Book Image

Learning VMware vSphere

By : Rebecca Fitzhugh, Abhilash G B
Book Image

Learning VMware vSphere

By: Rebecca Fitzhugh, Abhilash G B

Overview of this book

Computer virtualization is a method to enable the running of multiple application workloads on a machine to achieve efficient utilization and reduce the number of physical machines in a data center. This has now become the foundation of many modern day data centers. What began as a technology to virtualize x86 architecture has now grown beyond the limits of a server’s hardware and into the realm of storage and network virtualization. VMware is currently the market leader in developing data center virtualization solutions. This book goes into the details of designing and implementing VMware solutions that form the foundation of a VMware infrastructure. The book begins by introducing you to the concepts of server virtualization followed by the architecture of VMware’s hypervisor – ESXi and then by its installation and configuration. You then learn what is required to manage a vSphere environment and configure advanced management capabilities of vCenter. Next you are taken through topics on vSphere Networking, Storage, ESXi Clustering, Resource Management and Virtual Machine Management. You will then be introduced to SSL Certificate Management and its use in a vSphere environment. Finally, you will learn about the lifecycle management of a vSphere environment by effectively monitoring, patching and upgrading vSphere components using Update Manager. By the end of the book, you will know how to use VMware’s vSphere suite of components to lay the foundation of a modern day virtual infrastructure.
Table of Contents (13 chapters)
7
7. Understanding Host Profiles, Image Profiles, and Auto Deploy

Chapter 1. An Introduction to Server Virtualization Using VMware

Let's go back to a time when there wasn't a concept of server virtualization. We had data centers running a large number of machines; most of them were bought to run an application or a set of services. All those servers had enough CPU, memory, and storage capacity to host the application or the services that were running on it. The amount of compute and storage resources depended on what the application or the service would need during its peak load. However, the catch here is that not all servers execute peak load all the time. Research shows that more than 90% of hardware resources remain under-utilized. That is a huge number in terms of resource wastage. Running more than one application or service for the business always meant that there was a demand for additional hardware resources. Such a demand contributed to other factors such as power consumption, investment in cooling solutions, hardware maintenance, and the real estate space required to host all the hardware.

Now, a possible solution an administrator could have fantasized about would be to find a way to somehow magically connect all these servers together and present it as a large pool of resources to the applications or services. If that were possible, then you would probably be renting out 90% of your resources, that you have already invested in, to someone else to run their applications and you are paid for that service. Or, if you were in the planning phase of a new infrastructure, you could reduce the amount of server hardware needed for hosting the services. Unfortunately, such a conglomeration was far from reality due to two main reasons, the first one being the physical boundaries that separate these hardware resources and the second one being that not all services could run alongside each other without running into a conflict, affecting both the services. This is where the concept of server virtualization did its magic, on its introduction, like never perceived before.

In this chapter, we will learn the following:

  • The magic of server virtualization
  • What is a hypervisor?
  • What is a virtual machine?
  • An introduction to VMware vSphere