Datasheet

McCain c01.tex V3 - 09/17/2009 12:23pm Page 15
THE BOTTOM LINE 15
These scenarios begin to provide some idea of the benefits that organizations see when virtual-
izing with an enterprise-class virtualization solution like VMware vSphere.
The Bottom Line
Identify the role of each product in the vSphere product suite. The VMware vSphere prod-
uct suite contains ESX and ESXi and vCenter Server. ESX and ESXi provide the base virtualiza-
tion functionality and enable features like Virtual SMP. vCenter Server provides management
for ESX/ESXi and enables functionality like VMotion, Storage VMotion, VMware Distributed
Resource Scheduler (DRS), VMware High Availability (HA), and VMware Fault Tolerance
(FT). VMware Consolidated Backup is a backup framework that allows for the integration of
third-party backup solutions into a vSphere implementation.
Master It Which products are licensed features within the VMware vSphere suite?
Recognize the interaction and dependencies between the products in the vSphere suite.
VMware ESX and ESXi form the foundation of the vSphere product suite, but some features
require the presence of vCenter Server. Features like VMotion, Storage VMotion, VMware
DRS, VMware HA, and VMware FT require both ESX/ESXi as well as vCenter Server.
Master It Name three features that are supported only when using vCenter Server along
with ESX/ESXi.
Understand how vSphere differs from other virtualization products. VMware vSphere’s
hypervisor, ESX/ESXi, uses a type 1 bare-metal hypervisor that handles I/O directly within the
hypervisor. This means that a host operating system, like Windows or Linux, is not required in
order for ESX/ESXi to function. Although other virtualization solutions are listed as ‘‘type 1
bare-metal hypervisors,’’ most other type 1 hypervisors on the market today require the pres-
ence of a ‘‘parent partition’’ or ‘‘dom0,’’ through which all virtual machine I/O must travel.
Master It One of the administrators on your team asked whether he should install
Windows Server on the new servers you purchased for ESX. What should you tell him,
and why?