System information

Overview of VMware ESX/ESXi 1
You can use ESX/ESXi in conjunction with a Fibre Channel storage area network (SAN), a specialized high-
speed network that uses Fibre Channel (FC) protocol to transmit data between your computer systems and
high-performance storage subsystems. Using ESX/ESXi with a SAN provides extra storage for consolidation,
improves reliability, and helps with disaster recovery.
To use ESX/ESXi effectively with a SAN, you must have a working knowledge of ESX/ESXi systems and SAN
concepts.
This chapter includes the following topics:
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“Introduction to ESX/ESXi,” on page 9
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“Understanding Virtualization,” on page 10
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“Interacting with ESX/ESXi Systems,” on page 13
Introduction to ESX/ESXi
The ESX/ESXi architecture allows administrators to allocate hardware resources to multiple workloads in fully
isolated environments called virtual machines.
System Components
The main components of ESX/ESXi include a virtualization layer, hardware interface components, and user
interface.
An ESX/ESXi system has the following key components.
Virtualization layer
This layer provides the idealized hardware environment and virtualization of
underlying physical resources to the virtual machines. This layer includes the
virtual machine monitor (VMM), which is responsible for virtualization, and
VMkernel.
VMware, Inc. 9