Thanks for choosing VMware vSphere Design Essentials, your companion in learning the fundamentals of designing VMware vSphere. We understand your mission to learn, apply, and reap the benefits of virtualization and to design VMware vSphere to its fullest extent using this book. Let's get started learning about VMware vSphere and its essentials.

VMware vSphere is a product developed by VMware, Inc. The company is located at Palo Alto, California, USA, and was started in 1998. It offers virtualization, cloud software, and services. VMware vSphere is a product that aims to provide x86 virtualization to renovate datacenters into streamlined cloud computing infrastructures, which in turn enables IT organizations to deliver consistent and elastic IT services.

vSphere virtualizes physical hardware and converts one single physical system into multiple VMs; thereby VMware vSphere reduces the space, cost, and complexity of managing systems in a datacenter. This book is not only for VMware architects but also for people who use vSphere on a daily basis. This book will help you understand how vSphere is designed and will help you to design your virtual infrastructure using VMware vSphere to its best potential. Also this book will help you to improve your skills; you will become well versed in designing best practices.

Designing VMware vSphere infrastructure will be a multipart subject. In this chapter, we'll provide an introduction to the VMware vSphere landscape, the design of vSphere itself, challenges and obstacles that were caused by virtual infrastructure due to poor design, and the way to overcome those challenges with structured principles and processes.

In this chapter, you will learn the following topics: