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vmware products. Virtualization Products (VMware Inc.). Improvements to the VMware DRS mechanism

VMware vSphere Hypervisor is a free, powerful and reliable hardware hypervisor for use in server and workstation virtualization tasks. The article discusses installing and configuring the VMware Hypervisor hypervisor, creating a virtual machine, installing a guest operating system.

Free vSphere Hypervisor: Technical requirements, limitations and compatibility

VMware vSphere Hypervisor can be installed on a server that meets the following technical requirements:

The VMware vSphere Hypervisor distribution file is small in size (311 MB) and contains only the most necessary drivers, mainly for servers from branded manufacturers. But sometimes it is not possible to install a hypervisor on servers of well-known brands. Often server manufacturers release their own hypervisor distributions with their own drivers.

You can check the compatibility of VMware vSphere Hypervisor with your server on the page:

List of hardware that is not supported in ESXi 6.7: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/52583

Let's look at the main limitations of the free vSphere Hypervisor hypervisor in comparison with the full-fledged VMWare ESXi:

  1. There is no official VMWare technical support;
  2. One VM can be allocated no more than 8 virtual processors/cores (vCPU) (by the way, vCPU restrictions for gen1 generation of VMs are 64);
  3. The host cannot be connected to vCenter;
  4. vStorage API is not available (it will not be possible to set up a normal backup, Veeam will not be able to pick up the VM from the host);
  5. Maximum of 2 physical processors (sockets) in the server (there are no restrictions on the number of cores);
  6. All APi are available in read-only mode (i.e. you will not be able to change any of the server or VM parameters through the same).

However, the free Sphere Hypervisor response allows unlimited use of all cores and RAM of the physical server. There are no restrictions on the total number of RAM, processors, cores or runtime of the host or VM. PCI VMDirectPath/USB redirection is working.

How to download and install the free VMware vSphere Hypervisor?

Download the current version of the VMware Hypervisor vSphere 6.7 hypervisor. To do this, you need to log into your VMWare account or create a new one.

If you are creating a new VMWare account, then after filling out the registration form, you need to wait for an email to confirm your account. Follow the link in the letter and enter your password.

At the next stage you receive a license key for free version hypervisor and a link to download VMware vSphere Hypervisor. Be sure to save the key.

An iso image is downloaded, which can be written to a flash drive or CD/DVD disc. Now you can install the hypervisor on the server (workstation or virtual machine).

Installation is very simple. Select “ ESXi-6.7.0-2019xxx-standard installer”.

Specify the drive on which the system will be installed. In this example, one 40 GB disk is available.

Select your keyboard layout.

Enter and confirm the root password (at least 7 characters).

After installation, a warning appears that the hypervisor will work for 60 days without a license key.

Restart your computer.

The VMware vSphere hypervisor is installed. If your server is connected to a network with a DHCP server through at least one network interface, it will automatically receive an IP address, which you will see in the hypervisor console (it’s called DCUI). This IP address is used to control the hypervisor from the web interface.

Configuring VMware ESXi in the console

To manage Hypervisor settings on the DCUI screen, click F2, enter the login (root by default) and password specified during the installation process.

A graphical console will open for initial setup of the hypervisor.

Here you can configure the following options:


The initial setup of VMware vSphere Hypervisor is complete. You can connect via the Web interface.

VMware ESXi web management interface, free license installation

In order to connect to the vSphere Hypervisor via the Web interface, enter the server IP address assigned when initial setup hypervisor. Then login (root) and password.

Please note that a server without a license will operate for 60 days.

Activate the license received during registration “Manage” -> “Licensing” -> “Assign License”.

If you do not activate the license, after 60 days all running VMs will continue to operate, but you will not be able to enable new VMs or reboot existing VMs.


The hypervisor has an unlimited time license (Expires: Never) activated with unlimited volume random access memory for virtual machines. You can allocate up to 8 virtual vCPUs (Up to 8-way virtual SMP) to each virtual machine.

“Manage” -> “System” -> “Time&date” -> “Edit settings”

VMWare ESXi Virtual Switch

Virtual switch(vSphere Switch or vSwitch) is a virtual device that transfers data between virtual machines inside the server and transfers data outside through the physical NIC. There are two types of virtual switches:

  • Standard Switches- a simple virtual switch, logically located inside the physical server.
  • Distributed Switches- distributed virtual switch, can be distributed over several physical servers (not available in the free version of VMWare Hypervisor, and in the paid version it is only available in the Enterprise Plus edition ) .

After installing and launching the hypervisor, there is already one virtual switch vSwitch0, which includes one physical adapter vmnic0 and two groups of ports - service (Management Network) for managing the hypervisor and a network for data transfer (VM Network). The vmk0 hypervisor management interface (vmkernel port) is included in the Management Network group.

In most cases, on a stand-alone hypervisor you will only need one virtual switch. Port groups need to be created if you want to isolate virtual machines from each other and use different VLAN settings for a group of ports.

There is no need to make changes to the Management Network or vmkernel port unless absolutely necessary, otherwise you may lose access to your hypervisor management interface. If you have lost access to the hypervisor, you can reset network settings using the Network Restore Options menu in the DCUI console.

Creating a virtual machine in VMWare Hypervisor

In the Web interface, select “Virtual Machines” -> “Create / Register VM” -> “Create a new virtual machine”.

Assign a name to the virtual machine. Select the guest operating system type and version. Enable the “Windows Virtualization Based Security” checkbox if you want to make hardware virtualization, IOMMU, EFI and Secure Boot available to the guest OS.

Select a datastore for the virtual machine configuration files and all its virtual disks.

If free place on the selected disk is less than its capacity, you will receive a message that you need to increase the datastore volume.

At this step, all parameters of the virtual machine are configured: number of CPUs, amount of RAM, size and placement hard drive, network adapters, CD/DVD drives, etc. To access the network in a VM, just place its adapter in the VM Network port group on the vSwitch0 switch (if you have not reconfigured anything).

All these parameters, if necessary, can then be changed when the virtual machine is turned off.

The next screen will ask you to check all the virtual machine settings and confirm them.

Installing a guest OS on a virtual machine

To install a guest OS on a virtual machine, you need to download the distribution iso image with the distribution of the desired OS to local storage. From the Navigation menu, select Storage and press .

Create a directory for downloading distributions.

Select the created directory, click Upload in the upper left corner, select iso - the image of the OS to be loaded and wait until the download is complete.

Select the installed virtual machine and click “Actions” -> “Edit Settings”

Change the CD-DVD drive settings as in the screenshot below. In CD/DVD Media, select the downloaded iso image of the operating system.

Then you simply turn on the virtual machine, the VM tries to boot from ISO image and the installation of the guest OS begins from the virtual CD/DVD to which the iso image is attached.

Once the guest OS installation is complete, you can use it as usual.

I hope this short overview article on the features of using the free hypervisor VMWare vSphere Hypervisor will be useful to you.

We won't go into any technical detail in this article. Instead, let's understand VMware terminology. This short overview will be useful for those who want to understand the differences between the basic 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 break it all down.

When it hit the market in 2001, the VMware ESX hypervisor (formerly known as VMware ESX Server) started a virtual revolution. Today VMware is the leading developer software products for virtualization (now part of Dell). Every year and a half, the company releases new software with advanced features that is compatible with a wide range of equipment, including SSD drives NVMe, very high capacity hard drives and the latest central processors Intel or AMD.

VMware ESXi

ESXi is a hypervisor; tiny particle software, which is installed 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. At the same time, other computers are connected to local network(Local Area Network, LAN). Operating systems run on virtual machines (VMs), each of which has its own virtual hardware.

There are paid and free versions of VMware ESXi. You can order installation of the 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.

Working with the free version of ESXi is very simple and consists of basic processes: training, testing production processes, checking disaster recovery systems, approving architectural solutions. Using snapshots, you can check whether Windows patches are working correctly. Alternatively, this may be useful if you decide to clone your production server using VMware Converter or P2V technology, and want to test the Microsoft update package 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 purchase it in two ways:

  • vCenter Server Essentials as part of the vSphere Essentials package. This version of vCenter can manage 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 basic set you receive a license not only for vCenter server, but also for ESXi (up to three hosts with two CPUs each).
  • Standalone vCenter Server is a full-fledged standalone version of vCenter server, capable of managing 2,000 hosts with 25,000 working virtual machines. This is a vCenter-only license. 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 plan to create a host with two physical processors, then you will need 2 licenses for just that one host.

VMware vSphere

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

Depending on the license type, 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 it is not yet usable. The company continues to develop it.

The Essentials package does not include High Availability (automatic VM restart), vMotion, software for Reserve copy(VDP) and the ability to use VSAN storage.

The Essentials package is suitable for small companies that do not 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 upgrades on the host while remaining online gives you a real advantage. All this can be done during the working day without interrupting the work of users.

Additionally, in the event of an unexpected hardware failure, vSphere High Availability (HA) will automatically restart virtual machines that have stopped working with the problematic host. These virtual machines are automatically restarted on other hosts in the VMware cluster. It takes a little time for the system to determine which computer has failed 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 analysis, the VMs are restarted. The entire process is automated and does not require administrator intervention.

Summarize

As you can see, VMware terminology is quite 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 immune to data loss. Therefore, ESXi is intended for use in test environments only.


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 companies selecting virtualization solutions opt for two popular hypervisors - VMware and KVM. We suggest you 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 first 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, works with the operating system installed on the server. And operating systems for new users are created on top of the hypervisor.

Desktop hypervisors such as Oracle VirtualBox or VMware Workstation are the second type of hypervisors, and VMware and KVM are the first. VMware and KVM are installed directly on the server and do not require installation of any operating system.

VMware vSphere

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

In the free version, called VMware Free vSphere Hypervisor, there are no processor and memory restrictions 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 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 analogues by 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 the software installation process, network configuration, and connections to vCenter Server.

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

VMware vSphere has native integration with Microsoft Active Directory, that is, user authentication in a private or hybrid cloud can be done using Microsoft domain services. Flexible resource allocation allows hot addition of 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 using 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 a “Secondary” or “shadow” copy running on another ESXi server. For machines protected by VMware Fault Tolerance, the entire memory state and processor instructions are continuously (in real time) copied 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 node. This is where Fault Tolerance differs from High Availability. In High Availability, if a physical server fails, 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, fault tolerance, and disaster recovery with vSphere HA, vMotion, Storage vMotion, and vCenter Site Recovery Manager features.

To reduce planned downtime in the maintenance of servers or storage systems, vMotion and Storage vMotion functions online migrate virtual machines and their disks without stopping 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 features of this hypervisor include selectivity to hardware - before installation, 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 characteristics. Additional confusion is added by periodic changes (from version to version of vSphere) in the VMware licensing policy. There are several points to consider before purchasing VMware vSpere licenses:

  • Hypervisor licensing is based on the number of physical processors (CPUs). Each server CPU requires a separate vSphere license (cores are not physical processors and are not included in licensing);
  • The available functionality of the ESXi server is determined by the vSphere license installed on it. Detailed Guide there are licenses for;
  • for each vShpere license purchased, you must purchase a service support package (at least for a year);
  • VMware does not impose restrictions on the amount of memory (RAM) installed on the server or on the number of running virtual machines.

You can manage multiple hosts with ESXi hypervisors, storage systems and network equipment using another VMware product - Vcenter Server. 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. So vCenter users can back up, protect data, manage servers, networks, and security directly from the vCenter interface. In the same console, you can set up triggers that will notify you of problems that have arisen, and obtain data on the operation of the entire infrastructure in the form of graphs or tables.

KVM

KVM is an easy-to-use, lightweight, low-resource and quite functional hypervisor. It allows you to deploy a virtualization platform in the shortest possible time and organize virtualization running the Linux operating system. During operation, KMV accesses the operating system kernel through a special module (KVM-Intel or KVM-AMD). Initially, KVM supported only 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 communicate with the hypervisor, which is integrated into the Linux kernel, guest operating systems have the ability to directly access the hardware without the need to modify the guest operating system. Due to this, there is almost no slowdown in the performance of the guest operating system.

KVM allows virtual machines use unmodified disk images of 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 the support of unmodified VMware images, a physical server can be easily virtualized using the same VMware vServer Converter utility, and then transfer the resulting file to the hypervisor.

Installing KVM on the Linux operating system involves installing the KVM package and the Libvirt virtualization library, as well as carefully setting up the virtualization environment. Depending on the operating system used on the host, it is necessary to configure a bridge or connection to a VNC console, through which virtual machines will interact with the host.

KVM is more difficult to administer because it provides transparent access to files, processes, consoles, and network interfaces missing, you have to configure it yourself. Rebuilding VM parameters in KVM (CPU, RAM, HDD) is not very convenient and requires additional actions, 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 create a high availability cluster - use network replication using DRDB. A DRBD cluster only supports two nodes, and the nodes sync without encryption. That is, for more secure communication you need to use a VPN connection.

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

The KVM hypervisor is distributed as an open source product. source code, 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 quite unpretentious to resources, which makes it easy to use it for testing tasks.

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

So what should you choose?

Both hypervisors are mature, reliable, high-performance virtualization systems, and each has its own features 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 that VMware has more storage options than KVM, but it also makes VMware storage more difficult to support when expanding.

KVM is typically 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 total cost of ownership is typically 39 percent lower than VMware's, although the actual total cost of ownership depends 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 who use Linux. The inclusion of KVM in many Linux distributions also makes it a convenient choice for developers.

Cloud providers offering IaaS services to their clients usually choose infrastructure built on VMware products. Solutions based on VMware Sphere contain all the important enterprise functions for ensuring high and continuous availability, provide support for a larger number of guest operating systems and have the ability to interface the customer's infrastructure with cloud services.

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. Let's recall these articles:

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

The fourth version of VCF includes all the latest components, the articles describing which we provided 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 container support infrastructure in the new version of the vSphere platform. With the new VCF architecture, administrators can deploy and serve applications on Kubernetes clusters using Kubernetes tools and restful APIs.

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

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

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

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

Separately, it should be noted that vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) is very tightly integrated with the vSphere 7 platform. vLCM complements the lifecycle management capabilities of virtualization infrastructure components that already exist in SDDC Manager, but at a deeper level - namely at the level of firmware management 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'll talk about Identity Federation services introduced in VMware vSphere 7.

In today's world, corporate infrastructure is increasingly moving away from legacy password authentication and towards two-factor (2FA) or multi-factor (MFA) authentication practices. The user identification process is always based on 3 key things: something you know (password), something you have (phone) or someone 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 the two-factor or multi-factor authentication process. In other words, users logging in via 2FA to their desktop or cloud service will use the same procedure for operations with vCenter Server.

When 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 provider’s side, a reverse redirection will be made using a protected token, through which the user will already work with vCenter services.

From a user experience point of view, this is similar to, for example, logging into a website with 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 services to authenticate to vCenter Server. However, it must be understood that all these authentication methods do not affect vSphere Single Sign-on (SSO), which is still used to make administrative settings within the vSphere platform itself.

Bob Plankers talks about 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 version 1.2 image:

  • Minimum support for Horizon 7.11 / Horizon Client 5.3 and later
  • Minimum support for vSphere 6.7 and later
  • Updated OVA template base image on Ubuntu 18.04.4 LTS
  • Updated virtual hardware - Virtual Hardware v14
  • Added the ability to configure a static IP address
  • Added USB support 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
  • Selecting a keyboard layout
  • Ability to enable SSH
  • Removed runlevel 5 setting
  • Fixed bugs with MOTD
  • Turned off automatic update BY
  • Improved SSO support
  • Improvements to the optimization script, now called optimize.sh
Tags: VMware, Labs, VDI, Horizon, Linux, Update, VMachines

Let us also remind you that now you do not have a vCenter Server installer for Windows. , vSphere 6.7 was the last version of the platform where vCenter still had a Windows version. It is now just a virtual vCenter Server Appliance (vCSA) powered by Photon OS.

Previously, 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 command interface or the vSphere Client graphical client:

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

2. Migration process

If you are going through the migration path from vCenter Server for Windows to vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA), then the scheme will be exactly the same - in the end you will get vCenter 7 on vCSA in the built-in PSC:

Once the external PSC has been converted, it will remain in the console and decomission is a subsequent task for the vSphere administrator. This can be done using the CMSSO-UTIL command or from GUI client (in the System Configuration section):

3. Upgrade paths

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

As can be seen from the table, the upgrade is supported starting from version vSphere 6.5, but many administrators, when upgrading their virtual infrastructure, prefer to re-deploy vCenter services so as not to drag along a history of possible bugs that may appear during the upgrade.

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


Tags: VMware, vCenter, Upgrade

Now there is an opportunity 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 settings after the user logs in.

Well, the final interesting one new opportunity DEM 9.11 is a search for elements (Find Items). It will allow you to search in configuration templates available in the Marketplace, in Horizon Smart Policies you created, in a specific 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 vSphere and Kubernetes infrastructure.

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

You will then have access to Summary pages to monitor the performance, capacity, resource utilization, and configuration of Kubernetes on the vSphere 7.0 platform. For example, Capacity forecasting functions will show narrow places infrastructure at the node level, and dashboards, reports, views and alerts will be useful for daily operations.

2. Operations in the VMware Cloud on AWS infrastructure.

Now in the VMware Cloud on AWS cloud, you can use the VMware Cloud Service Portal token to auto-discover SDDC data centers and configure 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:

  • Monitor resource usage and performance of virtual machines, including NSX Edge, Controller and vCenter Server services.
  • Monitor key resources including CPU, memory, disk and network for the entire infrastructure and virtual machines.
  • Monitor resource consumption trends and forecast metrics such as Time Remaining, Capacity Remaining and Virtual Machines Remaining.
  • Finding virtual machines that consume unreasonably many resources and require reconfiguration based on historical data.

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

Well, in the vROPs 8.1 release there is full integration of the VMware Cloud on AWS cost tracking functionality 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 survey engine has also been updated, which now allows you to save multiple results from different scenarios for further analysis. These scenarios include various options for Reserved CPU, Reserved Memory, Fault Tolerance, Raid Level and Discounts.

3. Unified Multicloud monitoring functions.

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 includes 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 push GCP prospecting and pricing data into vRealize Operations 8.1. You can also create any number of custom dashboards by combining prices for different ratios of public, hybrid or private cloud resources.

vRealize Operations 8.1 is expected to be released in April of this year along with the release of VMware vSphere 7. We will definitely write about it.


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, and 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 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

Here we can note the simplification of the vCenter Server SSO topology:

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

vCenter Server Profiles:

  • This new feature for vCenter Servers works exactly the same way Host Profiles works for hosts. You can now compare and export vCenter server settings in JSON format for backup purposes or apply those settings to another vCenter server via REST API.

vCenter Multi-Homing Features:

  • Now up to 4 vNICs can be used for vCSA management traffic, among which one vNIC is reserved for the vCHA mechanism.

Content Library Improvements

  • There's now a new template management view that 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 vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) for vCenter Servers.
  • Using the Upgrade Scheduler, you can receive notifications about vCenter upgrades, plan upgrades, roll them out, and conduct what-if analysis before upgrading.
  • Ability to perform pre-upgrade checks for the selected vCenter server.

2 Improvements to the VMware DRS mechanism

  • DRS now runs every minute instead of every 5 minutes as before.
  • To generate recommendations, the VM DRS score (aka) mechanism is used.
  • Now this is a Workload centric mechanism - this means that now the needs of the virtual machine itself and the application in it are taken into account first, 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. vMotion improvements

Here are the following improvements:

  • Improvements to migrations for Monster VM (with large resources and very high load), which allows you to increase the chance of 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 context switching time to another server (now less than one second). Achieved by switching at the moment when the compacted memory bitmap has already been transferred to the target server, instead of waiting for the full bitmap to be transferred.

4. New vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM) features

There are 2 improvements to note here:

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

5. Application Acceleration Features (Tech Preview)

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

All this allows you to organize computing in such a way that ESXi hosts with GPU hardware modules run virtual machines, and their companion VMs 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.

6. Assignable Hardware Features

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

7. Certificate management

There are 2 main new features here:

  • New certificate import wizard.
  • Certificate API for managing certificates using scripts.

8. Identity Federation features

ADFS features are now supported out of the box, and more IDPs using OAUTH2 and OIDC mechanisms will 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.
  • An attestation mechanism can be used when encryption keys are required.
  • It is now easier to enforce the principle of least privilege and also expand the audit space.

10. vSGX / Secures Enclaves Capability (Intel)

  • Intel Software Guard Extensions (SGX) allow you to move sensitive application logic and storage to a protected area that is not accessible to guest OSes and the ESXi hypervisor.
  • SGX capabilities exclude the use of vMotion, snapshots, Fault Tolerance and other technologies. Therefore, it is better to use SGX only when there is no other way.

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

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

This is currently available only for users of VMware Cloud Foundation (4.0), since the solution is tied to the .

12. VMware Tools improvements

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 if the guest OS does not respond.
  • Precision Time Protocol (PTP) - for very time-sensitive applications (for example, trading platforms for traders), you can use PTP instead of NTP and assign its use to virtual machines.

14. vSphere Client improvements

Here are the following improvements:

  • The search history began to be saved.
  • API Explorer now provides better visibility into all available APIs.
  • Code Capture now has the ability to select 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 new things 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 ones, a Page Table containing PTE (Page Table Entries) records is used:

PTE records store links to real physical addresses and some memory page parameters (you can read more about this). PTE record structures 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, a DWORD addresses a block of addresses of 4 kilobytes (for example, addresses 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 - it is rarely necessary to write an entire number of pages, and part of the memory remains unused. As page size increases, page fragmentation also increases, but performance increases.

Page tables (and there may be several of them) are managed by a software or hardware component of the Memory Management Unit (MMU). In the case of a hardware MMU, the hypervisor delegates translation control functions to it, and a 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 a cache for the MMU. The TLB is always located in at least 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, typically the TLB access time on the processor is about 10 nanoseconds, while accessing physical memory is about 100 nanoseconds. VMware vSphere supports Hardware MMU Offload, that is, the transfer of memory management functions to the MMU side of the physical processor.

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

The offset is directly passed when accessing a physical memory page, but the virtual page tag is looked up in the TLB. In this case, there is an entry in the TLB that the address of the physical page corresponding to this tag is 0x0007, accordingly, the translation of the virtual page into the physical page 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 not in the TLB. In this case, a page is searched in physical memory by 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 evicted if it is full):

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

But this is not the worst situation, since the latency count still goes to nanoseconds. But access can also take much longer (milliseconds or even seconds) if the page required by the guest OS has been swapped 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 reset due to insufficient physical RAM.

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


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

Existing vSphere Platinum users will receive vSphere Enterprise Plus licenses, the VMware AppDefense SaaS product, and the VMware AppDefense Plugin for vSphere after the announced date (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 part of the packages.


Tags: VMware, vSphere, Platinum, Update, Support

The package focuses on code quality, code reuse, unit testing, relationship management and parallel releases of projects for the vRealize platform. vRealize Build Tools are extensions packaged in a Maven repository format that support the use of an IDE (via Maven) as well as a CLI to develop, test, and deploy 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 existing content and import it for vRO 8
  • Support for vRO 8 functions for exporting workflows to a folder structure created based on their tags
  • Running workflows on vRO using maven command
  • Ability to save JS Actions IDs at the source 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 will 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

Let us remind you that this module is not supported by VMware (like all utilities on VMware Labs that are in Tech Preview status), so use it with caution.

This tool may be useful to you in the following cases:

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

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

Weathervane deploys the benchmark application to the nodes and supplies them with the load that is generated through the Workload driver component. This driver can be located either together with the benchmark application or in an external environment, in a separate cluster.

Weathervane can be set to run a constant load for a fixed number of simulated users, or it can be configured to seek a maximum number of users so that quality-of-service (QoS) requirements are met. In the latter case, the test result will be the maximum number of WvUsers that the cluster can support. Actually, this parameter should be used to compare clusters in terms of performance.

Here's what the components of the Weathervane solution look like (the Run harness component is responsible for executing test runs and obtaining test results):

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

The Weathervane application consists of several tiers. The application logic is implemented through Java services running on the Tomcat server, which communicate via REST API and RabbitMQ messages, and Zookeeper is used for coordination. Backend storage is implemented using PostgreSQL and Cassandra. Frontend web servers and proxy cache servers are implemented on Nginx.


Tags: VMware, Kubernetes, Weathvane, Update, Performance

In Russia, too, there are already 10 people who are vExpert speakers, not so many, but not few (at the level of Sweden and Norway). It’s clear that most vExperts are from countries where everything is good with English, since the blog audience is based on English language 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 those specialists from Russia who received vExpert this year:


Tags: VMware, vExpert, Blogs

Performance of the VMware vCenter Server 6.7 server when working with the virtual infrastructure of VMware ESXi servers in remote offices and branches


Many users of the VMware vSphere platform know that there is such an option for deploying and operating a distributed virtual infrastructure 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, controlled by their own vCenter or without it.

At the end of last year, VMware released an interesting document “Performance of VMware vCenter Server 6.7 in Remote Offices and Branch Offices” (we already talked a little about it), which discusses the main aspect of applying such a scenario - performance. After all, remote offices can be located in other cities, countries and even continents, accessed via different types connections (for example, 4G or satellite), so it is very important how much traffic various operations consume and how quickly they are processed from the administrator's point of view.

Options various types network connections in VMware they compiled it into a table (in the right column, what was obtained as a result of using test configuration, and on the left - as happens in scenarios with real data centers):

Used for testing remote configuration from 128 ESXi hosts, where 3840 virtual machines were registered (960 VMs per cluster, 30 per host), of which up to 3000 machines were enabled simultaneously.

The issues of creating and using virtual machines have been discussed in our magazine more than once; infrastructure software designed to solve this problem is developing very dynamically today, as is the demand for a wide variety of solutions in this area. The reason for returning to this topic was the emergence of new versions of a number of products from VMware (a division of EMC), as well as, importantly, the expansion of the range of services related to these products provided in Russia, this is exactly what we are talking about we'll talk in this article.

Virtual machines and their applications

The first part of this article is addressed primarily to those readers who are not familiar with the concept of a “virtual machine” and with the modern technologies available in this area.

A little history

The concept of a “virtual machine” has existed for several decades. The first virtual machines were created under the control of operating systems that functioned on mainframes and were separate workspaces that differed in individual settings and allowed, to a certain extent, to personalize the work environments of numerous users sharing the same mainframe. Although the personalization of the 70s was very different from what we are used to today, it nevertheless created certain convenience for users and saved them work time and was generally justified economically.

In the era personal computers the problem of personalizing the workspace faded into the background and was forgotten for some time. However, in the late 90s, virtual machine technology actually experienced a rebirth and is now being used quite actively. Recently, virtual machine creation tools are very often used in laboratories and software testing departments, in companies specializing in application development, in research departments of development companies, in training centers, and also as an integral part of corporate solutions.

How virtual machines work

For modern virtual machines to function, a virtual machine management tool is required, which is either a specialized operating system with appropriate capabilities, or a Windows, Linux, or UNIX application installed on a real computer, called a host. The virtual machine itself, in most cases, is a file system image formed during the installation of an operating system (in general, different from the one under which the virtual machine management tool operates) and stored as a file or located on a dedicated partition of the hard drive. Using the virtual machine management tool, you can load an image of the virtual machine operating system into the allocated address space. This operating system is called a guest operation system, as opposed to the original operating system, which is called a host operation system (if one exists). After this, the virtual machine operating system will be able to interact with the computer hardware (for example, a video adapter, sound card, keyboard, mouse, network adapters). In this way it is possible, for example, when the operating room is running Windows system XP, using the virtual machine management tool, load the Linux operating system into the address space allocated for it and switch between both operating systems without rebooting the computer, and in some cases use the clipboard to exchange data between these operating systems or carry out network communication between them as if they were two different computers. You can load more than one virtual machine at the same time, as long as there is enough RAM for this (naturally, there should be a lot of it, because when the virtual machine boots, there is another operating system in the RAM).

Why do we need virtual machines?

Where are virtual machines used? Most often, such products are used by developers of software that affects the settings of operating systems, such as installation applications. Since any test run of the installation application can make changes to the operating system settings (registry, configuration files, environment variables, icons on the desktop, etc.), it is desirable that these changes are easily reversible. Testing the installation application on a virtual machine instead of a real one, at a minimum, will not disrupt the performance of the real operating system, and the virtual machine can always be restored from backup copy. In addition, create a “clean” version of the operating system (that is, without installed applications) for testing installation (as well as other) applications in the form of a virtual machine is much easier than in the form of a real computer.

Another typical example of using virtual machines is testing applications running different operating systems (such as Windows 2000, Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 in different language versions or editions with different service packs). Such testing is usually carried out during the development of “boxed” products, as well as in projects where the customer has a variety of workstations and servers purchased over the years.

In addition to the above cases, we will give several more exotic examples of the use of virtual machines: operation of a product that does not work on the existing platform (for example, a DOS application written many years ago); testing the performance of the operating systems or network services themselves; documenting products intended for a platform other than the one used to prepare the documentation; demonstrating products for various platforms and their interaction using a single computer (the latter is often done by software marketing and sales managers, as well as software development project managers); preparing classrooms for classes by copying virtual machines with customized software to workstations; technical support for multi-platform products.

In recent years, special attention has also been paid to the use of virtual machines in the server parts of scalable enterprise solutions. Virtual machines are often used for testing server software and its various configurations and simulating multi-server configurations on one server, for hosting legacy applications, for creating solutions with increased requirements for information security, for organizing mobile offices and training centers that do not require physical delivery of servers, to ensure uniform loading of servers and their redundancy by placing the same set of virtual machines on several physical servers, to reduce the cost of implementing and maintaining corporate information systems due to reducing the number hardware, the duration of installation and configuration of server and client software, to reduce the cost of software management. Today, many large financial and telecommunications companies, commercial and industrial enterprises, medical and educational institutions use virtual machines in their corporate information systems. Developers, system integrators and their clients also have access to ready-made hardware and software solutions for using virtualization technologies, such as multiprocessor servers with pre-installed virtual machine management tools.

Having discussed what it is modern technology virtual machines and where it is used, we can go directly to the topic of the article to consider the products of VMware, one of the market leaders in virtual machine creation tools.

VMware products

VMware (www.vmware.com) was founded in 1998, and its first product was a virtualization management tool released in 1999. VMware machines(later renamed VMware Workstation), designed for Windows and Linux platforms. For that time, VMware’s approach to organizing computing in multi-platform environments was truly revolutionary; previously, virtual machines were talked about only in relation to mainframes. In 2001, this company released server products VMware ESX Server and VMware VirtualCenter. Two years later, VMotion technology was developed to dynamically move virtual machines with server software between physical servers, allowing the creation of highly reliable server solutions using virtual machines thanks to this unique technology VMware has finally confirmed its leading position in the virtualization tools market, significantly ahead of its closest competitor, Microsoft Corporation, in terms of the quality, variety and reliability of the products offered.

Today, solutions based on VMware server products are used by the largest telecommunications companies, financial and government institutions, manufacturing and trading enterprises, educational institutions, including such well-known companies as Google, Lockheed Martin, Merrill Lynch, Subaru and QUALCOMM. Authors of their own solutions based on VMware products have access to the corresponding application software interfaces and sets of tools and examples (Software Development Kit, SDK).

Below is a brief overview of the capabilities of VMware products available on this moment.

Products for developing and testing applications and software configurations

This category of VMware products is intended primarily for application developers, testers, end users and system administrators servicing the above categories of employees. Note that two of the three products belonging to this category, VMware Server and VMware Player, are supplied free of charge.

VMware Workstation

Designed primarily for testing desktop and multi-tier distributed applications and their configurations, VMware Workstation 5.5 supports a very broad range of both host and guest operating systems. This product can use several of the latest operating systems from Microsoft, Red Hat, SuSE, Ubuntu, as well as Sun Solaris (for x86 processors) and FreeBSD as a host OS. VMware Workstation 5.5 can use various versions of Windows, Linux, Novell NetWare, DOS, Sun Solaris and FreeBSD as guest operating systems, including 64-bit ones. Virtual machines can be located either in a file or on a separate hard drive or in a separate partition.

WMware Workstation supports virtual and real IDE and SCSI disks, floppy drives, CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM of the host computer, LPT-, COM-, USB ports and USB devices dynamically connected to the host, such as scanners, printers, hard drives and flash cards, connected PDAs and cameras. In addition to real disk drives, WMware Workstation can work with ISO disk images, treating them as CD-ROM drives. SCSI devices such as scanners, tape drives, CD-ROM drives, DVD-ROM drives can be supported even if there are no drivers for these devices in the host operating system.

WMware Workstation supports a variety of ways to emulate network interaction, from its absence to integration into the local network in which the host is included, as well as emulation of network interaction with other virtual machines as separate computers, NAT address translation, virtual DHCP server, organization of network bridges using wireless connections, a wide range of network protocols, switching between different virtual networks.

VMware Workstation allows you to create “snapshots” of a virtual machine (snapshots), saving information about its state as a file on the host computer, running applications and their data (you can take several “snapshots” of the same machine), and also supports data exchange between virtual machines and the host operating system using the clipboard and drag-and-drop operations, time synchronization between the guest OS and the host OS , the ability to cancel all changes made by the user in a given session. We also note the presence in this product of memory optimization tools and multi-tier application management tools designed specifically to increase the productivity of developers and users operating a single workstation.

Among the innovations in the latest version of VMware Workstation, we highlight support for assigning two virtual processors to a virtual machine (which is useful for testing dual-processor software configurations), a tool for converting virtual machines created using Microsoft Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server, as well as OS images created using Symantec LiveState Recovery, to virtual VMware machines, support for 64-bit Intel and AMD processors, support for wireless adapters, automatic detection of storage devices and USB devices.

Note that with an approximately equally low price in terms of operating system support, the capabilities of VMware Workstation are significantly ahead of its closest competitor Microsoft Virtual PC, which can only use desktop versions of Windows 2000 and Windows XP as a host OS, and mainly DOS as guest OSes , all 32-bit desktop versions of Windows and some versions of the exotic OS/2 Warp; There is also no talk yet about support for 64-bit OSes in Virtual PC.

VMware Server

VMware Server a free product announced at the beginning of this year, recommended by the manufacturer as a replacement for the paid product VMware GSX Server. VMware Server is currently available in beta version, and the final version is expected to be released in the second quarter of this year.

VMware Server runs on 32-bit or 64-bit server Windows versions and Linux running on computers with one or more x86-compatible processors (currently the number of supported processors is 16). The range of operating systems supported by this product is very impressive: among the guest operating systems there is a wide range of versions of Linux and Windows, and if necessary, using this product you can also perform latest versions Novell NetWare (Figure 1).

This product contains tools for organizing remote administration and monitoring, based on the Web interface and running under Windows control or Linux. However, unlike VMware Workstation, this product only supports creating a single snapshot of a virtual machine, and its tools for optimizing host memory usage are not nearly as comprehensive.

Among the innovations that will be available to VMWare Server users, we note support for virtual symmetric multiprocessing (Virtual SMP) and virtualization technology on hardware Intel level Virtualization Technology, as well as support for 64-bit guest OSes.

Although VMware Server itself is a free product, VMware and its partners (including Russian ones) provide paid technical support to customers who need it.

Note that technical capabilities The free VMware Server product is similar to the capabilities of the paid Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Enterprise Edition products and exceeds the capabilities of Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Standard Edition (for example, in terms of the number of supported processors on the host computer). At the same time, Microsoft Virtual Server runs only under server versions of Windows (it is intended to use mainly different versions of Windows as guest OSes), while VMware Server, in addition to Windows, supports a wide range of other operating systems (Linux, Solaris, FreeBSD, Novell NetWare ) as guests and Linux as the host OS.

VMware Player

VMware Player is a free product designed to run virtual machines created using VMware Workstation and VMware Server. You cannot create new virtual machines using it. However, the VMware website has a constantly updated section with configured virtual machines running various OSes and installed software from various manufacturers available for download and use.

Unlike VMware Server, VMware Player does not require paid support from the manufacturer or partners.

Products for use as part of enterprise IT infrastructure

VMware ESX Server

VMware ESX Server 2.5 is a virtual machine creation tool that does not require a host operating system (essentially acts as an operating system itself) and runs on computers with two or more 32-bit Intel processors and AMD and with two or more network adapters. The file storage must be SCSI disks, drives accessible via Fiber Channel, or a built-in RAID controller; in such storage, this product creates its own file system VMware File System (VMFS). This product can be installed on Blade servers or on a SAN (Storage Area Network - a dedicated high-performance network designed to transfer data between servers and storage devices and operating independently of the local network).

This product supports emulation of up to 80 virtual processors, and server versions of Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Novell NetWare as guest operating systems. Virtual symmetric multiprocessor configurations are supported for some versions of Windows and Linux.

Unlike VMware Server, VMware ESX Server is designed for remote administration. It does not contain any tools that run locally on the server itself, other than the installation tools and initial configuration of the ESX Server itself. Tools for organizing remote administration of ESX Server are based on the Web interface (Fig. 2).

Rice. 2. Remote administration tools for VMware ESX Server 2.5

There is an add-on for VMware ESX Server called VMware Virtual SMP, which allows a single virtual machine to run on multiple physical processors. This addition makes it possible to further scale the most resource-intensive applications running on virtual machines, as well as test multiprocessor configurations of server software.

VMware VirtualCenter

VMware VirtualCenter 1.2 is a tool for managing virtual machines running VMware ESX Server and VMware Server and the servers that contain them. This product allows you to create a configuration of operating systems, services and applications running on virtual machines, transfer them from one machine to another and quickly deploy servers with a pre-installed operating system and applications, monitor the performance and use of server resources (Fig. 3).

Rice. 3. Monitor server resource usage using VMware VirtualCenter

The product also includes a New Deployment Wizard virtual servers from templates, which allows you to reduce the time to put a new server into operation several times compared to traditional server configuration methods.

To dynamically move virtual machines running server software between physical servers, VMware VirtualCenter includes VMotion. Dynamically move server software using VMotion does not affect the settings of workstations and occurs unnoticed by end users, which allows you to quickly adjust the server load balance and optimize the use of computing resources.

VMware ACE

VMware ACE (from Assured Computing Environment) is a tool designed for network administrators to create standard virtual machines and workstation configurations. Its main purpose is to simplify the administration of workstations by creating similar configurations and transferring them to workstations.

A special feature of this product is a wide range of capabilities related to ensuring network security, such as support for “guest” workstations (for example, visitors’ laptops), setting rules for access to virtual machines, data encryption or the validity period of a particular configuration (Fig. 4 ).

A significant advantage of this product is the ability to create standard hardware-independent configurations of workstations and transfer them to computers with different hardware, which is very important for most enterprises today.

As guest operating systems, VMware ACE supports various versions of DOS, Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, Novell NetWare, Sun Solaris, and as host operating systems and management tools, VMware ACE Manager all versions of Windows, starting with Windows 2000.

VMware P2V Assistant

VMware P2V Assistant a tool for creating virtual machines based on real-life physical machines running various versions of Windows, starting with Windows NT 4.0. This product takes a snapshot of the source operating system and turns it into a virtual machine, eliminating the need for administrators to install and configure one. Virtual machines created with its help can run under VMware ESX Server, VMware Server and VMware Workstation.

A few words about costs

It makes sense to talk about the use of virtualization tools in cases where their use can bring certain benefits to the company. Therefore, below we will name the benefits that companies that have implemented VMware products will receive.

The use of VMware Workstation in software development companies will help save a lot of money spent on purchasing additional workstations for software testing and creating distributions, and will eliminate the costs of their physical placement, software installation, configuration and maintenance. Considering that the cost of VMware Workstation does not exceed several hundred dollars, the purchase of this product is justified even for very small companies; the license for it will pay for itself in just a few days of use.

If a company has legacy applications that satisfy everyone, but are designed for a platform that is no longer supported by the manufacturer, then such a company faces a dilemma: whether to continue using a platform that poses a potential threat to the security of the entire corporate network due to the cessation of its updates, or rewrite existing applications? The first way to solve this problem seems risky, the second is usually very expensive. The use of VMware Player and VMware Server in such a case may well turn out to be the very option that is devoid of the disadvantages of the previous two, by exploiting a dangerous platform (no matter for the server or client part of the legacy application) inside a virtual machine, you can provide both an acceptable level of convenience and a sufficient security level.

If we talk about the use of virtual machines as part of the IT infrastructure of corporate solutions, then in this case there are much more opportunities to reduce the costs of infrastructure and its operation. A product like VMware ESX Server can make it unnecessary to purchase separate hardware servers for different tasks by creating a more efficient and cost-effective server fleet that can quickly respond to changing operating conditions and application requirements. The use of VMware VirtualCenter and VMotion technology will significantly reduce the time required to deploy new servers, as well as their downtime during hardware maintenance by moving virtual machines to other physical servers. And finally, VMware ACE will make it possible to implement the strictest security rules when using virtual machines, thereby reducing the possible risks of corporate data leakage and penetration into corporate network from the outside, which means it will avoid losses and often irreparable damage caused to the company’s reputation by such incidents.

), Softline (www.softline.ru).

In addition, a specialized course in Russian “Building a virtual infrastructure using ESX Server and VMware VirtualCenter” is now available in our country at the Microinform training center (www.microinform.ru), intended for both consumers of VMware products (system administrators, users ), and for system integrators implementing solutions using VMware products at their customers.

VMware provides end customers with a license and a one-year warranty, which includes service support. Currently, service support can be provided not only by the manufacturer itself, but also by Russian partners.

Conclusion

This article is devoted to the products of VMware, the market leader in tools for creating and supporting virtual machines for x86-compatible computers. In the last five years, the choice of products for such purposes has become very extensive; if at the beginning of 2001 it was limited to a single product, in which interest was shown mainly by developers and software testing specialists, today it includes not only tools for running virtual machines on workstations and single-processor computers, but also various means of creating and maintaining server solutions, in their own way functionality approaching the means of supporting virtual machines for mainframes, and in some respects even surpassing them. Today, both in the world and in Russia, there are many infrastructure virtualization projects underway, and, in our opinion, in the near future there will be an even wider use of such products as part of the infrastructure of large enterprises, as well as in companies specializing in the development and maintenance of software .

You will find trial versions of VMware products on the CD-ROM supplement to the magazine.



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