Installation guide

Datacenters
In vCenter Server only. A datacenter contains folders, clusters, hosts, networks,
datastores and virtual machines. All actions taken upon managed hosts and
virtual machines are applied within their datacenter. Within a datacenter, you
can monitor and manage virtual machines separately from their hosts and use
VMotion.
Clusters
In vCenter Server only. Child objects are hosts, virtual machines, or resource
pools.
Hosts
Child objects of hosts are virtual machines or resource pools. Hosts are
ESX/ESXi systems. The term host refers to the virtualization platform that is
the host to one or more virtual machines. A host object is the default top
structure for a standalone ESX/ESXi machine.
When the vCenter Server system is connected to the vSphere Client, all
ESX/ESXi systems registered with vCenter Server are referred to as hosts.
ESX/ESXi systems directly connected to the vSphere Client are referred to as
standalone hosts.
Resource pools
Child objects of resource pools are virtual machines or other resource pools.
Resource pools are available on ESX/ESXi hosts as well as through vCenter
Server systems.
A vSphere Client resource pool is used to allocate host-provided CPU and
memory to the virtual machines resident to the host.
Virtual machines
Located within a host, virtual disks on a datastore, associated within a cluster
or resource pool. Can be listed as a child object to hosts, clusters, or resource
pools. Can be moved between hosts or clusters. When adding to a cluster or
resource pool, you must specify or have in the cluster or resource pool a
designated target host.
Templates
A template is a master copy of a virtual machine that can be used to create and
provision new virtual machines.
Networks
In vCenter Server only. Child object to datacenters and network folders. There
are two types of networks: vNetwork Standard Switches (vSwitches) and
vNetwork Distributed Switches. vNetwork Standard Switches are associated
with a single host and are discovered when hosts are added to the vSphere
environment. You can add and remove vNetwork Standard Switches through
the vSphere Client. vNetwork Distributed Switches span multiple hosts. You
can add and remove vNetwork Distributed Switches through the vSphere
Client.
Datastores
In vCenter Server only. Child object to datacenters and datastore folders.
Datastores are logical containers that hold virtual disk files and other files
necessary for virtual machine operations. Datastores exist on different types of
physical storage devices, including local storage, iSCSI and Fibre Channel
SANs, and NFS. You create datastores by formatting storage devices or by
mounting NFS volumes on your host. In addition, you can add a host with
existing datastores to the inventory.
Libraries
Central repositories for virtual machine provisioning media such as virtual
machine templates, ISO images, floppy images, VMDK files, guest
customization files, and so on.
vSphere Basic System Administration
72 VMware, Inc.