Vmware products description in Russian. Virtualization Products (VMware Inc.). VSphere Client Enhancements

The term "virtualization" has recently become very fashionable. The concept of "virtual machine" has ceased to be something exotic and distant. Many organizations, one way or another connected with information technology have already learned how to use virtual machines in their daily activities to improve the efficiency of their IT infrastructure. The concept of virtualization is now used everywhere and, at times, in various contexts: virtualization of storage systems, operating systems, applications. If various aspects of virtualization of hardware resources have been known to specialists for a long time, then virtualization of operating systems has begun to gain momentum only in the last few years, but at a rapid pace.

So what are virtualization and virtual machines for operating systems? The term virtualization itself means the presentation of an object in a convenient form for the user, while all the details of the implementation are hidden, and the object itself has familiar interfaces for interacting with the external environment, in relation to it. When they talk about virtualization of operating systems, first of all, they mean the creation of virtual machines - some abstractions that contain their own virtual hardware and software environment, which allows you to install and run several instances of operating systems simultaneously on one physical platform. What is it for? First of all, in order to decouple the operating system view from the hardware and accommodate several running virtual servers on one physical platform with the ability to quickly migrate and recover operating environments. This approach also provides maximum flexibility in server deployment, maintenance, and management.

Most CIOs of large organizations, if they do not plan to partially or completely virtualize their IT infrastructure, then at least seriously think about it. In the long term, virtualization projects seem very tempting: increasing the flexibility of the IT infrastructure, increasing the reliability and high availability of servers, saving on hardware - all these and many other factors attract heads of IT departments of companies. However, many do not realize the effort it will take to migrate a physical infrastructure to a virtual one, because there are only a few competent specialists in this field, and the acquisition and deployment of powerful commercial virtualization platforms is costly. This article will focus on two popular server virtualization platforms - free VMware Server and commercial VMware ESX Server.

Why VMware?

VMware is one of the earliest players in the newly emerging virtualization platform market. In 1998, VMware patented its virtualization software techniques and since then has released many effective and professional virtualization products of various levels: from VMware Workstation aimed at the end user (consumer) to VMware ESX Server, designed to host the virtual infrastructure of medium and large enterprises. VMware's vast portfolio of products includes many tools to improve the efficiency of the virtualization process, manage virtual servers and migrate from physical platforms to virtual platforms. In Russia, VMware products are especially popular, since virtualization is still gaining momentum in our country, and the platforms of other vendors, not so well known to us, are very "raw" and have much less functionality than their counterparts from VMware. In addition, VMware virtualization almost always outperforms the competition in various performance tests. And if we talk about virtualization of Windows operating systems, then these are almost certainly VMware products. Meanwhile, among virtualization platforms, VMware has a lot to choose from:

• VMware Workstation- a platform focused on Desktop users and intended for use by software developers and IT professionals,
• VMware Player- a free "player" of virtual machines, designed to run ready-made templates of virtual machines, performing a specific task,
• VMware Server, formerly known as VMware GSX Server, aimed at small business infrastructure to support virtual servers
• VMware Ace- a product for creating virtual machines protected by security policies,
• VMware ESX Server- a powerful virtualization platform for medium and large businesses, focused primarily on maintaining a holistic and scalable IT infrastructure,
• VMware Virtual Center is a powerful tool for managing virtualization platforms VMware ESX Server and VMware Server, with extensive capabilities for server consolidation, configuration and management.
• VMware Fusion is a desktop virtualization product for the Mac platform from Apple.

VMware's formal competitors for server virtualization are Microsoft, Virtual Iron, XenSource, and SWsoft. However, the product of SWsoft company has a rather narrow scope of application (hosting), and the developments of other vendors in comparison with VMware products at the moment look much weaker.

When to implement virtual infrastructure in a company

First of all, it is necessary to clearly define the goals with which virtualization platforms will be implemented. Then, it is necessary to determine the criteria by which the effectiveness of the implementation of the virtual infrastructure will be assessed. In addition to purely financial criteria (cost reduction for Hardware maintenance savings), you also need to consider improving infrastructure reliability, scalability, flexibility, resilience, reduced deployment time, downtime, disaster recovery, centralized management, and high availability. Of course, all these criteria can be expressed in monetary terms, depending on the type and specifics of the environment to be virtualized.

7 reasons to implement server virtualization

• Increased hardware utilization
  According to statistics, most servers are loaded by 15-20 percent when performing daily tasks. The use of several virtual servers on one physical will increase it up to 80 percent, while providing significant savings in the purchase of hardware.
• Reduced hardware replacement costs
  Since virtual servers are decoupled from specific hardware, updating the fleet of physical servers does not require re-installing and configuring the software. The virtual machine can simply be copied to another server.
• Increasing the flexibility of using virtual servers
  In case you need to use several servers (for example, for testing and work in production) with varying load, virtual servers are the best solution, since they can be painlessly ported to other platforms when the physical server is experiencing increased loads.
• Ensuring high availability
  Backing up virtual machines and restoring them from backups takes significantly less time and is easier. Also, in the event of equipment failure, a backup copy of a virtual server can be immediately launched on another physical server.
• Improving the manageability of the server infrastructure
  There are many virtual infrastructure management products available to centrally manage virtual servers and provide load balancing and live migration.
• Savings on maintenance personnel
  Simplifying the management of virtual servers in the long term leads to savings on specialists who maintain the company's infrastructure. If two people using virtual server management tools can do what four did, why would you need two extra specialists earning at least $ 15,000 a year? Nevertheless, it should be borne in mind that a lot of money is also needed to train qualified personnel in the field of virtualization.
• Energy savings
  For small companies, this factor, of course, does not really matter, but for large data centers where the costs of maintaining a large server park include the cost of electricity (power, cooling systems), this point is of considerable importance. Concentrating several virtual servers on one physical server will reduce these costs.

When you do not need to implement infrastructure in the company

Despite all the advantages, server virtualization also has some limitations in its use. When planning a virtual infrastructure, consider the following factors:

• Servers have a continuous workload of over 60 percent
  These servers are not good candidates for virtualization because when you migrate it to a virtual machine and host it with other virtual servers, it may run out of resources.
• The server uses additional hardware that cannot be virtualized
  Everything is clear here: in the case when the server uses hardware that is not supported by the vendors of virtualization platforms, there is no point in virtualizing such a server.
• The acquisition and implementation costs of a virtualization platform are too high
  In midsize and small organizations, the server infrastructure is small, and the hardware and maintenance costs are low. In this case, you need to be careful about the virtualization procedure, since the purchase of a commercial platform may not be justified.
• Lack of qualified specialists
  In many cases, the process of migrating from physical hardware to virtual machines and the further deployment of the virtualization platform requires good qualifications from the people conducting them. This is especially required when deploying platforms of the "Bare metal" class (bare metal). If you are not sure if your people have the knowledge to do this, do not start a virtualization project.

VMware Server is a free and powerful virtualization platform for small businesses

The free product VMware Server is a fairly powerful virtualization platform that can run on servers running Windows and Linux host operating systems. The main purpose of VMware Server is to support small and medium-sized virtual infrastructures of small businesses. Due to the small complexity of its development and installation, VMware Server can be deployed in the shortest possible time, both on the servers of organizations and on computers of home users.

Previously, this product was distributed under a commercial license and was called VMware GSX Server 3, however, with the growth of opportunities and sales of the powerful virtualization platform VMware ESX Server, VMware did not see any prospects in sales of the VMware Server platform, eventually making the product free. It is worth noting that for this product, VMware relies heavily on the revenue from the sales of Virtual Center for VMware Server, an efficient virtual infrastructure management tool based on VMware Server that offers rich interoperability with virtual machines and virtual server consolidation.

Here are the main use cases for a VMware Server product:

• support of several virtual servers on one physical one in the production of the company
• support of several virtual servers for testing "in conjunction" in a virtual host network during software development and support
• running ready-to-use virtual machines (Virtual Appliances) that perform a specific server function
• ensuring high availability of virtual servers (virtual machines can be easily transferred between physical servers)
• Creation of easy-to-restore backup copies of virtual servers by obtaining snapshots of the current state of the system ("snapshots").

VMware Server has extensive capabilities for working with virtual machines, including:

• Support for any standard x86 architecture
  VMware Server has no specific requirements for the physical server components — unlike VMware ESX Server, which imposes very specific restrictions on the server hardware. Multi-core processors are also supported.
• Support for bidirectional virtual SMP (symmetric multi-processing)
  If the architecture of the physical server allows, virtual machines created in VMware Server can contain two virtual processors, which positively affects the performance of guests.
• Support for a large number of host and guest operating systems, full list which is always available on the VMware website
  The number of host operating systems on which VMware Server can be installed is, of course, less than the number of guest systems supported. Meanwhile, almost any known operating system can be installed as a guest. Even if it is not in the list of supported, it does not mean that it cannot be installed.
• Support for 64-bit host and guest operating systems
  As host 64-bit systems, 64-bit operating systems of the family Windows Server 2003, as well as 64-bit versions of Linux systems: Red Hat, SUSE, Mandriva and Ubuntu. The list of supported guest OS is also supplemented with 64-bit versions Windows Vista, Sun Solaris and FreeBSD.
• IntelVT (Intel Virtualization Technology) support
  VMware Server is experimenting with Intel's hardware virtualization technology and allows it to be used to support virtual machines. It is worth noting that hardware virtualization, according to research by VMware engineers, is still slower than software virtualization, so it is not recommended to enable software virtualization support for better performance.

An introduction to VMware Server begins with the Virtual Machine Management Console window:

In the workspace of the main program window, you can create a virtual machine, add an existing one, switch the console to another physical host (manage the virtual server remotely), and configure host parameters.

Creating a virtual machine in VMware Server is simple and intuitive and takes just a few steps in the New Virtual Machine wizard:

• select a guest system from the list, which will be installed as a guest
• select the name and location of the virtual machine files
• select the type of network interaction between the virtual machine, host OS, other virtual machines and an external network
• enter the volume virtual disk and click Finish.

After that, if the distribution of the guest system to be installed is on a CD or DVD, simply insert it into the drive and press the "Power on" button on the toolbar. If you have the operating system distribution kit in the form of an ISO image, select the VM-> Settings menu item, go to the CD-ROM element, where we indicate the path to ISO image, press "OK" and "Power On".

The process of installing a guest system in VMware Server is quite simple and does not require a separate description. However, when installing guest operating systems, be sure to consider the following points:

• Allocate the planned virtual server with enough resources to perform its functions, but remember that increasing the number of allocated resources is always more difficult than decreasing.
• When choosing the type of virtual server networking, consider security issues, and if the virtual server only needs communication in the host's internal virtual network, do not install Bridged Networking.
• If not only you have access to the virtual server management console, you can make your virtual machine private by checking the box in VM-> Settings-> Options-> Permissions.
• Remember to install VMware Tools on your guests, as installing these add-ons will significantly increase the guest experience and performance.
• Try to keep the ratio: no more than 4 virtual machines per physical processor, since more of them will significantly affect the performance of virtual servers.

When maintaining a virtual infrastructure based on VMware Server, you must carefully monitor the load on the server's hardware resources. If any virtual machine lacks resources, you need to think about moving it to another server. If you plan to manage a large number of virtual servers, you should consider purchasing VMware Virtual Center, which allows you to centrally control many hosts on which VMware Server is installed, combine them into clusters and monitor the load of hosts by virtual machines. Use the performance counters within the guests to determine the amount of resources to allocate to virtual servers. Try to use only virtual SCSI disks as virtual IDEs are slower.

If you need to access the virtual server console from an external network, you can configure a Web client for VMware Server integrated with Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS). This feature will allow you to control virtual servers over the Internet using a secure SSL connections(Secure Socket Layer).

VMware Server Specifications

Possibilities	VMware Server 1.0
Ability to run as a service	Yes
Starting virtual machines when the host operating system starts	Yes
Local management	Thick client, command line
Multiple user access	Yes
Programming interfaces (API)	Yes (C / COM / Perl)
Remote product use	Yes (Web console)
Remote use of virtual machines	Fat client
Management of multiple installations	No
Virtual machines / core ratio	2-4
Hardware virtualization support	Intel VT (Experimental)
Generation of virtual hardware	5
Support for virtual processors inside a virtual machine (VMware Virtual SMP technology)	2 (Experimental)
The maximum amount of RAM allocated for a virtual machine	Up to 3.4 GB
The maximum amount of RAM allocated for all virtual machines	Up to 64 GB
Virtual IDE controllers / disks per virtual machine	1/4
Virtual SCSI controllers / disks per virtual machine	4/60
Maximum virtual disk size	Up to 950 GB
Maximum number of virtual network interfaces	4
Virtual switches	9
Obtaining snapshots via a fat client	Yes
Getting snapshots via the command line	No
Multiple snapshots	No
Cloning virtual machines	No
Virtual machine groups (Teams)	No
Debugging virtual machines	Yes
Shared folders service	No
Drag & Drop Support Host Virtual Machine	No
Unsupported host OS	Windows XP Professional (32 / 64bit) Windows XP Home Windows 2000 Professional Red Hat Linux 7.0 Red Hat Linux 7.1

1. Only on operating systems that support extended memory or PAE enabled.
2. Available when using VMware Virtual Center.

There are many different commercial and free utilities available for VMware Server for virtual machine and disk management, performance monitoring, and maintenance. However, if you are going to take full advantage of the power of VMware Server, you should look at VMware Virtual Center for VMware Server.

VMware ESX Server - an enterprise-class virtualization platform and a tool for building a virtual infrastructure of the enterprise

Among the many virtualization solutions offered by VMware, VMware ESX Server stands out. As the company's flagship development, VMware ESX Server provides the foundation for building large virtual infrastructures that integrate other VMware products.

VMware ESX Server is a bare metal virtualization platform installed on a bare metal server with no operating system or other software. VMware ESX Server is built on the Linux Red Hat operating system, in which VMware engineers have made significant changes to add many features to support virtualization. This implementation of this platform maximizes the use of server hardware resources and ensures the best interaction between guests and hardware.

VMware ESX Server has many benefits and is the core of a large enterprise virtual infrastructure that requires multiple virtual servers to be maintained, consolidated, highly available, and virtualized between physical servers. ESX Server is the true concept of building an enterprise IT infrastructure using virtual machines.

In addition to the ESX server, the virtual infrastructure of the enterprise also contains components such as storage area networks (SANs), storage systems (Storages), high-speed connections (Fiber Channel) and virtual networks (VLANs). Virtual infrastructure based on VMware ESX Server allows you to centrally manage all these resources and ensure uninterrupted operation of virtual servers. The main components of the virtual infrastructure are:

• ESX Server itself.
• VMware File System VMFS (Virtual Machine File System) optimized for virtual machine performance and high availability.
• VMware SMP (Symmetric Multi-Processing)- a technology that allows virtual machines to use all processors on a host while having multiple virtual processors.
• Virtual Infrastructure Client- a powerful tool for remote administration and configuring VMware ESX Server that runs on Windows workstations and has a user-friendly interface.
• Virtual Center- a tool for centralized management of multiple ESX servers.
• Virtual Infrastructure Web Access- the ability to manage virtual machines from an external network via a secure channel.
• VMware VMotion- a technology that allows for "live" migration of a running virtual server to another physical server, without the need to shutdown the virtual machine and ensure its uninterrupted operation during the migration.
• VMware High Availability (HA)- the ability to automatically restart the necessary mirrors of virtual machines on another server in the event of a hardware or software failure of a physical server.
• VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)- a component that allows you to carry out dynamic allocation resources to virtual machines.
• VMware Consolidated Backup (VCB)- a simple and powerful tool for creating backups of virtual machines.
• VMware Infrastructure SDK- a package for developing applications for virtual infrastructure by third-party developers.

When to use virtual infrastructure based on VMware ESX Server

• You have a clear idea of ​​how many physical servers will be required to support the virtual server infrastructure. Keep in mind that planning the migration of physical servers should be based on no more than 4-6 virtual machines per physical processor with an average real load of the migrated physical servers of 15%.
• You have selected the appropriate VMware ESX Server edition and virtual infrastructure components, calculated the costs of their deployment and maintenance, and concluded that implementation is worthwhile as the savings in hardware and maintenance cover these costs.
• You have specialists who will not only competently conduct a virtualization project, but also administrators who have sufficient knowledge to maintain and develop a virtual infrastructure every day.
• You are ready to purchase the hardware that VMware ESX Server requires. Be careful - the ESX server installation guide tells you what specific hardware is required to install it. At first glance, everything seems quite expensive, but if you read the requirements carefully, it becomes clear that a fully functioning ESX Server for training purposes can be built for $ 900.

The installation procedure for VMware ESX Server is quite simple and does not require extensive knowledge from the user. If you followed the recommendations of VMware and wisely chose the host server hardware, then the ESX server installation will take less than an hour. Once you have installed at least one ESX, you immediately have a lot of questions and problems - this is the price for the capabilities that VMware ESX Server provides. Here are some basic guidelines for the first steps after installing ESX:

• To manage the ESX server and create your first virtual machines, use the VMware Infrastructure Client, which can be downloaded from https: //.
• To transfer files to and from ESX, use either WinSCP (slow file transfer, encrypts traffic) or FastSCP (fast file transfer, but it is better not to use it from the external network, since traffic is not encrypted).
• To allow Root user log in via SSH (Secure Shell), add the line “PermitRootLogon yes” to the “httpd.conf” file on ESX.
• Use the "vmkfs-tools" utilities to manage disks, use the "esxtop" command to monitor the performance of virtual machines, and use the "var / log / vmware / hostd.log" log to analyze error reports.
• Remember, free space on your ESX is always two types of partitions: the first for the operating system of the ESX itself, and the second for vmfs partitions for hosting virtual machines. To find out how much free space is left on both partitions, use the "vdf -h" command.

After you install VMware ESX Server, you need a physical to virtual (P2V) migration tool. VMware offers to use the product VMware Converter for these purposes, but you can use solutions from other manufacturers. You will constantly have questions - do not hesitate to contact the forums of the VMware company, where its regular visitors will help you in a difficult situation. Ultimately, several virtual machines will be installed on your ESX, which is a virtual infrastructure, which is shown in the figure made using the Veeam Reporter program:

The key concepts for virtual infrastructure are: physical adapter (NIC), virtual adapter (vNIC), virtual switch (vSwitch), and virtual network (Vlan). VMware ESX Server allows you to create up to four virtual network adapters for a virtual machine, each of which can be tied to a virtual network, which in turn is created on virtual switches.

A virtual switch is a kind of abstract multi-port device that switches channels between virtual networks and virtual network adapters of virtual machines.

A virtual network is a combination of several virtual machines into a single network environment in which they interact with each other. If the virtual switch is connected to a physical network adapter, then the virtual machines through it will be able to "see" the external, in relation to ESX, network.

In fact, everything is not as complicated as it seems: the creation of elements of a virtual infrastructure takes very little time and, once configured, such an infrastructure does not require further configuration when new virtual machines are introduced into it.

A little about Virtual Center for VMware ESX Server

As with the VMware Server product, the use of multiple hosts with VMware ESX Server in an enterprise IT infrastructure raises the problem of centralized management and performance monitoring of physical hosts. To solve these problems with VMware ESX Server platforms, as well as with VMware Server, the Virtual Center solution is used. Its appearance is shown in the figure:

Virtual Center allows you to monitor multiple hosts on which VMware ESX Server is installed, cluster them and control them using "alarms" - signals about various events. It should be noted that the capabilities of Virtual Center for VMware ESX Server are much more possibilities Virtual Center for VMware Server, which is primarily due to the fact that the VMware ESX Server product itself has much broader capabilities.

Should I choose VMware Server or VMware ESX Server?

From the above, it becomes clear that both products described in the article are aimed at maintaining a virtual server infrastructure and perform similar functions. However, there are significant differences between the two platforms. If a virtual infrastructure based on VMware Server can be built mainly from servers that perform daily tasks in an organization that do not require high availability, speed and flexibility, then VMware ESX Server is a complete platform for supporting the vital IT infrastructure of an enterprise in conditions of uninterrupted operation of virtual servers and their support in 24 × 7 × 365 mode.

Here are some examples of when to use a VMware Server-based infrastructure:

• support and maintenance of internal servers of the organization,
• performing testing tasks for individual applications,
• modeling small virtual networks in order to check the working bundles of servers,
• launching ready-to-use templates of virtual machines that act as internal servers of the organization,
• getting individual servers ready for quick migration.

VMware ESX Server must be used when solving the following tasks:

• streaming application testing in large software development organizations,
• maintaining external servers of the organization with a high degree of availability, flexibility and manageability,
• modeling of large virtual networks,
• reducing the cost of equipment, maintenance and electricity in large organizations and data centers.

Thus, when implementing virtual infrastructure in an organization, you need to carefully consider the definition of the ultimate goals. When deploying a free VMware Server, there will be no special problems with installation and maintenance, there will also be no costs for purchasing the platform itself, but the organization can lose on performance (since virtualization is performed on top of the host operating system), reliability and availability. Implementation of VMware ESX Server will result in great technical difficulties of deployment and maintenance in the absence of qualified specialists. Plus, investing in such a platform may not pay off for small and medium-sized organizations. However, as the experience of VMware shows, for large organizations, the implementation of VMware ESX Server turns, in the long run, into significant cost savings.

Taking these points into account will allow you to competently plan the migration of physical servers of your IT infrastructure to virtual ones, while saving not only money, but also time, which, as you know, is also money.

What's New in VMware Cloud Foundation 4?

We recently talked about new platform features and other updates to the VMware product line, announced simultaneously with the flagship product. Recall these articles:

Today we will tell you about another important update - the new version of the set of solutions for hybrid infrastructure VMware Cloud Foundation 4. We wrote about the previous version of this package VCF 3.9.1. As you remember, it is a comprehensive software solution that includes the components of the VMware vRealize Suite, VMware vSphere Integrated Containers, VMware Integrated OpenStack, VMware Horizon, NSX and others running in an on-premise, cloud, or hybrid enterprise infrastructure running SDDC Manager.

The fourth version of VCF includes all the latest components, the articles describing which we have given above:

• vSphere 7
• VMware vSAN 7
• VMware NSX-T
• VMware vRealize Suite 2019
• with Kubernetes support

As we can see, a fundamentally new component has appeared in the VCF stack - VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid. We have already written about the infrastructure for supporting containers in the new version of the vSphere platform and. In the new VCF architecture, administrators can deploy and serve applications across Kubernetes clusters using Kubernetes tools and a restful API.

At the same time, vSphere with Kubernetes technology (aka Project Pacific) will provide the following functionality:

• Kubernetes-based vSphere Pod Services will allow nodes to run directly on the ESXi hypervisor. When an administrator deploys containers through the vSphere Pod Service, they receive the same level of security, isolation, and performance guarantees as virtual machines.
• The Registry Service enables developers to store and serve Docker and OCI images on the Harbor platform.
• Network Service allows developers to manage Virtual Routers, Load Balancers, and Firewall Rules components.
• Storage Services enable developers to manage persistent disks for use with containers, Kubernetes clusters, and virtual machines.

All this allows you to get all the advantages of a hybrid infrastructure (VM + containers), which are interestingly described.

For the rest, VCF 4 acquires all the newest features that are provided by the already listed new releases of vSphere, vSAN, NSX-T and others.

Separately, it should be noted the very tight integration of vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) with the vSphere 7.vLCM platform complements the capabilities for lifecycle management of virtualization infrastructure components that are already in SDDC Manager, but at a deeper level - namely, at the firmware management level for vSAN nodes ReadyNodes (for example, HBA firmware updates).

Like all other updates to the vSphere line, the VCF 4.0 update is expected in April. You can follow the updates on this page.

Tags: VMware, Cloud, VCF, Update, vCloud, Enterprse

Today we are going to talk about Identity Federation Services introduced in VMware vSphere 7.

In today's world, corporate infrastructure is increasingly moving away from legacy password authentication to the practice of two-factor (2FA) or multi-factor (MFA) authentication. The user identification process is always based on 3 key things: you know something (password), you have something (phone), or who you are (fingerprint).

Identity Federation Services allows you to combine your vCenter Server infrastructure with other Identity Providers, such as Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS), to unify your two-factor or multi-factor authentication process. In other words, users who log in via 2FA to their desktop or cloud service will use the same procedure for operations with vCenter Server.

Being connected to one of the authentication providers (for example, ADFS), the vSphere Client will redirect to the login form of this provider when logging in. After authorization on the side of the provider, a reverse redirection will be made using a secure token, through which the user will already work with vCenter services.

In terms of user experience, this resembles, for example, logging into a website using Google or Facebook. The OAUTH2 and OIDC protocols are used to exchange information.

If you enable Identity Federation, you can use traditional Active Directory, Integrated Windows Authentication, and LDAP / LDAPS to authenticate to the vCenter Server. However, it should be understood that all of these authentication methods do not affect vSphere Single Sign-on (SSO), which is still used to make administrative settings for the vSphere platform itself.

Bob Plankers explains this mechanism in more detail in the video below:

Tags: VMware, vSphere, Security, Client, Update

Here's what's new in the Ubuntu OVA for Horizon 1.2 image:

• Supports at least Horizon 7.11 / Horizon Client 5.3 and later
• Supports at least vSphere 6.7 and later
• Updated base image of OVA template on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
• Updated virtual hardware - Virtual Hardware v14
• Added the ability to configure a static IP address
• Added support for USB 3.0 and USB Redirection (via linux-agent-installer.sh script)
• Added option to select KDE Desktop environment
• Added option to select Gnome environment (recommended)
• Developer Desktop Package Option
• Choosing a keyboard layout
• Option to enable SSH
• Removed runlevel 5 setting
• Fixed bugs with MOTD
• Automatic software update is disabled
• Improved SSO support
• Improvements to the optimization script, now called optimize.sh

Tags: VMware, Labs, VDI, Horizon, Linux, Update, VMachines

We also remind you that now you do not have the vCenter Server installer. for Windows... , vSphere 6.7 was the last version of the platform, where there was still a version for vCenter for Windows. This is now only a virtual Photon OS-based vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA).

Earlier we wrote that using the utility that appeared in, you can migrate an external Platform Services Controller (PSC) server to an easy-to-manage embedded PSC using the vCenter Server CLI or the vSphere Client graphical client:

Also, the vCenter 7 installer upgrades vCenter and transfers all services to the Embedded PSC as part of a single task, so the result of the upgrade will be complete immediately. The installer of the new vCenter 7 does not have an option to deploy an external PSC:

2. Migration process

If you go through the migration path from vCenter Server for Windows to vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then the scheme will be exactly the same - as a result, you will get vCenter 7 to vCSA in the integrated PSC:

After the external PSC is converted, it remains in the console, and its decommission is a subsequent task for the vSphere administrator. This can be done using the CMSSO-UTIL command or from graphical interface client (in the System Configuration section):

3. Ways of upgrade

Everything is simple here. The upgrade is supported according to this plate:

As you can see from the table, the upgrade is supported starting from vSphere 6.5, but many administrators, when upgrading the virtual infrastructure, prefer to redeploy vCenter services so as not to drag along a history of possible bugs that may appear during the upgrade.

Before upgrading, be sure to look at the documents and. But remember that prior to the official release of vSphere 7, these documents do not contain up-to-date information about the seventh version.

Tags: VMware, vCenter, Upgrade

Now it is possible to redefine policies. Computer-based policies are applied at system startup. Using the value RefreshInterval you can control how often these settings are updated before the user logs into the system. And using the value ContinueRefreshAfterLogon you can continue to update the settings after the user is logged in.

Well, the final interesting new opportunity DEM 9.11 is Find Items. It will allow you to search in the configuration templates available in the Marketplace, in the Horizon Smart Policy you created, in a certain set of conditions (condition set) and other elements, which is very convenient for administrators:

You can download Dynamic Environment Manager 9.11 from this link. Release Notes are available.

Tags: VMware, DEM, Update, VDI, EUC
Tags: VMware, Horizon, Update, VDI, DEM, Client, EUC

Let's take a look at what's new in vRealize Operations 8.1:

1. Operations with integrated infrastructure vSphere and Kubernetes.

vRealize Operations 8.1 allows you to discover and monitor Kubernetes clusters within a vSphere-integrated infrastructure with the ability to auto-add Supervisor Clusters, Namespaces, PODs, and Clusters as you add them to vCenter using Workload Management features.

After that, you will have access to the Summary pages for monitoring performance, capacity, resource utilization, and configuration of Kubernetes on the vSphere 7.0 platform. For example, Capacity forecasting will show infrastructure bottlenecks at the node level, while dashboards, reports, views and alerts will be useful for day-to-day operations.

2. Operations in the infrastructure of VMware Cloud on AWS.

Now, in VMware Cloud on AWS, you can use the VMware Cloud Service Portal token to auto-discover SDDC datacenters and set up monitoring tools in a few simple steps. It will also be possible to use one account to manage multiple SDDC objects on the VMware Cloud on AWS platform, including vCenter, vSAN and NSX services, and there will also be full integration with VMConAWS billing.

The following dashboards can be used in the cloud:

• Track resource utilization and performance of virtual machines, including NSX Edge, Controller, and vCenter Server services.
• Monitor key resources including CPU, memory, disk and network for all infrastructure and virtual machines.
• Track resource consumption trends and predict metrics such as Time Remaining, Capacity Remaining, and Virtual Machines Remaining.
• Finding virtual machines that consume an unreasonable amount of resources and require reconfiguration based on historical data.

In addition, full support for visualization and monitoring tools will be provided for VMware NSX-T services:

Well, in the release of vROPs 8.1 there is a complete integration of the cost tracking functionality of VMware Cloud on AWS with the vRealize Operations solution in the portal interface. This will allow you to control already made and deferred costs, as well as detail them by subscriptions, consumption and payment dates.

The AWS migration assessment has also been updated to allow multiple results from different scenarios to be saved for further analysis. These scenarios include various options for Reserved CPU, Reserved Memory, Fault Tolerance, Raid Level, and Discounts.

3. Functions of monitoring of several clouds (Unified Multicloud monitoring).

Monitoring tools now provide even more advanced features such as Google Cloud Platform support, improved AWS support, and the new Cloud Health Management pack.

VROPS 8.1 now has the following GCP services:

• Compute Engine Instance
• Storage bucket
• Cloud VPN
• Big Query
• Kubernetes Engine

The AWS Management Pack now supports the following AWS Objects:

• Elastic Beanstalk
• Direct Connect Gateway
• Target Group
• Transit Gateway
• Internet Gateway
• Elastic Network Interface (ENI)
• EKS Cluster

The CloudHealth Management Pack has also been enhanced to include the ability to bring GCP Outlook and Pricing data to vRealize Operations 8.1. You can also create any number of custom dashboards by combining prices for different resource ratios of public, hybrid or private clouds.

VRealize Operations 8.1 is expected to be released in April this year, concurrently with the release of VMware vSphere 7. We will write about it for sure.

Tags: VMware, vRealize, Operations, Update, Monitoring, vSphere, Cloud
Tags: VMware, vCenter, VEBA, Labs
Tags: VMware, SRM, Update, DR, Replication, Enterprise

Let's say right away that this is just an announcement, not an announcement about the availability of a new version of the product for download - as a rule, the GA version of vSphere appears within a month after the announcement. Therefore, we will still wait for VMware vSphere 7 in April, and today we will talk about the new features of this platform.

1. Improvements to VMware vCenter services

The simplification of the vCenter Server SSO topology can be noted here:

• Upgrade vCenter Server for external PSC users to a consolidated topology based on a single vCSA server.
• Embedded PSC is now the only one possible variant deployment. External PSC is no longer supported.

VCenter Server Profiles:

• This new feature for vCenter Servers works exactly the same as Host Profiles works for hosts. You can now compare and export vCenter Server settings in JSON format for purposes Reserve copy or applying these settings to another vCenter server via the REST API.

VCenter Multi-Homing Features:

• Up to 4 vNICs can now be used for vCSA control traffic, of which one vNIC is reserved for vCHA.

Content Library improvements

• There is now a new view for template management, which provides Check-In and Check-Out functionality for managing template versions and the ability to roll back to a previous version.
• First, a Check-Out is done to open the possibility of making changes, then you can do a Check-In to save the changes in the library.

New vCenter Server Update Planner feature:

• The new capability is available as part of the vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) for vCenter Servers.
• With the Update Scheduler, you can receive vCenter update alerts, plan and roll out upgrades, and perform what-if analysis before upgrading.
• Ability to perform pre-upgrade checks for the selected vCenter server.

2 VMware DRS improvements

• DRS now starts every minute instead of every 5 minutes as it used to.
• The VM DRS score mechanism (aka) is used to generate recommendations.
• Now it is a Workload centric mechanism - this means that now, first of all, the needs of the virtual machine itself and the application in it are taken into account, and only then the use of host resources.
• Memory calculations are based on granted memory instead of the cluster standard deviation.
• The Scaleable Shares mechanism has appeared, which allows you to better allocate Shares in the resource pool in terms of their balancing.

3. Improvements to vMotion

There were such improvements:

• Improvements to migrations for Monster VM (with large resources and very high load), which allows you to increase the chance of a successful migration.
• Using only one vCPU when tracking changed pages (page tracer) instead of all vCPUs, which has less impact on performance during migration.
• Reduced time for context switching to another server (now less than one second). This is achieved by switching at a time when the compacted memory bitmap has already been transmitted to the target server, instead of waiting for the full bitmap to be transmitted.

4. New features of vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM)

There are 2 improvements to note here:

• Cluster Image Management, which includes firmware, driver and ESXi image updates of different versions.
• Initial support for Dell OpenManage and HP OneView solutions.

5. Features Application Acceleration (Tech Preview)

These features came from the acquired company Bitfusion. They allow you to optimize the use of the GPU in the pool over the network, when the vGPU can be partially shared between several VMs. It can be used for AI / ML application task workloads.

All this allows you to organize computations in such a way that ESXi hosts with GPU hardware modules run virtual machines, and their VM companions on regular ESXi servers run applications directly. In this case, CUDA instructions from client VMs are transmitted to server VMs over the network. You can read more about it.

6. Assignable Hardware Functions

This feature allows you to use the so-called Dynamic DirectPath I / O for machines that need to work with PCIe passthrough and Nvidia GRID devices. Now it can be used to select hosts with specific hardware requirements such as vGPU and PCIe. This allows, in turn, to use HA and DRS Initial Placement technologies for such VMs in a cluster where there are ESXi hosts that are compatible in terms of hardware.

7. Certificate Management

Here are the 2 main new features:

• New Certificate Import Wizard.
• Certificate API for scripting certificate management.

8. Identity Federation Features

ADFS features are now supported out of the box, and more IDPs using OAUTH2 and OIDC mechanisms will also be supported.

9. vSphere Trust Authority (vTA) Features

• vTA uses a separate cluster of ESXi hosts to create a separate hardware trust node.
• This cluster will be able to encrypt the compute cluster and its VMs along with vCenter and other management components.
• You can use the attestation mechanism when encryption keys are required.
• It is now easier to enforce the principle of least privilege and expand the auditing space.

10. Capability vSGX / Secures Enclaves (Intel)

• Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) allow you to move sensitive application logic and storage to a protected area that guest operating systems and the ESXi hypervisor cannot access.
• SGX features eliminate the use of vMotion, snapshots, Fault Tolerance and other technologies. Therefore, SGX is best used only when there is no other way.

11. New edition of vSphere with Kubernetes (Project Pacific)

We talked about Project Pacific in detail. It is a set of tools for transforming a VMware vSphere environment into a native platform for Kubernetes clusters. vCenter Server provides k8s cluster management capabilities (any clusters older than n-2 will be upgraded). Harbor is also integrated into the solution, which can be included for each namespace.

So far, this is available only for users of VMware Cloud Foundation (4.0), since the solution is tied to a component.

12. Improvements to VMware Tools

Guest Store features are now available in the guest OS (such as updating VMware Tools from the guest OS).

13. Updated hardware (VM Hardware v17)

The main improvements here are:

• Virtual Watchdog Timer - now there is no dependence on physical hardware to restart the VM in case the guest OS is not responding.
• Precision Time Protocol (PTP) - For very time sensitive applications (such as trading platforms for traders), you can use PTP instead of NTP and assign it to virtual machines.

14. Improvements to vSphere Client

The following improvements have appeared here:

• Search history has started to be saved.
• The API Explorer now has a better view of all available APIs.
• For Code Capture, you can now choose a scripting language - PowerCLI, Javascript, Python or Go.

Of course, these are not all the new features of VMware vSphere 7, presented the other day. In the near future, we will tell you a lot more about them, and in addition, we will also look at the announced solutions of the VMware Tanzu family, VMware Cloud Foundation 4 and vRealize 8.1.

Tags: VMware, vSphere, Update, Enterprise, Kubernetes, vCenter

To translate virtual addresses into physical addresses, a Page Table is used, which contains PTE (Page Table Entries) records:

PTE records store links to real physical addresses and some parameters of the memory page (you can read more about it). The structures of PTE records can be of different sizes - these are WORD (16 bits / 2 bytes), DWORD (32 bits / 4 bytes) and QWORD (64 bits / 8 bytes). They address large blocks of addresses in physical memory for example, DWORD addresses a 4 kilobyte block of addresses (for example, addresses from 4096 to 8191).

Memory is read and transferred to the guest system and applications in 4 KB or 2 MB pages - this allows you to read the contents of memory cells in blocks, which significantly speeds up performance. Naturally, with this approach, there is memory fragmentation - rarely when it is necessary to write an integer number of pages, and part of the memory remains unused. As the page size increases, so does their fragmentation, but performance increases.

Page tables (and there can be more than one) are controlled by a software or hardware Memory Management Unit (MMU). In the case of a hardware MMU, the hypervisor transfers the broadcast control functions to it, and the software MMU is implemented at the VMM level (Virtual Machine Monitor, part of the ESXi hypervisor):

An important component of the MMU is the Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB), which is the cache for the MMU. TLB is always located at least in physical memory, and for processors it is often implemented at the level of the CPU itself, so that access to it is as fast as possible. Therefore, the typical TLB access time on a processor is about 10 nanoseconds, while access to physical memory is about 100 nanoseconds. VMware vSphere supports Hardware MMU Offload, that is, transferring memory management functions to the MMU side of the physical processor.

So, if a request appears from the virtual machine to access the virtual address 0x00004105, then this address is split into the address of the virtual page (Virtual page number - 0x0004) and offset (Offset - 0x105- the area inside the page that is being accessed):

The offset is passed directly when accessing the physical memory page, but the virtual page tag is looked for in the TLB. In this case, the TLB contains an entry that the physical page address corresponding to this tag is 0x0007, accordingly, the translation of the virtual page into the physical one was successful. It is called TLB Hit, that is, hitting the cache.

Another situation is also possible - when decomposing a virtual address, the resulting tag 0x0003 missing in the TLB. In this case, the page is searched in physical memory by the tag (page number 3) and its address is already translated ( 0x006). Next, an entry with this tag is added to the TLB (in this case, old entries from the cache are preempted if it is full):

It should be noted that such an operation causes a slightly larger delay (since you have to search in global memory), and this situation is called TLB Miss, that is, a TLB miss.

But this is not the worst situation, since latency still goes to nanoseconds. But access can be much longer (milliseconds or even seconds) if the page that the guest OS needs has been copied to disk.

Let's look at an example:

The virtual machine accessed the virtual address 0x00000460 for which there is a tag 0x0000... In physical memory, page 0 is allocated for this tag, which means that you need to look for this page on the disk where the page was flushed due to lack of physical RAM.

In this case, the page is restored from disk to RAM(displacing the oldest page in terms of access time), well, then the address is translated to this page. This situation is called page failure ( Page Fault), which leads to delays in application operations, so it is sometimes useful to track Page Faults of individual processes in order to understand the reason for the drop in performance when working with memory.

Tags: VMware, vSphere, ESXi, Memory, Performance, Blogs

Existing vSphere Platinum users after the announced date will receive vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses, VMware AppDefense SaaS product and VMware AppDefense Plugin for vSphere (see where to download this plugin). For vCloud Suite Platinum and Cloud Foundation Platinum users, nothing changes, except for the evolution of vSphere itself, which is included in the packages.

Tags: VMware, vSphere, Platinum, Update, Support

The package focuses on code quality, code reuse, unit testing, relationship management, and side-by-side project releases for the vRealize platform. vRealize Build Tools are extensions packaged in a Maven repository format that support the use of an IDE (via Maven) and a CLI for developing, testing, and deploying solutions for vRA / vRO platforms.

Let's see what's new in the second version:

• Support for the solution, its blueprints, custom forms, subscriptions and flavor-mapping mechanics
• Support for existing content and import it for vRO 8
• Support for vRO 8 functionality for exporting workflows to a folder structure based on their tags
• Launching worker processes on vRO using maven command
• Ability to save JS Actions IDs at source in order to prevent conflicts in the vRO environment
• Improvements to experimental support for TypeScript projects
• Bug fixes and documentation updates

To get started with vRealize Build Tools, you need the following tools:

• vRealize Orchestrator
• Microsoft VS Code

You can download vRealize Build Tools from this link.

Tags: VMware, Labs, vRealize, Automation, Orchestrator, Update

In addition to many bug fixes, the utility has several new cmdlets:

• Add-vRA-Project-Administrator
• Add-vRA-Project-Member
• Get-vRA-DeploymentFilters
• Get-vRA-DeploymentFilterTypes
• Get-vRA-FabricNetworksFilter
• Get-vRA-FabricImagesFilter
• Remove-vRA-Project-Administrator
• Remove-vRA-Project-Member
• Update-vRA-Project-ZoneConfig

As a reminder, this module is not supported by VMware (like all utilities at VMware Labs that are in Tech Preview status), so use it with caution.

You may find this tool useful in the following cases:

• When you need to compare two clusters by performance (for example, on different hardware)
• When to understand the performance impact of cluster configuration changes
• When you need to verify that a new cluster is configured correctly before launching it into a production environment

To run Weathervane, you need to create container images, prepare a config file and run a benchmark. Next, the utility will itself deploy containers in the cluster, launch applications and collect test results.

Weathervane deploys the benchmark application to the nodes and feeds the load there, which is generated through the Workload driver component. This driver can be located both together with the benchmark application, and in the external environment, in a separate cluster.

Weathervane can be set to a constant load for a fixed number of simulated users, or it can be configured to search for the maximum number of users to meet quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. In the latter case, the test result will be the maximum number of WvUsers that the cluster can withstand. Actually, this parameter should be used to compare clusters by performance.

This is what the components of the Weathervane solution look like (the Run harness component is responsible for executing test runs and getting test results):

Weathervane uses a multi-tiered web application that includes stateless and stateful services. You can choose from these types of application deployment. Multiple application instances can be run in a single run, allowing testing to scale across large clusters.

The Weathervane app consists of several tiers. The application logic is implemented through Java services running on the Tomcat server that communicate through the REST API and RabbitMQ messages, and use Zookeeper for coordination. Backend storages are implemented using PostgreSQL and Cassandra. Front-end web servers and proxy cache servers are implemented in Nginx.

Tags: VMware, Kubernetes, Weathvane, Update, Performance

In Russia, too, there are already 10 vExpert carriers, not so many, but not too few (at the level of Sweden and Norway). It is clear that the majority of vExpert are from those countries where everything is good with English, since the audience of blogs in English is wider, which motivates authors to write posts (and in general, vExpert is given for blogging).

This is what the top ten looks like:

And here are the specialists from Russia who received vExpert this year:

Tags: VMware, vExpert, Blogs

VMware vCenter Server 6.7 Performance with Virtual Infrastructure of Remote Office and Branch Office VMware ESXi Servers

Many users of the VMware vSphere platform know that there is such an option for deploying and operating a distributed virtual infrastructure such as ROBO (Remote or Brunch Offices). It implies the presence of one or more main data centers, from where small remote offices are managed, where several VMware ESXi servers are located, with or without their own vCenter.

At the end of last year, VMware released an interesting paper "Performance of VMware vCenter Server 6.7 in Remote Offices and Branch Offices" (we have already covered it a bit), which discusses the main aspect of using such a scenario - performance. After all, remote offices can be located in other cities, countries and even continents, access to which is carried out via different types connections (e.g. 4G or satellite), so it is very important how much traffic is consumed various operations, and how quickly they work out from the administrator's point of view.

Parameters of various types network connections in VMware, they were summarized in a table (in the right column, what was obtained as a result of using the test configuration, and in the left column, as happens in scenarios with real data centers):

For testing, we used a remote configuration of 128 ESXi hosts, where 3840 virtual machines were registered (960 VMs per cluster, 30 per host), of which up to 3000 machines were turned on simultaneously.

The leading developers in this technology were VMWare with vSphere and Microsoft with Hyper-V technologies. To select a hypervisor for the infrastructure of Avantrade LLC, it is necessary to carry out comparative analysis two solutions.

VMWare Product Overview

VMware has been developing specialized products for virtualization since 1998. The entire package of the company's products, one way or another, is associated with virtualization technologies and the possibilities of their application. It should be noted that among the three main players in the commercial virtualization market (Citrix, Microsoft, VMware), only VMware is a highly specialized virtualization company, which allows it to go ahead of all competitors in terms of product functionality.

VMware's flagship products are VMware ESX / ESXi - hypervisors installed on bare metal. Currently, the latest version of the product is the fourth version, released in mid-2009. The hypervisor is the foundation for server virtualization, it allows you to share resources in such a way as to create separate, independent environments for multiple operating systems on a single physical server. However, the hypervisor itself has a very limited range of capabilities, but to realize all the benefits, a solution is required that includes not only virtualization tools, but also infrastructure management (vCenter). complex solution called vSphere.

An analysis of the efficiency of using server equipment shows that most of the working time the load is about 5-8% of the maximum, during non-working hours the servers simply stand idle, heating the air. When using VMware vSphere, we consolidate the load from several servers on one physical server (we transfer not only applications, but also operating systems to one server). The performance of modern servers makes the previously popular concept of "one task, one server" extremely inefficient, but thanks to virtualization, you can now use the new one: "one task - one virtual machine." Thus, the problem of compatibility of various software is solved - not all applications can be run in one instance of the operating system. In addition, the infrastructure often uses old applications that are no longer compatible with the current versions of the OS, and the installation of older versions is not supported on new hardware. Virtualization solves this problem too - you can even run Windows NT 4.0 or MS-DOS in an ESX virtual machine.

Server virtualization products are used in a wide variety of infrastructures, from small businesses to large enterprises.

In small companies, the product allows you to minimize the amount of server hardware, if necessary, while retaining the ability to use various operating systems. With the help of virtualization technologies, we can place all services on one or two full-fledged servers (instead of several ordinary PCs, as is often the case) and solve both the issues of equipment quality and its quantity.

For midsize and large enterprises, server virtualization can improve service availability through resiliency technologies and virtual server migration between physical servers. The ability to move virtual servers from one physical server to another without stopping can significantly increase service availability and facilitate maintenance of the entire system. The time for deploying new services is significantly reduced - you no longer need to wait for a new server to be delivered, it is enough to deploy a new virtual machine and install the necessary software in a few minutes. Due to the fact that virtual machines do not require installation of specific drivers, firmware updates, etc. administration tasks are also greatly simplified.

VMware vSphere has universal system monitoring the state of the elements of the entire system, both at the level of physical servers and at the level of virtual servers in the enterprise. If the standard monitoring tools for some reason are not enough, then there is whole line additional third-party applications with additional capabilities.

It is possible to provide increased availability of virtual servers by restarting on the backup physical server in case of failure of the main one, as shown in Figure 2.3.

Figure 2.3 - Organization of work of the hypervisor in case of failures

Thus, due to the availability of redundant servers, it is possible quick recovery system operability by moving data from the main server in case of failure to the backup one.

Hypervisors (virtualization technologies) have existed for more than 30 years, and during this time they have managed to become one of the main "cogs" in the cloud ecosystem. Many virtualization companies choose two popular hypervisors, VMware and KVM. We propose to figure out which one is better. But first, a little theory.

What is a hypervisor?

A hypervisor is a program that separates the operating system from the hardware. Hypervisors virtualize server resources (processor, memory, disk, network interfaces, etc.), allowing them to be used as their own, and create several separate virtual machines based on one server. Each created virtual machine is isolated from its neighbors so as not to affect the work of others. For the hypervisor to work, virtualization support is required: for Intel processors on an Intel VT processor, and for AMD processors on AMD-V.

Hypervisors are divided into two types: the former work directly with the server, and the user's operating system runs on top of the hypervisor. These hypervisors can provide server management functionality to some users, and most enterprises use these hypervisors.

The second type of hypervisor, also known as Hosted Hypervisor, runs with the operating system installed on the server. And operating systems for new users are built on top of the hypervisor.

Desktop hypervisors such as Oracle VirtualBox or VMware Workstation are type 2 hypervisors, while VMware and KVM are type 1. VMware and KVM are installed directly on the server and do not require any operating system to be installed.

VMware vSphere

Before purchasing VMware vSphere, you can try the trial version (60 days), after which you need to buy a license, or put up with the limitations of the free version.

The free version, called VMware Free vSphere Hypervisor, has no CPU or memory limits for the host, but there are a number of others:

• The product API is read-only;
• a virtual machine cannot have more than 8 cores;
• it cannot be used in conjunction with Veeam to create backups;
• connection to vCenter Server is not supported;
• High availability, VM Host Live Migration and VM Storage Live Migration technologies are also not supported.

The product from VMware differs from its counterparts in supporting a large number of operating systems - Windows, Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Netware, MacOS and others.

Installing a VMware distribution on a server is very simple: just boot from a CD, flash drive, or via PXE. In addition, scripts are supported to automate software installation, network configuration, and vCenter Server connectivity.

It is also important that there is a special VMware vCenter Converter that allows you to use MS Virtual Server, Virtual PC, Hyper-V images in ESXi, as well as physical servers and images of disk partitions created by such programs as Acronis True Image, Norton Ghost and others.

VMware vSphere has built-in Microsoft Active Directory integration, which means you can authenticate users in a private or hybrid cloud using Microsoft Domain Services. Flexible resource allocation allows for hot add CPU, RAM and hard disk (including resizing the current hard disk without rebooting).

VMware Fault Tolerate is a VMware technology designed to protect virtual machines with continuous availability clusters. If the host (ESXi server) with the Primary working copy of the virtual machine fails, the protected virtual machine will instantly switch to the "Secondary" or "shadow" copy running on another ESXi server. For machines protected by VMware Fault Tolerance, there is a constant (real-time) copy of the entire state of memory and processor instructions from the main copy to the shadow copy. If the primary ESXi host fails, users will not even notice the failover process to the second host. This is what makes Fault Tolerance different from High Availability. In High Availability, if the physical server fails, the virtual machines will be restarted on other nodes, and while the operating systems are rebooted, users will not be able to access the virtual servers.

In addition to VMware Foult Tolerate, the VMware vCloud Suite Enterprise license provides high availability, resiliency, and disaster recovery with vSphere HA, vMotion, Storage vMotion, and vCenter Site Recovery Manager.

To reduce planned outages in servicing servers or storage systems (DSS), the vMotion and Storage vMotion functions move virtual machines and their disks online without interrupting applications and users. VSphere Replication supports multiple vCenter Site Recovery Manager (SRM) replication options to protect against major disasters. SRM provides centralized disaster recovery planning, automatic Failover and Failback from a backup site or vCloud, and non-disruptive disaster recovery testing.

The peculiarities of this hypervisor include selectivity to the hardware - before installing, you must carefully check the existing hardware for compatibility with the desired version of ESXi. There is a special one for this on the VMware website.

Licensing of VMware products has its own specifics. Additional confusion is added periodic changes(from version to version of vSphere) in the VMware licensing policy. There are several points to consider before purchasing VMware vSpere licenses:

• the hypervisor is licensed on a per physical basis (CPU) basis. Each server CPU requires a separate vSphere license (cores are not physical processors and do not count towards licensing);
• the available functionality of the ESXi server is determined by the vSphere license installed on it. A detailed guide on licenses is available at;
• For each purchased vShpere license, you must purchase a service support package (at least for a year);
• VMware does not impose limits on the amount of memory (RAM) installed on the server or on the number of running virtual machines.

Another VMware product, Vcenter Server, can be used to manage multiple hosts with ESXi hypervisors, storage systems, and networking equipment. The vSphere client plug-ins provided by VMware partners give IT administrators the ability to manage third-party elements in the data center directly from this console. Therefore, vCenter users can back up, protect data, manage servers, networks and security directly from the vCenter interface. In the same console, you can configure triggers that will notify you of problems that have arisen, and get data about the operation of the entire infrastructure in the form of graphs or tables.

KVM

KVM is an easy-to-use, lightweight, low-resource, and fairly functional hypervisor. It allows you to deploy a virtualization platform and organize virtualization under the Linux operating system in the shortest possible time. During operation, KMV accesses the operating system kernel through a special module (KVM-Intel or KVM-AMD). Initially, KVM only supported x86 processors, but modern versions of KVM support a wide variety of processors and guest operating systems, including Linux, BSD, Solaris, Windows, etc. By the way, all Wiki resources (MediaWiki, Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia, Wikivoyage, Wikidata , Wikiversity) use this particular hypervisor.

Because guest operating systems interact with a hypervisor that is integrated into the Linux kernel, guest operating systems have the ability to access hardware directly without having to change the guest operating system. Due to this, there is almost no slowdown in the guest operating system.

KVM allows virtual machines to use unmodified QEMU, VMware, and other images containing operating systems. Each virtual machine has its own virtual hardware: network cards, disk, video card, and other hardware.

Thanks to support for unmodified VMware images, a physical server can be easily virtualized using the same VMware vServer Converter utility, and then transferred the resulting file to the hypervisor.

Installing KVM in the operating room Linux system consists in installing the KVM package and the Libvirt virtualization library, as well as in carefully setting up the virtualization environment. Depending on the operating system used on the host, you need to configure a bridge or connection to a VNC console through which virtual machines will communicate with the host.

It is more difficult to administer KVM, as there is no transparent access to files, processes, consoles and network interfaces, you have to configure it yourself. Rebuilding VM parameters in KVM (CPU, RAM, HDD) is not very convenient and requires additional steps, including rebooting the OS.

The project itself does not offer convenient graphical tools for managing virtual machines, only the Virsh utility, which implements all the necessary functions. For convenient management of virtual machines, you can additionally install the Virt-Manager package.

KVM doesn't have built-in tools like Fault Tolerate for VMware, so the only way to create a HA cluster is to use network replication with DRDB. The DRBD cluster only supports two nodes, and the nodes are synchronized without encryption. That is, for a more secure connection, you must use a VPN connection.

In addition, to build a high availability cluster, you will need the Heartbeat program, which allows the nodes in the cluster to exchange service messages about their status, and Pacemaker, the cluster resource manager.

The KVM hypervisor is distributed as an open source product, and for corporate users there is a commercial solution Red Hat Virtualization (RHEL) based on KVM and the oVirt virtual infrastructure management platform.

The undoubted advantage of this hypervisor is that it can run on any server. The hypervisor is rather unpretentious in terms of resources, which makes it easy to use for testing tasks.

Please note that KVM does not have a support service. If something doesn't work out, you can count on the forums and community help. Or go to RHEL.

So what should you choose?

Both hypervisors are mature, reliable, high-performance virtualization systems, each with its own characteristics to consider when choosing.

KVM is generally more scalable than VMware, primarily because vSphere has some limitations on the servers it can manage. In addition, VMware has added a large number of storage area networks (SANs) to support multiple vendors. This feature means VMware has more storage options than KVM, but also makes it harder to support VMware storage as it expands.

KVM is usually the most popular hypervisor for companies looking to reduce implementation costs and are less interested in enterprise-grade features.

Research has shown that KVM's TCO is typically 39 percent lower than VMware, although the actual TCO is dependent on specific factors such as operational parameters and site workload.

Tight integration with the host operating system is one of the most common reasons why developers choose KVM. Especially those using Linux. Enabling KVM in many Linux distributions also makes it convenient choice for developers.

Cloud providers offering IaaS services to their customers typically opt for an infrastructure built on VMware products. Solutions based on VMware Sphere contain all important corporate functions for ensuring high and continuous availability, provide support more guest operating systems and have the ability to interface the customer's infrastructure with cloud services.

We will not go into any technical details in this article. Instead, let's look at VMware terminology. This short overview will be useful for those who want to understand the difference between the underlying VMware products. Almost everyone knows about ESXi. What about vSphere and vCenter? People often confuse these terms, but in fact there is nothing complicated about them. Let's put everything on the shelves.

Introduced in 2001, the VMware ESX hypervisor (formerly known as VMware ESX Server) launched a virtual revolution. Today VMware is a leading developer software products for virtualization (now part of Dell). Every year and a half, the company releases a new software Advanced features that are compatible with a wide range of hardware including NVMe SSDs, extra large hard drives, and the latest Intel or AMD CPUs.

VMware ESXi

ESXi is a hypervisor; a tiny piece of software that installs on a physical server and allows you to run multiple operating systems on a single host computer. These operating systems operate separately from each other, but can interact with the outside world through the network. In this case, the rest of the computers are connected to a local area network (Local Area Network, LAN). OS run on virtual machines (Virtual Machine, VM), each of which has its own virtual hardware.

There are paid and free versions of VMware ESXi. You can order the installation of a free version on. The functionality of the free version is somewhat limited. It allows you to consolidate a limited number of operating systems on one computer, and it cannot be managed through a central management server - vCenter. However, Free ESXi (or VMware ESXi Hypervisor) connects to remote storage where virtual machines can be created, stored, and used. That is, this remote storage can be shared between several ESXi hosts, but not between virtual machines. Virtual machines are "owned" by each host, making central management impossible.

Work with free version ESXi is very simple and consists of basic processes: training, testing production processes, testing disaster recovery systems, approving architectural solutions. Using snapshots, you can check the correctness of the Windows patches. Alternatively, this can be useful if you decide to clone your production server using VMware Converter or P2V technology and want to test the Microsoft service pack before installing it.

VMware vCenter

VMware vCenter is a centralized management platform for VMware virtual infrastructure. With its help, you can manage almost all processes from just one console. VCenter Server can be installed on Windows or deployed as a pre-configured virtual machine using Photon OS, a powerful Linux-based distribution. Previously, VMware used the Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SUSE) distribution, but recently switched to Photon OS.

vCenter Server is licensed software. You can buy it in two ways:

• vCenter Server Essentials as part of the vSphere Essentials package. This version of vCenter manages three hosts with two physical processors each. If you have a small company, then you will operate with about 60 VMs, and this version of vCenter will suit you. With the basic set, you get a license not only for vCenter server, but also for ESXi (up to three hosts with two CPUs each).
• Standalone vCenter Server is a complete standalone vCenter server capable of managing 2,000 hosts from 25,000 virtual machines. This license is exclusively for vCenter. VCenter itself is only part of the licensing puzzle. To manage all hosts from one device, you need a license for each of them. There are three types of licenses: standard, enterprise, enterprise Plus, and each applies to one processor. So, if you are planning to create a host with two physical processors, then you will need 2 licenses for this one host only.

VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere is the trade name for the entire VMware suite of products. As stated earlier, different software packages cost different amounts of money. The cheapest are the basic vSphere essentials or Essentials Plus packages. Is there a difference between them? Yes, but it consists in the number of available functions, and not in the software itself.

Depending on the type of license, you get access to a certain number of functions that can be managed through the vSphere Web client. There is also a vSphere HTML 5 client, but not yet usable. The company continues to develop it.

Essentials does not include High Availability (automatic VM restart), vMotion, backup software (VDP), and the ability to use VSAN storage.

The Essentials package is suitable for small businesses that don't need to be online all the time. On the other hand, the ability to move your virtual machines to another host and perform maintenance or host upgrades while staying online gives you real advantage... All this can be done during the working day without interrupting the work of users.

In addition, in the event of an unexpected hardware failure, vSphere High Availability (HA) will automatically restart virtual machines that stopped working with the problem host. These virtual machines are automatically restarted on other hosts from the VMware cluster. It takes a little time for the system to determine which computer has crashed and which hosts can temporarily take over its virtual machines. These hosts must have enough memory and CPU power to handle the additional load. As soon as the system finishes analyzing, the VMs are restarted. The whole process is automated and does not require administrator intervention.

Summarize

As you can see, VMware terminology is fairly easy to understand, as is the difference between ESXi, vSphere, and vCenter. The licensing system is also clear. The hypervisor itself is free, but its functionality is limited, as a result of which such software is not insured against data loss. Therefore ESXi is intended for use in test environments only.