VMware Infrastructure 3 introduction

VMware® Infrastructure 3 (VI3) includes 8 components. It is provided in 3 packaged formats to meet customer requirements.

Packages

Components

VMware ESX Server

ESX Server, as the basic component of the virtual system, provides a highly reliable and high-performance virtual environment by:

• functions that create virtual machines and control multiple virtual machines,
• functions for providing virtualization of the hardware devices used by the virtual machines,
• functions for bridging virtual machines and devices by controlling the hardware of the physical machine.

VMware Virtual Center

This component reduces IT management workloads by unifying configuration administration and monitoring the ESX Server and virtual machines. It works with VMotion, DRS and HA function.

VMware VMFS

Unlike conventional file systems, where only one server has read-write access to the same file at a given time, VMFS is a cluster file system that leverages shared storage to allow multiple instances of ESX Server to read and write to the same storage concurrently.

VMFS allows you to:

• Greatly simplify virtual machine provisioning and administration by efficiently storing the entire virtual machine state in a central location.
• It supports unique virtualization-based capabilities including:
  - live migration of running virtual machines from one physical server to another,
  - automatic restart of a failed virtual machine on a separate physical server, and
  - the clustering virtual machines across different physical servers.

VMware Virtual SMP™

VMware Virtual SMP allows a single virtual machine to use up to four physical processors simultaneously. This makes scaling your virtual infrastructure much easier, with multiple processors working in parallel in a single virtual machine.

VMware VMotion Technology

VMware VMotion technology, unique to VMware, leverages the complete virtualization of servers, storage and networking to allow the moving of an entire running virtual machine instantaneously from one physical server to another.

VMotion Technology allows you to:

• Perform live migrations with zero downtime, undetectable by users.
• Continuously and automatically optimize virtual machines within resource pools.
• Perform hardware maintenance without needing scheduled downtime or disrupting business operations.
• Proactively move virtual machines away from failing or underperforming servers.

VMware HA

VMware HA provides cost-effective high availability for any application running on a virtual machine, regardless of operating system or underlying hardware configuration. VMware HA eliminates the need for dedicated stand-by hardware and additional software.

VMware HA allows you to:

• Protect applications with no other failover options making high availability possible for software applications that might otherwise be left unprotected.
• Protect applications from OS related failures by automatically restarting virtual machines when failure is detected (experimental mode).
• Establish a consistent first line of defense for your entire IT infrastructure.

VMware DRS

VMware DRS continuously monitors utilization across resource pools; intelligently allocating available resources between the virtual machines based on pre-defined rules that reflect business needs and changing priorities. When virtual machine resources are constrained, additional capacity is made available by migrating live virtual machines to a different physical server using VMware VMotion.

VMware DRS enables you to:

• Dynamically allocate IT resources to the highest priority applications.
• Create rules and policies to prioritize how resources are allocated to virtual machines.
• Give IT autonomy to business organizations.
• Provide dedicated IT infrastructure to business units while still achieving higher hardware utilization through resource pooling.
• Empower business units to build and manage virtual machines within their resource pool while allowing centralized IT control over those hardware resources.

VMware Consolidated Backup

VMware Consolidated Backup enables LAN-free backup of virtual machines from a centralized proxy server.

Consolidated Backup allows you to:

• Integrate with existing backup tools and technologies already in place.
• Perform full and incremental file backups of virtual machines.
• Perform full image backup of virtual machines.
• Centrally manage backups to simplify management of IT resources.

VMware Inc.: View the components of VMware Infrastructure