Datasheet

34
|
CHAPTER 1 VMware VSphere 4 OVerView
Physical-to-virtual conversion•u
Intelligent placement on the right vSphere host•u
You can find and analyze physical systems using Guided Consolidation in several ways:
You can automatically scan active domains daily.
•u
You can manually add systems by entering a computer name, a singular or range of IP •u
addresses, or a filename.
Guided Consolidation is recommended for smaller environments, up to 100 concurrent phys-
ical machines at any given time. For larger environments, you should use VMware Capacity
Planner.
vCenter Update Manager
vCenter Update Manager automates the process of patch management in vSphere environments
and helps you enforce compliance to patch standards. The vCenter Update Manager can help
you do the following:
Patch and upgrade VMware ESX/ESXi hosts
•u
Apply patches to Windows and certain versions of Linux guest operating systems in vir-•u
tual machines
Upgrade VMware Tools and virtual hardware for virtual machines
•u
Patch and upgrade virtual appliances•u
VMware Update Manager integrates with the Shavlik patch management technology to pro-
vide these patching capabilities. It also allows you to download patches from a remote server
and stage them to a local server. Staging patches on local server can be very helpful when patch-
ing several hosts and virtual machines.
Update Manager also allows you to create update baselines and baseline groups that repre-
sent a set of updates. You can then review the Update Manager dashboard to compare hosts and
virtual machines against these baselines. If the host or virtual machine is not compliant, then
it can be easily remediated. You can use this to ensure consistency across ESX hosts and virtual
machines in your vSphere environment.
In Chapter 2, we discuss in more detail how you can use Update Manager to patch Windows
Server 2008 virtual machines and comply with your patch management policies.
vSphere Management Assistant
With vSphere, VMware also ships vSphere Management Assistant (vMA), a virtual machine that
includes the vSphere CLI, vSphere SDK for Perl, and other prepackaged software. You can use
this prebuilt virtual machine to run agents and scripts to manage ESX/ ESXi and vCenter Server
systems. Some folks refer to vMA as the missing service console for ESXi. A key functionality of
vMA includes noninteractive login, which allows you to use the vSphere CLI without having to
explicitly authenticate each time. vMA can also collect ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server logs and
store the information for analysis. vMA can also host third-party agents for added management
functionality.
563601c01.indd 34 6/29/10 4:41:04 PM