VMware Storage Servers

VMware vSphere Features

There are a large variety of features that make VMware vSphere a great choice to configure with your CyberStore Storage Appliance.

VMware ESXi

VMware vSphere includes VMware ESXi, a virtualisation layer that is run on physical servers. VMware ESXi abstracts storage, processor, memory, resources into various virtual machines.

VMware vCenter Server

The centre point for managing, provisioning and configuring virtualised IT environments is the VMware vCenter Server. It delivers vital data centre services such as access control, monitoring performance and alarm management.

The VMware vSphere Client

The VMware vSphere Client is an interface that allows users to connect remotely to ESXi or vCenter Server.

VMware vSphere Web Client

vCenter Server can be connected to remotely from numerous operating systems or web browsers through the VMware vSphere Web Client.

VMware vSphere SDKs

Standard interfaces for VMware and third-party solutions to access VMware vSphere are provided by VMware vSphere SDKs.

vSphere Virtual SMP

ESXi VMs can feature the vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS), which is a cluster file system capable of high performance. vSphere Virtual SMP allows a single VM to utilise many physical processors simultaneously.

vSphere vMotion

Virtual machine that are powered on scan be migrated across physical servers with no down time with vSphere vMotion. Continuous service availability and complete transaction integrity are maintained. With vSphere Storage vMotion enables the migration of virtual machine files from a data centre to another without interruption to the service. The VM and all its disks can be put in a single location, or certain different locations for the VM configuration file and for each virtual disk. The VM stays on the same host during Storage vMotion.

vSphere High Availability (HA)

With vSphere High Availability (HA) allows for the high availability of VMs. If a server was to fail, the affected virtual machines will be restarted on other servers that have spare capacity available.

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler dynamically balances and distributes computing capacity across bands of hardware resources for virtual machines. Included with this feature is distributed power management (DPM) capabilities that allow for data centre to substantially lessen its power consumption.

vSphere Storage DRS

vSphere Storage DRS distributes and balances storage capacity and I/O dynamically across groups of data centres. Management capabilities minimise the risk of running of out of space and the risk of I/O bottlenecks negatively affecting the performance of VMs.

vSphere Fault Tolerance

vSphere Fault Tolerance provides continuous availability through protecting a VM with a copy. Whenever this feature is enabled for a VM, a secondary copy of the original VM is created. Every action completed on the primary VM is also applied to the secondary VM. If the original, primary VM becomes unavailable, a secondary machine immediately becomes active.

vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS)

vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS) can span multiple ESXi hosts, allowing for a substantial reduction of on-going network maintenance and heightening network capacity. This improved efficiency allows VMs to keep up consistent network configuration as they migrate across many hosts.

Host Profiles

Host Profiles is a feature that simplifies host configuration management via user-defined configuration policies. The host profile policies capture the blueprint of a known and validated host configuration and use it to configure storage, security, networking and other settings across multiple hosts. The host profile policies generally monitor compliance to standard host configuration settings throughout the data centre. The manual steps involved in configuring a host are reduced by Host Profiles. It can also aid in maintaining the consistency across the data centre.

Host Profiles is additionally a component of vSphere Auto Deploy. The concept of an auto deployed host signifies vCenter Server owns the entire host configuration and its captured in a host profile. Some policies need input from the user to provide host-specific values. An answer file, containing policy definitions, is created to support Auto Deploy for host profiles.