6.5.1

vSphere Software Components
VMware vSphere is a suite of software components for virtualization. These include ESXi, vCenter Server,
and other software components that fulll a number of dierent functions in the vSphere environment.
N Starting with vSphere 6.5, all vCenter Server services and some Platform Services Controller services
run as child processes of the VMware Service Lifecycle Manager service.
vSphere includes the following software components:
ESXi
A virtualization platform that you use to create the virtual machines as a set
of conguration and disk les that together perform all the functions of a
physical machine.
Through ESXi, you run the virtual machines, install operating systems, run
applications, and congure the virtual machines. Conguration includes
identifying the virtual machine’s resources, such as storage devices.
The server provides bootstrapping, management, and other services that
manage your virtual machines.
vCenter Server
A service that acts as a central administrator for VMware ESXi hosts that are
connected on a network. vCenter Server directs actions on the virtual
machines and the virtual machine hosts (the ESXi hosts).
vCenter Server is a single Windows or Linux Service and is installed to run
automatically. vCenter Server runs continuously in the background. It
performs its monitoring and managing activities even when no
vSphere Web Clients are connected and when no one is logged on to the
computer where it resides. It must have network access to all the hosts it
manages and be available for network access from any machine where the
vSphere Web Client is run.
You can install vCenter Server in a Windows virtual machine on an ESXi
host, allowing it to take advantage of the high-availability that is provided by
VMware HA. See the vSphere Installation and Setup documentation for details
about seing up this conguration.
vCenter Single Sign-On
A service that is part of the vCenter Server management infrastructure. The
vCenter Single Sign-On authentication service makes the VMware cloud
infrastructure platform more secure by allowing the various vSphere
software components to communicate with each other through a secure
token exchange mechanism, instead of requiring each component to
authenticate a user separately with a directory service like Active Directory.
When you install vCenter Single Sign-On, the following components are
deployed.
STS (Security
Token Service)
STS certicates enable a user who has logged on
through vCenter Single Sign-On to use any vCenter
service that vCenter Single Sign-On supports
without authenticating to each one. The STS service
Chapter 1 vSphere Concepts and Features
VMware, Inc. 15