy, because IT managers are scared by the idea they are relying on a product which has no economical model behind, and the company producing it could suddenly stop supporting it.

To address this legit idea VMware offers Server as a free product but at the same time offers enterprise-grade commercial support for it.

Considering the problem from another point of view, often happens some companies, mostly smallest ones, when considering differences between Server and ESX Server do not feel support a mandatory need, planning to rely to online documentation, support forums, blogs and books to solve any issue popping up during the virtual infrastructure lifecycle.

Unfortunately there are a large amount of factors which make things much more complex than that, including incompatibilities with some hardware configuration, unexpected behaviours of some virtual machines depending on hosted applications, sudden performances bottlenecks at host level and others.

Any virtualization platforms should be considered a mission critical tier, considering on it depend many virtual machines and related services, and customers have few reasons to avoid purchasing commercial support.

In this perspective Server and ESX Server are identical, offering same Gold and Platinum support plans.

Conclusion

VMware Server and ESX Server offer different approaches to solve the same problem, addressing different company needs.

Customers looking for maximum performances and partial datacenter automation should look at ESX Server, knowing it implies a significant cost in hardware equipment, implementation efforts and training time.

Customers looking for a faster startup time and a flexible solution can adopt VMware Server with confidence: it’s reliable enough to be considered in every virtualization project.

VMware ESXI Course

VMware ESX Server Course Outline

Introduction (14:51)
Course Overview

In this kick-off video, I introduce myself and share my expertise. It is a brief overview of what you will learn and what to expect from this comprehensive course. I provide an introduction to the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification and explain why what the VMware ESX Server is an exciting technology that you MUST master.

Video 1 (18:44)
VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware 3i Server – New & Improved

I start off this series with the latest and greatest VMware ESX Editions – ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5.You will find out what is new and what is so great about the most recent versions of ESX Server. I explain what is new in VMware Virtual Center & VI Suite and why you should care about ESXi Server. I end the video with a demonstration of ESX Server 3.5, ESXi 3.5 and VirtualCenter so you can see these new versions IN ACTION!

Video 2 (54:15)
Introduction to Virtualization

Here, you learn the Virtualization Essentials including how the different types of virtualization could be compared. I’ll talk about OS licensing, the future of virtualization, and how to test virtualization in your own office or home.

* What is Virtualization?
* Virtualization Statistics
* Uses for Server Virtualization
* What is the VMKernel?
* Virtualization Products Available
* VMware ESX Server vs. VMware Server
* VMware ESXi vs. VMware ESX
* VMware ESXi Server vs. Windows 2007 Server Hyper-V
* What is the Future of Virtualization?
* Windows OS Licensing and Virtualization
* VMware ESX Virtual Machine Specifications
* What is the VMTN?
* Other Virtualization Resources
* How Can I Test and Demo ESX at Work or Home?
* How is VMware ESX Server Supported and Licensed?

Video 3 (46:33)
Planning and Installing VMware ESX Server

Watch the step-by-step installation process for VMware ESX Server, as well as how to plan and license ESX Server..

* Steps to select the right hardware for virtualization
* ESX Server Installation Requirements, Recommendations, and Maximums
* What should or shouldn’t be virtualized?
* How do I consolidate servers? And, importance of SAN storage
* Licensing options for ESX Server – host based vs server based
* Partitioning options for ESX Server
* How to install VMware ESX Server

Video 4 (14:48)
Installing VMware ESX Server 3.5

See how to Install the latest edition of VMware ESX – version 3.5, step by step!

* Installation Requirements of VMware ESX Server 3.5
* Installing VMware ESX Server 3.5

Video 5 (20:00)
Installing VMware ESXi Server

ESXi is the new “thin version” of ESX – find out what you need to know to install it, great console config tricks, and watch get walked through the install process!

* ESXi Installation Requirements & Installation Notes
* ESXi Console Tips and Tricks
* ESXi Installation – Step by Step

Video 6 (23:10)
Running VMware ESX 3.5 & ESXi 3.5 Inside VMware Workstation 6.5

* Why would you want to run VMware ESX Server inside Workstation?
* PC Requirements & Customizing the VMX file
* Demonstration of how it works

Video 7 (42:03)
Navigating and configuring VMware ESX Server

Find out how to configure and manage VMware Server using VMware Management Interface and VMware Server Console.

* VMware ESX Management options
* Service Console -  SSH & telnet
* Web – HTTP & HTTPS
* VI Client
* Installing the Virtual Infrastructure (VI) Client
* Using the VI Client
* Navigation
* Remote Control of Virtual Servers
* Hot Keys

Video 8 (43:51)
Installing & Using VMware Virtual Center (VC)

Learn what VMware Virtual Center centralized management can do for you, how to install it, and how to navigate it, step by step

* Once installed, what does VC look like?
* Introduction to VMware Virtual Center
* Product Description
* Use Cases
* Features
* Architecture
* VC Minimums / Requirements
* VC Maximums
* Installing Virtual Center
* Navigating VC

Video 9 – Part A (1:11:35)
Creating & Modifying Virtual Guest Machines

VMware Tools are necessary for proper management of guest machines – find out how to load them and how they work. Learn how to create VMware Guest virtual machines. Install, configure, import and export, and downloading virtual machines from the Internet.

* What does a running Virtual Guest machine look like?
* Virtual Guest – Machine Specifications
* Changing BIOS settings
* How to create ISO Images of CD & DVD Installation media
* How to create a new virtual machine & install a guest OS
* Adding or removing virtual hardware

Video 9 – Part B (32:12)
Creating & Modifying Virtual Guest Machines

* What is an “appliance”?
* Downloading Virtual Machines from the VMTN Virtual Appliance Marketplace
* What and where are VMX configuration files?
* Importing VMs to ESX and Exporting VMs
* Transferring files to your server with SCP

Video 10 (29:46)
Installing and Configuring VMware Tools

* About VMware Tools
* Why you should use VMware Tools
* Installing & Configuring VMware Tools in Linux
* Installing & Configuring VMware Tools in Windows
* Configuring VMware Tools

Video 11 – Part A (51:27)
VMware ESX Disk Storage

VMware storage management can be complex – learn all the terminology you need to know in our virtualization storage video. Learn about SAN, NAS, Fibre Channel, and iSCSI. Plus, understand what Virtual Machine Snapshots are and how to use them.

* Storage Terminology
* How does a Datastore help you?
* VMware ESX Storage Options
* What is a VMFS Virtual Disk?
* Advantages of Virtual Disks
* Understanding local disk storage
* Understanding Fibre Channel (FC) SAN Storage
* Understanding iSCSI SAN Storage
* Understanding NAS NFS Storage
* Local vs. iSCSI vs. FC compared

Video 11 – Part B (1:01:37)
VMware ESX Disk Storage

* Guest OS disk adapter types
* What are Snapshots and how do you use them?
* VMware virtual disk types & access modes
* Pre-allocated/fixed vs. dynamic
* Independent, persistent, & Nonpersistent mode
* Using VMware’s Virtual disk manager utility – vmkfstools
* Aligning your VMware ESX partitions
* Expanding your Guest OS Virtual Disk
* Configuring your ESX Server Clock, Timezone, and NTP Time Synchronization
* Configuring ESX Server to work with OpenFiler iSCSI SAN Server

Video 12 (1:09:07)
Administering VMware ESX Server Security

* Concepts of ESX Security Design
* Best Practices of ESX Security
* How does security work with ESX Server?
* Adding, Modifying, and removing ESX users and groups
* Defining and applying roles & permissions
* Default ESX Security Management Roles
* Ports used by VMware ESX & Virtual Center
* Enabling SSH CLI Access to ESX
* Securing the command line interface
* Securing Guest Virtual machines

Video 13 (35:03)
VMware ESX – Tasks, Events, Alarms, and Maps

Learn how to use Tasks, Events, Alarms, and Maps in VMware ESX Server

* Configure SNMP and SMTP Email for your Virtual Center Server
* Understanding Tasks & Events in Virtual Center & ESX
* Configuring Alarms for Virtual DataCenters and Virtual Guests
* Exploring Maps of your Virtual Infrastructure

Video 14 (1:02:28)
VMware ESX Server Virtual Networking

* Virtual Networking Overview
* Virtual Networking Terms – vmnic, vswitch, vswif, & port group
* Virtual Network Diagrams Explained
* Virtual Networking Must Knows
* Virtual Networking Configuration Scenarios
* Private/Host-only
* Single NIC – most common
* Redundant & Load Balanced
* DMZ with router / firewall
* Using VLANs with ESX
* Configuring Virtual Switches
* Adapter teaming, fault tolerance, and load balancing
* Service Console Command line Networking Tools

Video 15 (36:56)
Using Templates, Cloning, and Migrating with VMware

Learn how to clone and migrate virtual machines: V2V and P2V

* What are templates and how do you use them?
* What is VM cloning? Why would you clone a VM?
* Migrating a VM from one ESX server to another
* Migrating from one Virtualization platform to another (V2V)
* Migrating from a physical machine to a virtual machine (P2V)
* VMware Converter

Video 16 (28:09)
Troubleshooting and Patching VMware ESX Server

* Common VMware ESX Issues & their resolutions
* Things to check when troubleshooting ESX
* Resources for ESX Troubleshooting assistance
* VMware Support script
* Updating & Patching VMware ESX Server

Video 17 (31:14)
VMware Update Manager

New in ESX/VI 3.5 – Update Manager can update ESX hosts and Windows/Linux Guest machines – learn how it used!

* What is Update Manager?
* How Can Update Manager Help You?
* What Can Update Manager Update for You?
* How Does Update Manager Work?
* How to Install VMware Update Manager
* Components of VMware Update Manager
* Verifying Install of the Update Manager Service
* Installing the Update Manager Plug-In
* Configuring and Using Update Manager

Video 18 (18:32)
Upgrading VMware ESX & Virtual Center

* Upgrading VMware ESX from Version 3.0.x to 3.5
* Upgrading Virtual Center from Version 1.x to 2.5
* Upgrading VMware VI Client from 1.x to 2.5

Video 19 (41:08)
Performance virtualization with ESX

* Select The Right Hardware
* Performance Optimization Recommendations
* Optimizing Memory
* Optimizing the CPU
* How VMware ESX Server Hosts Reclaim Memory
* Review of VMware ESX Performance Monitoring Tools
* VMotion Overview
* ESX Resource Pools
* ESX Clusters Overview

Video 20 (47:15)
Configuring VMotion, Resource Pools, DRS, & VMHA with VMware ESX

Learn to use vMotion to migrate servers with zero downtime! Plus, discover how to create virtual machines, virtual appliances, resource pools, clusters, and much more.

* Configuring VMotion
* Configuring Resource Pools
* Configuring Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) Clusters
* Configuring VMware High Availability (HA) Clusters

Video 21 (22:39)
Storage VMotion (SVMotion)

One of the most exciting features of VMware ESX 3.5 is Storage VMotion. This allows you to move virtual disks while the server is up and running!

* What is Storage VMotion (SVMotion)?
* Storage VMotion – How It Works?
* How Can Storage VMotion (SVMotion) Help You?
* What is Required to Use Storage VMotion?
* How to Use SVMotion at the Command Line Using RCLI?
* Installing the SVMotion Plug-In
* Demo: Moving Live VM Storage Using SVMotion

Video 22 (20:45)
Third Party Applications for VMware ESX

* Dunes Technologies – VS-O (Virtual Service Orchestrator)
* Platespin
* VeeAm
* PHD Technologies EsXpress
* Leostream
* V-Kernel
* vmGalaxy

Video 23 (59:45)
Backing up Virtual Machines / VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)

Learn the different types of backups available for VMware, as well as third party companies.

* Backup & Disaster Recovery for Virtual Machines
* Backing up the VM within the Guest OS (file level)
* Backing up the VM within the Host OS (image level)
* VMware Consolidated Backup
* What is VCB?
* How does VCB work?
* VCB Requirements
* What is the process of using VCB?
* Installing VCB
* Using VCB CLI Commands
* Scenario: Creating VCB Backup Scripts

Video 24 (37:24)
Vizioncore vEssentials Backup, Performance, and Replication Suite

* Who is Vizioncore?
* Overview of the Vizioncore product line
* Why do you need 3rd party tools for VMware ESX?
* What is vEssentials & How does it help you?
* Downloading & Installing vEssentials
* What is vRanger and what are its features?
* How to backup your ESX Guest VMs with vRanger
* What is vCharter and what are its features?
* vCharter ESX Performance Monitoring Demo
* What is vReplicator and what are its features?
* vReplicator VM Replication Demo

VMware ESXI Training

VMware ESX Server Training Package

Why Pay $5,000 for VMware ESX Classroom Training?
You Can Now Learn Enterprise-Level Virtualization
from an Expert VCP… for a Tiny Fraction of the Price!

By David Davis
VCP, CCIE #9369, CWNA, MCSE, CISSP, SCSA, Linux+

Virtualization technology is constantly improving and changing the way we think and do business. Consolidating servers with VMware ESX Server will not only save your company money and time, but virtualizing your servers can actually be more secure, more convenient, and easier to maintain in real time than using many physical servers.

With VMware ESX, customers will be able to create dynamic and automated enterprise data centers with highest levels of performance, scalability and reliability.

VMware professionals are in great demand! No course can claim to be the “official” exam prep for VMware except VMware themselves. However, this course has helped hundreds of students worldwide become proficient in VMware ESX for the real world and in turn, pass the VCP certification exam!

“Am I Qualified To Take This VMware ESX Server Course?”

YES! If you are a middle to upper level enterprise network administrator, an IT pro or system admin with a strong desire to learn VMware ESX Server & VMware Infrastructure for use at a professional level organization.

YES! If you have basic knowledge of server/network operating system like Windows Server or Linux, or have basic networking skills it would be beneficial, but is not required.

Discover what virtualization is, the many ways to utilize it, and exactly what it can do for your career and/or your business!

How to select the right hardware needed for virtualization, RAM, CPU, Disk Storage, etc.

Maintain your VMware ESX Server configuration and all of your virtual guest machines with the Virtual Infrastructure Client‘s visual interface, as well as the service console.

Determine how to optimize the hard disk, perform memory and CPU adjustments, and complete virtual machine configuration changes.

Learn the differences between the various VMware ESX server management interfaces and how to navigate them quickly and easily

Learn how to configure a VMware iSCSI SAN on your own home systems computer systems with free open source software, then connect to it with VMware ESX Server

And much more… see full course outline below…

“I would definitely recommend it to people who are
trying to learn about ESX (and I have recommended it)…”
William Cronin, Train Signal Student

(Risk-Free 90-Day Total Experience ™ Guarantee!)

VMware ESX Server Course Outline

Introduction (14:51)
Course Overview

In this kick-off video, I introduce myself and share my expertise. It is a brief overview of what you will learn and what to expect from this comprehensive course. I provide an introduction to the VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certification and explain why what the VMware ESX Server is an exciting technology that you MUST master.

Video 1 (18:44)
VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware 3i Server – New & Improved

I start off this series with the latest and greatest VMware ESX Editions – ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5.You will find out what is new and what is so great about the most recent versions of ESX Server. I explain what is new in VMware Virtual Center & VI Suite and why you should care about ESXi Server. I end the video with a demonstration of ESX Server 3.5, ESXi 3.5 and VirtualCenter so you can see these new versions IN ACTION!

Video 2 (54:15)
Introduction to Virtualization

Here, you learn the Virtualization Essentials including how the different types of virtualization could be compared. I’ll talk about OS licensing, the future of virtualization, and how to test virtualization in your own office or home.

* What is Virtualization?
* Virtualization Statistics
* Uses for Server Virtualization
* What is the VMKernel?
* Virtualization Products Available
* VMware ESX Server vs. VMware Server
* VMware ESXi vs. VMware ESX
* VMware ESXi Server vs. Windows 2007 Server Hyper-V
* What is the Future of Virtualization?
* Windows OS Licensing and Virtualization
* VMware ESX Virtual Machine Specifications
* What is the VMTN?
* Other Virtualization Resources
* How Can I Test and Demo ESX at Work or Home?
* How is VMware ESX Server Supported and Licensed?

Video 3 (46:33)
Planning and Installing VMware ESX Server

Watch the step-by-step installation process for VMware ESX Server, as well as how to plan and license ESX Server..

* Steps to select the right hardware for virtualization
* ESX Server Installation Requirements, Recommendations, and Maximums
* What should or shouldn’t be virtualized?
* How do I consolidate servers? And, importance of SAN storage
* Licensing options for ESX Server – host based vs server based
* Partitioning options for ESX Server
* How to install VMware ESX Server

Video 4 (14:48)
Installing VMware ESX Server 3.5

See how to Install the latest edition of VMware ESX – version 3.5, step by step!

* Installation Requirements of VMware ESX Server 3.5
* Installing VMware ESX Server 3.5

Video 5 (20:00)
Installing VMware ESXi Server

ESXi is the new “thin version” of ESX – find out what you need to know to install it, great console config tricks, and watch get walked through the install process!

* ESXi Installation Requirements & Installation Notes
* ESXi Console Tips and Tricks
* ESXi Installation – Step by Step

VMware ESXI Server

VMware ESX Server

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VMware ESX Server

Developed by	VMware, Inc.
Latest release	3.5 Update 3 (build 123630) / 6 November 2008; 43 days ago[1]
Platform	x86-compatible
Type	Virtual machine
License	Proprietary
Website	VMware ESX Server

VMware ESX Server is an enterprise-level virtualization product offered by VMware, Inc., a division of EMC Corporation. ESX Server is a component of VMware’s larger offering, VMware Infrastructure, which adds management and reliability services to the core server product. The basic server requires some form of persistent storage – typically an array of hard disk drives – for storing the virtualization kernel and support files. A variant of this design, called ESX Server ESXi Embedded, does away with the first requirement by moving the server kernels into a dedicated hardware device. Both variants support the services offered by Virtual Infrastructure.^[2]

Contents [hide] 1 Technical description 1.1 Terms and wording 1.2 Architecture 1.2.1 Interface to hardware 1.2.2 Guest systems 1.2.3 Service console 1.3 Linux dependencies 2 Related products 3 Known limitations 3.1 Infrastructure limitations 3.2 Performance limitations 4 See also 5 References 6 External links

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Technical description

Terms and wording

VMware, Inc. refers to the hypervisor used by VMware ESX Server as “vmkernel”.

Architecture

VMware states that the ESX Server product runs on “bare metal”.^[3] In contrast to other VMware products, it does not run atop a third-party operating system^[4], but instead includes its own kernel. Up through the current ESX version 3.5, a Linux kernel is started first^[5] and is used to load a variety of specialized virtualization components, including VMware’s ‘vmkernel’ component. This previously-booted Linux kernel then becomes the first running virtual machine and is called the service console. Thus, at normal run-time, the vmkernel is running on the bare computer and the Linux-based service console runs as the first virtual machine (and cannot be terminated or shutdown without shutting down the entire system).

The vmkernel itself, which VMware claims is a microkernel,^[6] has three interfaces to the outside world:

• hardware
• guest systems
• service console (Console OS)

Interface to hardware

The vmkernel handles CPU and memory directly, using Scan-Before-Execution (SBE) to handle special or privileged CPU instructions.^[7]

Access to other hardware (such as network or storage devices) takes place using modules. At least some of the modules derive from modules used in the Linux kernel. To access these modules, an additional module called vmklinux implements the Linux module interface. Excerpt from the README: “This module contains the linux emulation layer used by the vmkernel.”^[8]

The vmkernel uses the device drivers:^[8]

1. net/e100
2. net/e1000
3. net/bnx2
4. net/tg3
5. net/forcedeth
6. net/pcnet32
7. block/cciss
8. scsi/adp94xx
9. scsi/aic7xxx
10. scsi/aic79xx
11. scsi/ips
12. scsi/lpfcdd-v732
13. scsi/megaraid2
14. scsi/mptscsi_2xx
15. scsi/qla2200-v7.07
16. scsi/megaraid_sas
17. scsi/qla4010
18. scsi/qla4022
19. scsi/vmkiscsi
20. scsi/aacraid_esx30
21. scsi/lpfcdd-v7xx
22. scsi/qla2200-v7xx

These drivers mostly equate to those described in VMware’s “Hardware Compatibility List”.^[9] All these modules fall under the GPL. Programmers have adapted them to run with the vmkernel: VMware Inc has changed the module-loading and some other minor things.^[8]

Guest systems

The vmkernel offers an interface to guest systems which simulates hardware. This takes place in such a way that a guest system itself can run unmodified atop the hypervisor. Because using unmodified drivers in the guest system uses up some system resources, VMware Inc offers special drivers for different operating systems to increase performance.^{[citation needed]} These enhanced drivers are typically installed on the guest OS as part of VMTools, which also add utilities to better connect the guest OS with the underlying vmkernel and/or service console, for things such as better clock synchronization and automatic guest OS shutdown.

Service console

The Service Console is a vestigial general purpose operating system most significantly used as the bootstrap for the VMware kernel, vmkernel, and secondarily used as a management interface. Both of these Console OS functions are being deprecated as VMware migrates to exclusively the ‘embedded’ ESX model, current version being ESX 3i.^{[citation needed]}

Linux dependencies

ESX Server uses a Linux kernel to load additional code: often referred to by VMware, Inc. as the “vmkernel”. The dependencies between the “vmkernel” and the Linux part of the ESX server have changed drastically over different major versions of the software. The VMware FAQ^[10] states: “ESX Server also incorporates a service console based on a Linux 2.4 kernel that is used to boot the ESX Server virtualization layer”. The Linux kernel runs before any other software on an ESX host.^[5] On ESX versions 1 and 2, no VMkernel processes run on the system during the boot process.^[11] After the Linux kernel has loaded, the S90vmware script loads the vmkernel.^[11] VMware Inc states that vmkernel does not derive from Linux, but acknowledges that it has adapted certain device-drivers from Linux device drivers. The Linux kernel continues running, under the control of the vmkernel, providing functions including the proc file system used by the ESX and an environment to run support applications.^[11] ESX version 3 loads the VMkernel from the Linux initrd, thus much earlier in the boot-sequence than in earlier ESX versions.

In traditional systems, a given operating system runs a single kernel. The VMware FAQ mentions that ESX has both a Linux 2.4 kernel and vmkernel — hence confusion over whether ESX has a Linux base. An ESX system starts a Linux kernel first, but it loads vmkernel (also described by VMware as a kernel), which according to VMware ‘wraps around’ the linux kernel, and which (according to VMware Inc) does not derive from Linux..

The ESX userspace environment, known as the “Service Console” (or as “COS” or as “vmnix”), derives from a modified version of Red Hat Linux, (Red Hat 7.2 for ESX 2.x and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 for ESX 3.x). In general, this Service Console provides management interfaces (CLI, webpage MUI, Remote Console). This VMware ESX hypervisor virtualization approach provides lower overhead and better control and granularity for allocating resources (CPU-time, disk-bandwidth, network-bandwidth, memory-utilization) to virtual machines, compared to so-called “hosted” virtualization, where a base OS handles the physical resources. It also increases security, thus positioning VMware ESX as an enterprise-grade product.

As a further detail which differentiates the ESX from other VMware virtualization products: ESX supports the VMware proprietary cluster file system VMFS. VMFS enables multiple hosts to access the same SAN LUNs simultaneously, while file-level locking provides simple protection to file-system integrity.

Related products

Two other products operate in conjunction with ESX Server – VirtualCenter and Converter.^[12]

• VirtualCenter allows monitoring and management of multiple ESX or GSX servers. In addition, users must install it to run infrastructure services such as:
  • VMotion (transferring virtual machines between servers on the fly, with almost zero downtime)
  • SVMotion (transferring virtual machines between Shared Storage LUNs on the fly, with almost zero downtime)
  • DRS (automated VMotion based on host/VM load requirements/demands)
  • HA (restarting of Virtual Machine Guests in the event of a physical ESX Host failure)
• Converter allows users to create VMware ESX Server- or Workstation-compatible virtual machines from either physical machines or from virtual machines made by other virtualization products. Converter replaces the VMware “P2V Assistant” and “Importer” products — P2V Assistant allowed users to convert physical machines into virtual machines; and Importer allowed the import of virtual machines from other products into VMware Workstation.

Known limitations

Known limitations of VMware ESX Server, as of December 2007, include the following:

Infrastructure limitations

Some limitations in ESX Server 3 may constrain the design of data centers:^[13]

• Guest system maximum RAM: 64 GB
• Number of hosts in a HA cluster: 32
• Number of hosts in a DRS cluster: 32
• Maximum number of processors per virtual machine: 4

Performance limitations

In terms of performance, virtualization imposes a cost in the additional work the CPU has to perform to virtualize the underlying hardware. Instructions that perform this extra work, and other activities that require virtualization, tend to lie in operating system calls. In an unmodified operating system, OS calls introduce the greatest portion of virtualization overhead.

Paravirtualization or other virtualization techniques may help with these issues. VMware and XenSource invented the Virtual Machine Interface for this purpose, and selected operating systems currently^[update] support this.

See also

• Comparison of virtual machines for a list of related virtualization software products
• List of VMware software
• Virtual appliance
• Virtual machine
• Virtualization
• VMware VMFS, the VMware cluster file system
• x86 virtualization

External Links:

VMware FAQs / Brochures:

• VMware Products List
• WMware Infrastucture 3 Features
• VMware ESX Features
• VMware Server FAQ

References

1. ^ “VMware Infrastructure 3 Release Notes“. VMware, Inc. (2008-11-21). Retrieved on 2008-11-26.
2. ^ “Meet the Next Generation of Virtual Infrastructure Technology“. VMware. Retrieved on 2007-09-21.
3. ^ “ESX Server Datasheet”
4. ^ “ESX Server Architecture”
5. ^ ^{a b} ESX machine boots
6. ^ “Support for 64-bit Computing”
7. ^ Gerstel, Markus: “Virtualisierungsansätze mit Schwepunkt Xen”
8. ^ ^{a b c} “ESX Server Open Source”
9. ^ “ESX Hardware Compatibility List”
10. ^ VMware FAQ
11. ^ ^{a b c} ESX Server Advanced Technical Design Guide
12. ^ P2V Assistant Documentation
13. ^ “Configuration Maximums for VMware Infrastructure 3” (PDF). VMware, Inc. (2007-12-18). Retrieved on 2007-12-19.

External links

• VMware ESX Server product page
• ESX Server 3.0.2 Update 1 Release Notes
• ESX Server Updates FAQ

Retrieved from “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_ESX_Server”

Categories: Virtualization software | Proprietary software

VMware ESXI Server Advantages

Comparison on the Essential Functionalities of a Hypervisor

The hypervisor is a critical component of and foundation of a virtual infrastructure. VMware was the first to bring a bare-metal hypervisor to market back in 2001 and since then has continued perfecting it by adding features in response to ever-increasing customer needs. Today, as virtualization becomes ubiquitous, companies both small and large, are looking beyond simple server consolidation as a reason to adopt virtualization. Fundamental characteristics of a hypervisor are:

• Have a purpose-built, thin OS independent architecture for enhanced reliability and robustness
• Make optimal use of available hardware resources
• Deliver performance acceleration features that support mission critical applications
• Enable advanced capabilities not previously possible on physical systems

Ten of thousands of companies have already adopted VMware ESX/ESXi making it the most proven foundation of today’s virtual infrastructure. Its reliability was rated by industry press as “virtually bomb-proof”  VMware ESX/ESXi is the only hypervisor in the market that can truly provide the essential capabilities to satisfy today’s customer requirements.

The following table compares VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5 with the recently released Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisor and shows how Hyper-V presents substantial limitations in all critical aspects of a hypervisor:

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Features	VMware ESX/ESXi 3.5	Microsoft Hyper-V RTM	Hypervisors Comparison
Thin and Purpose-Built Architecture
Small disk footprint			Hyper-V is fully dependent on a general-purpose OS(Windows 2008). Microsoft’s best-case disk footprint is 2.6GB (Hyper-V + Server Core), which is more than 80x times larger than ESXi’s (32MB). Hyper-V + Windows Server 2008 is even larger with a footprint of ~10GB. The large size of both options creates an easier target for security attacks and increasing performance overhead. Also, patches to Windows Server 2008 / Server Core will affect Hyper-V guests. VMware ESXi on the other hand is a fully functional hypervisor in a 32MB disk footprint, which reduces the risk of downtime and increases reliability.
OS independence			Hyper-V depends on Windows 2008 and is consequently biased towards Windows guests when it comes to making full use of the available hardware resources: Hyper-V  is limited to only Novell SUSE Hyper-V  is limited to Windows Server 2008. For Windows 2003, Hyper-V only supports up to 2-way vSMP VMware ESX/ESXi is optimized for virtualization, offers the  (5 Windows versions, 9 Linux versions, Netware and Solaris) and allows all supported guest OSs to optimally utilize available resources (4-way vSMP is available on all supported server OSs)
Hardened drivers			Windows 2008 is a general purpose OS that relies on generic device drivers built by third parties that are not designed for virtualization. This fact dramatically increases the likelihood of performance problems, downtime related to driver patches, and system failures, even though the drivers go through Microsoft’s certification process. Windows drivers already go through Microsoft certification today and driver problems still exist. On the other hand, VMware works closely with IHVs to test and optimize their drivers for use with ESX/ESXi to ensure, overall reliability and performance when running concurrent virtualized workloads.
Resource Efficiency
Advanced memory management			System memory management is in most cases the dominant factor that determines the number of concurrent VMs that can run on a physical host. Hyper-V cannot over commit host memory because it is not does not support features such as transparent memory page sharing and memory ballooning to reclaim idle physical memory. Consequently Hyper-V delivers lower virtual machine density, and low ratios of server consolidation compared to VMware ESX/ESXi. VMware ESX/ESXi fully supports memory overcommit, enabling high rates of VM density while delivering consistent performance. VMware customers regularly use memory overcommit in their production datacenters at rates of 1.5X to 2.5X without any noticeable impact to end-users.
Advanced storage management			Hyper-V uses the NTFS file system for storage. NTFS is not a clustered file system. Therefore, Hyper-V does not provide native support for shared virtual disks and live migration. Hyper-V’s lack of a clustered file system means that with Microsoft quick migration (based on host clustering) all VMs on a LUN will be migrated at the same time. To avoid this unwanted result, a user must assign one VM per LUN, which creates a storage nightmare. The only other option is to purchase a third party clustered file system at additional licensing and support cost. VMware ESX/ESXi comes with VMFS, a clustered file system designed specifically for virtualization. VMFS fully supports live migration, and enables multiple VMs to share a single LUN and still migrate/failover individual VMs.
Advanced networking management			Hyper-V does not support native physical NIC teaming, instead requiring 3rd party drivers from IHVs (Intel, Broadcom). This limitation prevents Hyper-V from providing out-of-the-box, hardware independent protection from NIC failure. Additionally, Hyper-V drivers for supported NICs are not virtualization aware, cannot be controlled from within the hypervisor, and must be loaded in the parent partition. VMware ESX/ESXi fully supports NIC teaming, resulting in a simple, comprehensive out of the box solution for NIC failover.
Performance Acceleration
I/O Scalability			Hyper-V uses an “indirect driver” model that keeps all device drivers in a Windows 2008 instance stored in the parent partition of Hyper-V and relies on the general purpose OS to handle the I/O traffic. This design bottlenecks I/O, as all guest I/O requests must travel through Windows Server 2008 (or Server Core) which is not optimized for virtualization. The result is scalability issues when running many virtual machines under load. This scalability issue severely limits consolidation ratios. VMware ESX/ESXi utilizes a direct driver model with a scheduler built specifically to handle the demands of multiple, high workloads. This scalability results in higher VM density ratios with while delivering consistent, high performance.
Distributed Resource Allocation			Hyper-V lacks many capabilities to optimally distribute hardware resources., based on real time workload conditions. Unlike ESX/ESXi, Hyper-V does not support: Network traffic shaping for load balancing Storage I/O prioritization to ensures that critical VMs receive priority access to storage devices Memory swap prioritization (memory ballooning) VMware ESX/ESXi has a proven solution for hardware resource distribution, including full support for network traffic shaping, I/O prioritization, and memory ballooning for memory management and prioritization.
Support for Performance Enhancing Technologies			Hyper-V lacks support of several performance enhancing technologies such as: AMD RVI (nested page tables), included in the latest release of the AMD Barcelona CPU Large memory pages, which allows improved performance when virtualizing databases VMware ESX/ESXi supports both nested page tables and large memory pages and is therefore capable of superior performance even in the most demanding environments. Mission critical and intensive applications such as an Oracle database will perform better in a VMware virtual environment.
Linux Paravirtualization Support			Hyper-V supports the “old way” of doing Linux para-virtualization, where IT admins maintained two kernels, one for physical and one for virtual machines. This extra maintenance increased complexity and management costs. On the other hand, VMware ESX/ESXi supports Linux para-virtualization through paravirt_ops / VMI (Virtual Machine Interface) – the new industry accepted way to para-virtualize Linux. This new way does not require IT admins to maintain and support separate kernels for physical and virtual machines – it’s all in one kernel. Currently, SLES 10, and Ubuntu 7 all support paravirt-ops/VMI.
Advanced Virtualization Features
Virtual security technology			Hyper-V does not provide dedicated capabilities for security vendors to extend their security capabilities to virtualized environments. an upcoming feature of VMware ESX/ESXi, will enable a rich ecosystem of third-party security solutions for virtualized environments. VMsafe is a virtual security technology that provides fine-grained visibility over virtual machine resources, making it possible to monitor every aspect of system execution and stop previously undetectable viruses, rootkits and malware before they can infect a system.

VMware ESXI Server Features

Features

Below you will find a comprehensive list of the VMware ESX features.

Architecture

• Bare-metal architecture. VMware ESX inserts a robust virtualization layer directly on the server hardware for near-native virtual machine performance, reliability and scalability.
• Small Footprint.¹ VMware ESXi’s 32MB disk footprint is a fraction of the size of a general purpose operating system, reducing complexity and providing unmatched security and reliability.
• Server Integration.¹ VMware ESXi is available built into server hardware as an embedded component, simplifying and speeding deployment of virtualization.
• CPU virtualization. Increase server utilization without the risk of critical services being starved for CPU resources. VMware ESX uses intelligent process scheduling and load balancing across available processors to manage the execution of virtual machine processing.
• Virtualization for storage. Leverage high performance shared storage to centralize virtual machine file storage for greater manageability, flexibility and availability.
  • Virtual disk files. Add or delete a VMware ESX server from a VMFS volume without pausing or halting the processing of other instances of VMware ESX
  • VMFS cluster file system. Leverage high performance shared storage to centralize virtual machine file storage for greater manageability, flexibility and availability
  • Logical volume manager. Manage the interaction between the physical storage arrays and VMFS with flexibility and reliability
  • Raw device mapping. Optionally, map SAN LUNs directly to a virtual machine in order to enable application clustering and array-based snapshot technology while profiting from the manageability benefits of VMFS
  • Fibre Channel HBA consolidation. Share expensive storage network components across many virtual machines while maintaining hardware fault tolerance
  • Write-through I/O. Ensure precise recovery of virtual machines in the event of server failure. Write-through I/O enables virtual machines to have the same recovery characteristics as a physical system running the same operating system.
  • Boot from SAN. Run VMware ESX installations on diskless configurations of blade and rack mount servers by booting from SAN. Simplify backups and disaster recovery by eliminating the need to separately backup local attached server disks
• Virtualization for Networking. Network virtual machines like physical machines. Build complex networks within a single VMware ESX server or across multiple installations of VMware ESX for production deployments or development and testing purposes.
  • Virtual NICs. Configure each virtual machine with one or more virtual NICs. Each of those network interfaces can have its own IP address and even its own MAC address. As a result, virtual machines are indistinguishable from physical machines from a networking standpoint
  • Virtual switches. Create a simulated network within a VMware ESX server with virtual switches that connect virtual machines.
  • Expanded port configuration policies. Simplify port configuration by utilizing a single configuration object across large groups of ports. The configuration object specifies all information needed to enable a port: NIC teaming policy (now per port instead of per virtual switch), VLAN tagging, Layer 2 security, and traffic shaping.
  • VLAN. Overlay a logical LAN on top of physical LANs to isolate network traffic for security and load segregation purposes. VMware ESX VLANs are compatible with standard VLAN implementations from other vendors. Modify network configurations without having to change actual cabling and switch setups. VLANs keep broadcast traffic limited to the VLAN, reducing the network load of broadcast packets on other switches and network segments.
    
    ¹Available only for VMware ESXi

Performance and Scalability

• Leveraging nine years of R&D and experience from more than 120,000 customer deployments, VMware ESX delivers unparalleled performance and scalability. With VMware ESX, even the most resource intensive production applications such as databases, ERP and CRM can be virtualized.
• Enhanced virtual machine performance. Benefit from better virtual machine performance in VMware ESX. Performance improvements have been achieved through:
  • Networking performance optimization. Reduce the CPU overhead associated with processing network i/
  • Support for hardware nested page tables. Optimize memory translation time between guest operating systems and physical memor
  • Support for large memory pages. Improve memory access efficiency for guest operating systems and the hypervisor
  • Support for paravirtualized Linux guest operating systems (Linux kernel 2.6.21 onwards). Run higher levels of performance through virtualization-aware operating systems
• Advanced memory management.
  • RAM over-commitment. Increase memory utilization by configuring virtual machine memory that safely exceeds the physical server memory. For example, the sum of the memory of all virtual machines running on a server with 8GB physical memory can be 16GB
  • Transparent page sharing. Utilize available memory more efficiently by storing memory pages identical across multiple virtual machines only once. For example, if several virtual machines are running Windows Server 2003, they will have many identical memory pages. Transparent page sharing consolidates those identical pages into a single memory location.
  • Memory ballooning. Shift memory dynamically from idle virtual machines to active ones. Memory ballooning artificially induces memory pressure within idle virtual machines, forcing them to use their own paging areas and release memory for active virtual machines.
• Improved power management. Lower the data center utility bill with improved power management. VMware ESX enters a low power “halt” state when a CPU is not scheduled.
• 4-Way Virtual SMP. Enable a single virtual machine to use up to four physical processors simultaneously. VMware ESX extends this unique feature from two to four processors. With 4-way Virtual SMP even the most processor intensive software applications like databases and messaging servers can be virtualized.
• 64GB RAM for virtual machines. Run the most memory-intensive workloads in virtual machines with a memory limit extended to 64GB.
• Support for powerful physical server systems. Take advantage of very large server systems with up to 32 logical CPUs and 256GB RAM for large scale server consolidation and DR projects.
• Support for up to 128 powered-on virtual machines. Take advantage of very large server systems for enterprise-class server consolidation and containment with support for up to 128 powered on virtual machines on a single server.
• Flexible virtual switches. Scale up to handle more virtual machines. Virtual switches can be created with any number of ports from 8 to 1016, and up to 248 virtual switches are supported per host.
• Wake-on LAN. Enable higher consolidation ratios by allowing virtual machines to go on stand-by mode when not used.

Interoperability

• VMware ESX is the only virtualization platform optimized, rigorously tested and certified across the complete IT stack of servers, storage, operating systems, and software applications allowing for enterprise-wide standardization.
• Hardware. VMware ESX has been certified with industry-leading rack, tower and blade servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun Microsystems and Unisys as well as servers that conform to Intel white-box standard specifications.
• VMware ESXi is integrated into server hardware guaranteeing that virtualization works out of the box.
• Storage. VMware ESX is certified with a wide range of storage systems from, Dell, EMC, EqualLogic, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance, StorageTek, Sun Microsystems and 3PAR and many other vendors.
  • Heterogeneous storage arrays. Utilize a wide variety of heterogeneous storage devices in the same VMFS volume
  • NAS and iSCSI SAN support. By supporting lower-cost, more easily managed shared storage, VMware ESX further reduces total cost of ownership of IT environments. Advanced VMware Infrastructure features like VMotion and VMware HA are fully supported with NAS and iSCSI environments
  • 4GB Fibre Channel SAN support. Centralize management and configuration of all VMware ESX servers in VirtualCenter.
  • Local SATA storage support. Use select servers with local SATA storage to further lower total cost of ownership while consolidating workloads
• Networking. Use high performance networking such as 10 Gig E and Infiniband with  VMware ESX 3.5 and VMware ESXi 3.5 for the most network intensive workloads
• Operating systems. Run any software application in VMware virtual machines.
  • 64-bit guest operating system suppor
  • Solaris 10 operating system suppor
  • Windows Vista operating system support
  • Ubuntu guest operating system support
• Software applications with third party systems management products through Web services APIs provided by the VMware Infrastructure SDK.
• Support for other virtual machine formats. VMware ESX can run virtual machines created in non-VMware formats. Using the free VMware Virtual Machine Importer users can run Microsoft® Virtual Server and Virtual PC, and Symantec® LiveState Recovery virtual machines in VMware ESX.

Management

• Remote Command Line Interface. Manage VMware ESXi through a remote execution environment that can run VMware ESX command scripts.
• Advanced manageability and usability features. VMware ESX enables management of entire virtualized IT environment.
• SMI-S-Compliant Management Interfaces. Monitor virtual storage using any standard SMI-S-aware storage management tool.
• Virtual Infrastructure Client. Manage VMware ESX, virtual machines, and (optionally) VMware vCenter Server with a common user interface.
• Virtual Infrastructure Web Access. Manage VMware ESX with simple Web interface (formerly known as the Management User Interface, or MUI).
• Virtual machine shortcuts. Enable self-help for end users with direct access to virtual machines through a Web browser.
• Remote devices. Install software in a virtual machine running on a server from the CD-ROM of a desktop without leaving your desk.
• Agent-less Hardware Management with CIM. The Common Information Model (CIM) provides a protocol for monitoring hardware health and status through VirtualCenter or CIM-compatible 3rd party tools.

Resource Optimization

• Resource management for virtual machines. Define advanced resource allocation policies for virtual machines to improve service levels to software applications. Establish minimum, maximum, and proportional resource shares for CPU, memory, disk and network bandwidth. Modify allocations while virtual machines are running. Enable applications to dynamically acquire more resources to accommodate peak performance.
  • CPU capacity prioritization. CPU capacity is assigned to virtual machines on a “fair share” basis and CPU resource controls also allow an absolute minimum level of CPU capacity to be provided to critical virtual machines
  • Storage I/O traffic prioritization. Ensure that critical virtual machines receive priority access to storage devices. I/O traffic from virtual machines to disk can be prioritized on a “fair share” basis.
  • Network Traffic Shaper. Ensure that critical virtual machines receive priority access to network bandwidth. Network traffic from virtual machines can be prioritized on a “fair share” basis. Network Traffic Shaper manages virtual machine network traffic to meet peak bandwidth, average bandwidth and burst size constraints.
• Resource Pools. Aggregate collections of hardware resources virtualized by VMware ESX into unified logical resources that can be allocated to virtual machines on-demand. Resource pools increase flexibility and hardware utilization.

High Availability

• VMware ESX delivers data center-class high availability for virtual machines.
• Shared storage. Eliminate single points of failure by storing virtual machine files on shared storage such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN, or NAS. Use SAN mirroring and replication features to keep updated copies of virtual disk at disaster recovery sites.
• SAN transparency. Use native SAN storage for virtual machines with the same ease and flexibility as virtual disk files. Raw device mapping lets virtual machines use standard SAN LUN data stores in addition to special-purpose VMFS formatted LUNs for virtual disk files. Offload file-level backup and replication of virtual machine data to SAN-based utilities. Easily configure clusters of virtual and physical machines with shared SAN data stores for cost effective high availability.
• Built-in storage access multipathing. Ensure shared storage availability with SAN multipathing for Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN, and NIC teaming for NAS.
• Enhanced NIC teaming. Give each networked virtual machine built-in NIC failover and load balancing enabling greater hardware availability and fault tolerance.  New NIC teaming policies allow users to configure multiple active and standby adapters. Teaming configuration may be different for different port groups on the same virtual switch and different groups can even select different teaming algorithms for the same team.
• Distributed journaling. Recover virtual machines faster and more reliably in the event of server failure.
• Support for Microsoft® Clustering Services. Cluster virtual machines running Microsoft® Windows operating system across physical hosts.

Security

• Compatibility with SAN security practices. Enforce security policies with LUN zoning and LUN masking.
• VLAN tagging. Enhance network security by tagging and filtering network traffic on VLANs. Limit the scope of broadcast domains.
• Layer 2 network security policies. Enforce security for virtual machines at the Ethernet layer. Disallow promiscuous mode sniffing of network traffic, MAC address changes, and forged source MAC transmits.

VMware ESXI Server Overview

Deploy the Most Advanced and Production-Proven Hypervisor

Virtualize even the most resource-intensive applications with the hypervisor that sets the industry standard for reliability, performance and cross-platform support.

VMware ESX is a “bare-metal” hypervisor that partitions physical servers in multiple virtual machines. Each virtual machine represents a complete system, with processors, memory, networking, storage and BIOS. VMware ESX enables multiple virtual machines to:

• Share physical resources
• Run unmodified operating systems and applications
• Run the most resource-intensive applications side by side on the same server

Reliably Run Multiple Operating Systems on a Single Server

Deploy mature hypervisor technology that has been proven in tens of thousands of customer environments. With VMware ESX, you can virtualize any environment, from the corporate data center to the branch office, with a compatibility list that includes more than 200 server and storage systems, and the broadest range of supported , including Windows, Linux, Netware, and Solaris. VMware ESX helps you to achieve data center-class with shared storage, SAN transparency, built-in storage access multipathing and support for Microsoft Clustering Services. Plus, you’ll enhance IT infrastructure security with LUN zoning and masking, VLAN traffic tagging and filtering, and enforcing security at the Ethernet layer.

Get Higher Consolidation Ratios for the Most Resource Intensive Applications

Run email, databases, ERP and other resource-intensive applications on VMware ESXi’s bare-metal architecture offering advanced memory management and support for scaled up physical and virtual machines. You can also run virtual machines at possible with other first-generation hypervisors and minimize your hardware costs. VMware ESX enables a single virtual machine to use up to four physical processors with and lets you leverage high performance shared storage for greater manageability, flexibility and availability with – a high performance cluster file system optimized for virtual environments.

Build a Dynamic Virtual Infrastructure

VMware ESX and form the robust foundation of the VMware Infrastructure 3 suite and are included in all VMware Infrastructure delivers improved service levels and operational efficiency by enabling centralized management, automatic load balancing, business continuity, power management and the ability to live migrate a virtual machine across physical machines to minimize service interruption.