Datasheet

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Chapter 1: Exploring VMware Infrastructure 3 as Your Virtual Solution
I’ve added “hardware” to a virtual server in New Jersey remotely from
a beach in Sarasota. Nice!
 Easy backup and fast recovery: Again, your servers are just a bunch
of files.
 The ability to freeze your server in time through snapshots: You can
take a snapshot before applying a Service Pack. If you have problems
after the update, you can go back in time to before the service pack was
applied instead of rebuilding your server and restoring your data. Fixing
a bad update takes only minutes instead of hours.
 Quality-of-life improvement: All the time and effort saved makes your IT
life much better! All the money you save makes management extremely
happy as well. Everyone benefits from virtualization.
After reading this list of benefits, you likely think that using virtualization
can prevent many IT headaches — and you’re right! Time to meet the
components of VI3.
After you start to virtualize machines, it can become very addictive. You might
even get the overwhelming urge to create far more virtual machines than you
actually need. You should resist that urge! In fact, this is called virtual machine
sprawl. While it does not take up as much space as physical server sprawl,
it can be detrimental from an efficiency, resource, and management point of
view. As a rule of thumb, only create a virtual machine if you would have
created a physical machine to accomplish your goal in the past.
Meeting the pieces and parts
of VMware Infrastructure 3
Many pieces make up VI3, and each has a specific purpose to help create
a seamless whole. Although you can purchase different parts separately,
buying them as a package costs less. If you’re virtualizing your infrastructure,
you will want the entire product suite.
Here’s a list of what’s included in the VI3Enterprise Suite:
 VMware ESX: This comprises the operating system that you put on your
server hardware that allows you to create virtual machines and share
hardware resources between them. Your physical servers are referred
to as hosts. The virtual machines run guest operating systems.
A new version — ESXi — is also available. This preinstalled version can
be configured by non-technical people via menus at boot-up. This ver-
sion supports everything that the ESX supports, but it lacks a Service
Console. This version is designed for remote deployment and manage-
ment. And did I mention that it runs on a chip? You don’t even need any
hard disks in your ESXi server.
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