The primary Enterprise product offering from VMware is VMware Infrastructure; itself centered around the core product offering, VMware ESX Server. VMware Infrastructure provides a collection of components that together enable the deployment and management of virtual servers and their supporting services in the Enterprise data center.

As mentioned, the core of VMware Infrastructure is VMware ESX Server, which itself enables a single physical machine to be partitioned into one or more (up to 128) virtual servers, each with its own guest operating system and unique characteristics, such as CPU, storage, and network traffic I/O priorities. Each virtual server can be interacted with by users and other applications as if it were indeed a separately accessible server; with various features--such as the ability to allocate multiple virtual NICs (each with its own IP address) to each virtual server and the ability to load balance CPU requests from multiple virtual servers across the physical server's CPUs--allowing the virtual server to operate and appear on the network as a unique entity.

VMware ESX Server is deployed over bare metal (not over a pre-installed operating system), allowing the various resources of the machine--including CPU, memory, and network interfaces--to be accessed by the virtual machines that the software will provision and expose. Onto these virtual machines can be loaded any of a number of supported guest operating systems; including Windows (NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista/2008), Linux (multiple flavors), and Solaris (9/10). Guest operating systems can be loaded unaltered onto the virtual machines. For the hardware itself, the vendor states that rack, tower and blade servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun and Unisys are all supported; as are servers that conform to Intel white-box standard specifications.

Other key features of ESX Server include storage virtualization (VMs can access and utilize shared storage via the vendor's VMFS cluster file system, with an included logical volume manager for physical-to-virtual mappings or optional support for raw device mapping); support for the creation of virtual network switches and VLANs; support for virtual Symmetric Multi-Processors (SMPs) that enable a single VM to access multiple (up to 4) CPUs; and RAM over-allocation (servers can be collectively assigned RAM allocations that exceed the physical RAM of the host server; with ESX Server using techniques such as dynamic RAM allocation and shared memory pages for identical memory usages in similar virtual machines to balance the RAM across the VMs).

On top of the core ESX Server offering, multiple other VMware Infrastructure components provide ancillary services for the management of virtual server deployments. These include:

- Consolidated Backup, a centralized, proxy-based platform for the backup of production virtual machines

- Update manager, providing patch management for ESX Server hosts

- VMware High Availability, providing failover for applications across ESX Servers (even if the applications themselves do not support failover)

- VMotion, for the live migration of virtual servers from host to host

- Storage VMotion, for the live migration of a virtual machine's disk between physical storage resources

- VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), which automatically allocates available resources across virtual machines based on pre-defined rule sets

- VirtualCenter Server, a centralized management component for virtual data centers. VirtualCenter Server is required for the deployment of Consolidated Backup, Update Manager, HA, VMotion, Storage VMotion, or DRS.

- Site Recovery Manager, the newest product in the family, which provides for the creation, management and automated execution of disaster recovery plans for VMware servers. Site Recovery Manager runs over VMware VirtualCenter Management Server (2.5+) and VMware Infrastructure (3.0.2, 3.5) and features role-based access controls, the ability to extend recovery plans with custom scripts, the ability to monitor remote site availability, and testing features including the ability to use storage snapshot capabilities and automated test environment cleanups. Site Recovery Manager does not itself perform data replication; rather, it leverages 3rd party block-based storage products (several vendor's have already announced replication adapters for their products; including FalconStor, EMC, and 3PAR). Site Recovery Manager will be offered as a separate purchase from VMware Infrastructure.

Also available from the vendor is their ESX Server 3i offering, which moves the ESX Server functionality into hardware and therefore provides the ability to deploy diskless virtual servers with small-footprint (32 MB) VM kernels. ESX Server 3i can be purchased as part of VMware Infrastructure or as a stand alone product (but when purchased as a stand alone product the vendor warns that it cannot be managed by VirtualCenter).

Multiple product bundles of VMware Infrastructure are available from the vendor; from VMware Infrastructure Foundation (ESX Server or Server 3i, Consolidated Backup and Update Manager), which is base priced at $995; to VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise (adds HA, VMotion, Storage VMotion, and DRS with Distributed Power Management), which is priced at $5,750.

Visit the VMware Web site for further information.

product submission by EITPlanet Staff

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