Architecture
Bare-metal architecture inserts a robust virtualisation layer directly on the server hardware for near-native virtual machine performance, reliability and scalability.
CPU virtualisation. Increase server utilisation without the risk of critical services being starved for CPU resources. ESX Server uses intelligent process scheduling and load balancing across available processors to manage the execution of virtual machine processing.
Storage virtualisation. Leverage high performance shared storage to centralise virtual machine file storage for greater manageability, flexibility and availability.
Networking virtualisation. Network virtual machines like physical machines. Build complex networks within a single ESX Server or across multiple installations of ESX Server.
Performance and Scalability
Enhanced virtual machine performance. Benefit from better virtual machine performance across the board in VMware Infrastructure 3. Performance improvements have been achieved through:
- multi-virtual machine scalability
- improved memory management unit (MMU) handling
- significant networking enhancements
- Linux native posix thread library (NPTL) support
- VMFS performance optimisation for virtual machine I/O, Adaptive block sizing, Dynamic increase of VMFS volume size, Increased number of ESX Server per VMFS volume, Extended block size and file limits, and Caching.
- Advanced memory management including RAM over-commitment, Transparent page sharing and Memory ballooning.
- Improved power management. Lower the data center utility bill with improved power management. ESX Server enters a low power "halt" state when a CPU is not scheduled.
- 4-way Virtual SMP. This unique feature allows even the most processor-intensive applications like databases and messaging servers to be virtualised.
Interoperability
Hardware. VMware Infrastructure 3 is rigorously tested and certified with industry-leading rack, tower and blade servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun Microsystems and Unisys.
Storage. VMware Infrastructure 3 is rigorously tested and certified with a wide range of storage systems from Dell, EMC, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, NEC, Network Appliance, StorageTek, Sun Microsystems and 3PAR.
Operating systems. VMware Infrastructure 3 supports a wide range of unmodified operating systems including Windows, Linux, Solaris and Novel NetWare.
Software applications. Run software applications from hundreds of software vendors in VMware virtual machines.
Support for other virtual machine formats. ESX Server 3 can run virtual machines created in non-VMware formats. Using the free VMware Virtual Machine Importer, users can run Microsoft® Virtual Server and Virtual PC, and Symantec® LiveState Recovery virtual machines in ESX Server.
Management
The advance management capabilities of VMware Infrastructure 3 reduce the operating cost of IT environments.
Storage Management
Virtual machine provisioning and migration.
Server and virtual machine management
System monitoring. Continuously monitor physical servers and virtual machine availability and utilisation from a single interface.
Maintenance mode for servers with VMware DRS. Perform maintenance on physical servers without disruption to virtual machines and end users. When a physical server is placed in maintenance mode, DRS automatically moves virtual machines to alternative servers in the resource pool.
Programmatic interfaces through the VMware Infrastructure SDK. Provide Web Services APIs to access the functionality and data provided through the graphical user interfaces in order to integrate with third party systems management products and to extend of the core functionality.
Distributed Resource Optimisation
Resource management for virtual machines. Define advanced resource allocation policies for virtual machines to improve service levels to software applications. Establish minimum, maximum, and proportional resource shares for CPU, memory, disk and network bandwidth. Modify allocations while virtual machines are running. Enable applications to dynamically acquire more resources to accommodate peak performance.
- CPU capacity prioritisation. CPU capacity is assigned to virtual machines on a "fair share" basis and CPU resource controls also allow an absolute minimum level of CPU capacity to be provided to critical virtual machines.
- Storage I/O traffic prioritisation. Ensure that critical virtual machines receive priority access to storage devices. I/O traffic from virtual machines to disk can be prioritised on a "fair share" basis.
- Network Traffic Shaper. Ensure that critical virtual machines receive priority access to network bandwidth. Network traffic from virtual machines can be prioritised on a "fair share" basis. Network Traffic Shaper manages virtual machine network traffic to meet peak bandwidth, average bandwidth and burst size constraints.
Dynamic resource optimisation across resource pools with VMware DRS. Align computing resources with business goals while ensuring flexibility and efficient utilisation of hardware resources. VMware DRS continuously monitors utilisation across resource pools and intelligently allocates available resources among virtual machine based on pre-defined rules and policies.
- Abstraction of resources from hardware. Manage resources independently of the physical servers that contribute the resources.
- Flexible hierarchical organisation. Organise resource pools hierarchically to match available IT resources to the business organisation. DRS ensures that resource utilisation is maximised while business units retain control and autonomy of their infrastructure. Resource pools can be flexibly added, removed, or reorganised as business needs or organisation change.
- Isolation between resource pools. Make allocation changes within a resource pool without impacting other unrelated resource pools. For example, any allocation changes in the resource pool dedicated to a given business unit do not impact other resource pools.
- Management of sets of virtual machines running a distributed application. Optimise the service level of distributed applications by controlling the aggregate allocation of resources for the entire set of virtual machines running the distributed application.
- Manual and Automatic Migration Mode. Execute recommendations for virtual machine resource optimisation either manually or automatically with VMware VMotion.
- Affinity Rules. Create rules that govern the allocation of virtual machines to physical servers. For example, certain virtual machines can always be kept on the same server for performance reasons. Alternatively, certain virtual machines can always be kept on different servers for high availability.
High Availability
VMware Infrastructure 3 delivers data center-class high availability.
Shared storage. Eliminate single points of failure by storing virtual machine files on shared storage such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN, or NAS.
SAN transparency. Use native SAN storage for virtual machines with the same ease and flexibility as virtual disk files. Raw device mapping lets virtual machines use standard SAN LUN data stores in addition to special-purpose VMFS formatted LUNs for virtual disk files. Offload file-level backup and replication of virtual machine data to SAN-based utilities. Easily configure clusters of virtual and physical machines with shared SAN data stores for cost effective high availability.
Built-in storage access multipathing. Ensure shared storage availability with SAN multipathing for Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN, and NIC teaming for NAS.
Virtual machine snapshots. Increase application availability while reducing backup windows using virtual machine snapshots. Create a point-in-time copy of virtual machine data that can be used for testing, backup, and recovery operations.
Hot add virtual disk. Add virtual disk to a running virtual machine to increase available resources or for backup
Distributed journaling. Recover virtual machines faster and more reliably in the event of server failure
Enhanced NIC teaming. Give each networked virtual machine built-in NIC failover and load balancing enabling greater hardware availability and fault tolerance. New NIC teaming policies allow users to configure multiple active and standby adapters. Teaming configuration may be different for different port groups on the same virtual switch and different groups can even select different teaming algorithms for the same team.
Support for Microsoft®Clustering Services. Cluster virtual machines running Microsoft® Windows operating system across physical hosts.
Automatic restart of virtual machines with VMware HA. Provide an easy to use and cost-effective failover solution VMware Consolidated Backup. Provide an easy to use, centralised backup facility for virtual machines that simplifies backup administration and reduces the load for multiple installations of ESX Server.
Security
Compatibility with SAN security practices. Enforce security policies with LUN zoning and LUN masking.
VLAN tagging. Enhance network security by tagging and filtering network traffic on VLANs. Limit the scope of broadcast domains.
Layer 2 network security policies. Enforce security for virtual machines at the Ethernet layer. Disallow promiscuous mode sniffing of network traffic, MAC address changes, and forged source MAC transmits.
Integration with Microsoft® Active Directory. Base access controls on existing Microsoft® Active Directory authentication mechanisms.
Custom roles and permissions. Enhance security and flexibility with user-defined roles. VirtualCenter users with appropriate privileges can create custom roles such as night shift operator or backup administrator. Restrict access to the entire inventory of virtual machines, resource pools and servers by assigning users to these custom roles.
Fine-grained access control. Secure resource allocation at different levels in the company. For example, when a top-level administrator makes a resource pool available to a department-level use, all virtual machine creation and management can be performed by the department administrator within the boundaries assigned to the resource pool.
Audit trails. Maintain a record of significant configuration changes and the administrator who initiated them. Export reports for event tracking.
Session management. Discover and, if necessary, terminate VirtualCenter user sessions.
VMware Infrastructure Foundation is a virtualisation software suite for small or remote work environments - ideally for small businesses, departments or branch offices. VMware Infrastructure Starter may also be used by smaller businesses to get started with virtualisation.
VMware Infrastructure Foundation includes:
ESX Server with the following limitations:
- No Fiber Channel or iSCSI SAN storage
- Cannot be deployed on a server with more than four physical CPUs or 8GB of physical memory).
- VirtualCenter Agent (Note: VirtualCenter Agent is no longer
sold separately).
- Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) with the following limitations:
- Can be used on local storage only (since the version of ESX Server in VMware Infrastructure Starter does not include SAN storage)
- VMware Consolidated Backup, which provides an easy to use, centralized facility for LAN-free backup of virtual machines.
VMware Infrastructure Standard is an enterprise-class infrastructure suite designed to deliver the highest levels of performance, scalability and robustness for mission critical applications. Standard is similar to the previous Virtual Infrastructure Node (VIN) bundle, with the notable exception of VMotion. VMotion is available in VMware Infrastructure Enterprise and can also be purchased separately as an add-on to VMware Infrastructure Starter or Standard.
VMware Infrastructure Standard includes:
- ESX Server (with no limitations)
- VMFS
- Virtual SMP (up to 4-way)
- VirtualCenter Agent
- VMware HA, which provides easy to use, cost effective high availability for applications running in virtual machines.
- VMware Consolidated Backup, which provides an easy to use, centralized facility for LAN-free backup of virtual machines.
- Update Manager
VMware Infrastructure Enterprise is the industry's first full Infrastructure virtualization suite designed to deliver unprecedented capabilities for the dynamic, automated and selfoptimizing data center. In addition to all of the components and functionality of Standard, Enterprise includes VMotion and several new products:
- ESX Server (with no limitations)
- VMFS
- Virtual SMP (up to 4-way)
- VirtualCenter Agent
- VMotion
- VMware HA, which provides easy to use, cost effective high availability for applications running in virtual machines.
- VMware DRS, which dynamically allocates and balances computing capacity across a collection of hardware resources aggregated into logical resource pools.
- VMware Consolidated Backup, which provides an easy to use, centralized facility for LAN-free backup of virtual machines.