What is VMware Infrastructure?
So what is VMware Infrastructure (VI)? VI, is really just a product suite. Keep that in mind. There is really no application called "VMware Infrastructure". VI is a bundle of VMware products.
•Virtual Center (VC) - VC provides a centralized management console for all VMware ESX servers. If you plan to grow your virtual data center into the ten’s and hundreds, over time, you should have Virtual Center in your plans. To use VMotion, VM HA, VM DRS, and VM consolidated backup, you must purchase Virtual Center.
•VMotion - Like magic, VMotion can move a running virtual server to another physical server, without interrupting that server’s requests. This can be done for maintenance of hardware or to better balance workload. VMotion requires a SAN be used to store the virtual machines being moved.
•Virtual SMP- virtual symmetric multi-processing(SMP) option is what allows virtual machines to act as if they have multiple processors, thus improving performance.
•VMware HA - the high availability (HA) option for ESX server is what moves virtual guest machines from a failed server to a running server. VM HA uses VMotion to accomplish its task.
•VMware DRS - dynamic resource scheduling (DRS) is a load balancing system. It can be tuned to move virtual machines, or groups of machines, from one server to another based on the CPU, memory, disk, and network demands being placed on those servers. By using VMotion, DRS can move virtual machines automatically, throughout each day, to best balance the server load, and provide optimum performance to users.
•VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)- VCB is an application, running on a separate server, that contacts virtual guests, on a schedule, and provides a pass-through to backup the virtual guest data to your third party backup application. VCB is not a backup application in itself but it has the ability to gain access to the VMFS proprietary file system and allow you to backup or restore individual files, inside the file system.
What different VMware Infrastructure Suites are available?
As you probably already know, VMware ESX is an enterprise grade virtualization product by VMware. Unlike VMware Server, VMware ESX does not require an underlying operating system to be loaded first. What this means is that you get the highest virtualization performance that is possible when using VMware ESX Server.
So what is VMware Infrastructure (VI)? VI, is really just a product suite. Keep that in mind. There is really no application called "VMware Infrastructure". VI is a bundle of VMware products.
What capabilities or options are available for VMware ESX?
When you buy a VMware Infrastructure suite, you are really just buying VMware ESX Server, the VMFS file system, and some number of options. No matter which suite or bundle you buy, you MUST get VMware ESX as that is the core virtualization product you will need.
When you buy a VMware Infrastructure suite, you are really just buying VMware ESX Server, the VMFS file system, and some number of options. No matter which suite or bundle you buy, you MUST get VMware ESX as that is the core virtualization product you will need.
So what options are available for VMware ESX? (some of these were covered in our VMware Versions Compared article)
•Virtual Center (VC) - VC provides a centralized management console for all VMware ESX servers. If you plan to grow your virtual data center into the ten’s and hundreds, over time, you should have Virtual Center in your plans. To use VMotion, VM HA, VM DRS, and VM consolidated backup, you must purchase Virtual Center.
•VMotion - Like magic, VMotion can move a running virtual server to another physical server, without interrupting that server’s requests. This can be done for maintenance of hardware or to better balance workload. VMotion requires a SAN be used to store the virtual machines being moved.
•Virtual SMP- virtual symmetric multi-processing(SMP) option is what allows virtual machines to act as if they have multiple processors, thus improving performance.
•VMware HA - the high availability (HA) option for ESX server is what moves virtual guest machines from a failed server to a running server. VM HA uses VMotion to accomplish its task.
•VMware DRS - dynamic resource scheduling (DRS) is a load balancing system. It can be tuned to move virtual machines, or groups of machines, from one server to another based on the CPU, memory, disk, and network demands being placed on those servers. By using VMotion, DRS can move virtual machines automatically, throughout each day, to best balance the server load, and provide optimum performance to users.
•VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)- VCB is an application, running on a separate server, that contacts virtual guests, on a schedule, and provides a pass-through to backup the virtual guest data to your third party backup application. VCB is not a backup application in itself but it has the ability to gain access to the VMFS proprietary file system and allow you to backup or restore individual files, inside the file system.
What different VMware Infrastructure Suites are available?
There are three VMware Infrastructure Suites available: Starter, Standard, and Enterprise. Here is how they compare:
•VMware Infrastructure Starter Edition - only ESX Server & VMFS - no SAN storage, up to 4 CPU and 8GB of RAM per server, starting cost about $1000 per server
•VMware Infrastructure Standard Edition - only ESX Server, VMFS, SAN storage, and Virtual SMP, starting cost about $3750 per server
•VMware Infrastructure Enterprise Edition - includes ESX Server, VMFS, Virtual SMP,
VM HA, VM DRS, and VCB, starting cost about $6000 per serverAlso, keep in mind that no matter which option you choose if you want to use centralized management and/or you want to use features like VMotion, VM HA, or VM DRS, you must purchase Virtual Center separately, at a cost of approximately $5000
No comments:
Post a Comment