VMware vSphere Install, Manage, and
Configure V[8]
Module 2: vSphere and Virtualization Overview
© 2009 VMware Inc. All rights reserved
Importance
As a vSphere administrator, you must be familiar with the
components on which vSphere is based. You must also understand
the following concepts:
• Virtualization, the role of the ESXi hypervisor in virtualization, and virtual
machine
• Fundamental vSphere components and the use of vSphere in the software
defined data center
• When to use each one of the user interface to administer and manage
vSphere Environment
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Module Lessons
1. Overview of vSphere and Virtual Machine
2. vSphere Virtualization of Resources
3. vSphere User Interface
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Lesson 1: Overview of vSphere and Virtual Machine
Learner Objective
After completing this lesson, you should be able to meet the following objectives:
▪ Explain basic virtualization concepts
▪ Describe how vSphere fits into the software-defined data center and the
cloud infrastructure
▪ Describe how to proactively manage your vSphere environment
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1.1 Terminology (1)
Term Definition Example
OS Software designed to allocate physical Microsoft, Linux OS, …
resource to applications
Application Software that runs on an operating Excel, AD, Mail, ….
System, consume physical resource
Hypervisor Specialized OS that designed to run ESXi, Workstation, Proxmox,
VMs Hyper-V, XCP-ng, …
Virtual Machine Specialized application that abstracts
hardware resources into software
Guest The OS that runs in a VM Microsoft, Linux OS, …
Host Physical computer that provides
resource to ESXi Hypervisor
vSphere Server virtualization that combines ESXi
and vCenter Server
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1.1 Terminology (2)
Term Definition Example
Cluster Group of ESXi hosts
vSphere vMotion Feature that support migration of power on/off VM without
service interruption
vSphere HA Cluster feature that protect against host hardware failures
by restarting VMs to other running hosts
vSphere DRS Cluster feature that use vSphere vMotion to balance
resource withing cluster
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1.2 Datacenter Physical Infrastructure
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1.3 About Virtual Infrastructure
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1.4 About Virtual Machines
A virtual machine (VM) is a software representation of a physical computer and its
components. The virtualization software coverts the physical machine and its
components into files.
Virtual Machine Components
• Guest operating system
• VMware Tools
• Virtual resources, such as CPU and
Memory, Network adapters, Disks,
GPU, …
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1.5 Benefits of Using Virtual Machines
Physical Machines:
• Difficult to move or copy
• Bound to a specific set of hardware components
• Often have a short life cycle
• Require personal contact to upgrade hardware
Virtual Machines:
• Easy to move or copy
• Independent of physical hardware because VMs
are encapsulated into files
• Isolated from other VMs running on same physical
hardware
• Insulated from physical hardware changes
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1.6 About vSphere
vSphere is the virtualization platform that includes two core administrative
components for running virtual machine:
• ESXi: Hypervisor on which you run virtual machines
• vCenter: Central administration platform for ESXi hosts, VMs, storage and
networking.
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1.7 Types of Virtualization
Virtualization is the process of creating a software-based representation of
something physical, such as a server, desktop, network, or storage device.
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1.7 About the Software-Defined Data Center
In a software-defined datacenter (SDDC), all infrastructure is virtualized, and the
control of the data center is automated by software. vSphere is the foundation of
the SDDC.
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1.8 About vSphere+
VMware vSphere+ is a subscription offering that brings the benefits of cloud to on-
premises workloads.
vSphere+ consists of on-premises and cloud components that interact with each
other.
vSphere+ lets you centrally manage your on premises workloads from a cloud
console.
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1.9 vSphere+: Accessing Cloud Service
vSphere+ lets you access cloud service to augment and enhance on premises capabilities:
• Admin Services
▪ Inventory management
▪ Events and alerts management
▪ Lifecycle Management
▪ Configuration Managment
• Developer Services
▪ Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
▪ Tanzu integrated service
• Add-On Service
▪ Disaster recover
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Lesson 2: vSphere Virtualization of Resources
Learner Objectives
After completing this lesson, you should be able to meet the following objective:
• Explain how vSphere interacts with resources:
▪ CPUs
▪ Memory
▪ Networks
▪ Storage
▪ GPUs
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2.1 Virtual Machine: Guest and Consumer of ESXi Host
Any application in any supported OS can run in a VM (guest) and consume CPU,
memory, disk, and network from host-based resources.
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2.2 Physical and Virtual Architecture
Virtualization technology abstracts physical components into software components
and provides solution for many IT problems.
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2.3 Physical Resource Sharing
Multiple VMs, running on a physical host, share the compute, memory, network,
and storage resources of the host.
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2.4 CPU Virtualization
In physical environment, the OS assumes the ownership of all the physical CPUs
in the system.
CPU Virtualization emphasizes performance and runs directly on the available
CPUs.
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2.5 Physical and Virtualized Host Memory Usage
In physical environment, the OS assumes the ownership of all the physical
memory in the system.
Memory pages are allocated to virtual machines on first access.
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2.5 Physical and Virtual Networking
Virtual Ethernet adapters and virtual switches are key of virtual networking
components.
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2.6 Physical File System and Datastores
vSphere Datastores provides a distributed storage architecture, where multiple
ESXi hosts can read or write to the shared storage concurrently.
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2.7 GPU Virtualization
GPU graphics devices optimize complex
graphics operations. These operations can
run at high performance without overloading
the CPU.
vGPU can be added to VMs with following
use case:
• VMware Horizon virtual desktop
• Graphics intensive applications
• Scientific computation applications
• Artificial Intelligences (AI) and Machine
Learning (ML)
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2.8 Sharing GPUs with vSphere Bitfusion
vSphere Bitfusion virtualizes hardware accelerators such as GPUs to provide a
pool of shared, network-accessible resources that support AI and ML workloads.
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Lesson 3: vSphere User Interface
Learner Objectives
After completing this lesson, you should be able to meet the following objective:
• Recognize the user interfaces for accessing the vCenter Server system
and ESXi hosts.
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3.1 vSphere User Interface
You can use the vSphere Client, PowerCLI, VMware Host Client, and ESXCLI to
interact with the vSphere environment.
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3.2 About VMware Host Client
VMware Host Client is an HTML5-based user interface that you can use to
manage individual ESXi hosts directly when vCenter Server is unavailable.
VMware Host Client served from ESXi, and you access it from a supported
browser at [Link]
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3.3 About vSphere Client
The vSphere Client is an HTML5-based client. You manage the vSphere
environment with the vSphere Client by connecting to vCenter Server Appliance.
You access the vSphere Client from a supported browser at
[Link]
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3.4 About PowerCLI and ESXCLI
Beside using GUI of vSphere Host Client and vSphere Client, we also can use:
• PowerCLI is a command line and scripting tool that is built on Windows PowerShell.
• ESXCLI tool allows for remote management of ESXi hosts by using the ESXCLI command.
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