vSphere and

Virtualization Overview

© 2022 VMware, Inc.

Importance
As a vSphere administrator, you must be familiar with the components on which vSphere is
based.
You must also understand the following concepts:
• Virtualization, the role of the ESXi hypervisor in virtualization, and virtual machines
• Fundamental vSphere components and the use of vSphere in the software-defined data
center
• When to use each one of the user interfaces to administer and manage vSphere
environments

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Module Lessons
1. vSphere Virtualization Overview
2. vSphere Virtualization of Resources

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vSphere Virtualization Overview

© 2019 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.

Learner Objectives
• Explain basic virtualization concepts
• Describe vSphere
• Describe how vSphere fits in the software-defined data center
• Describe vSphere+
• Recognize the user interfaces for accessing vSphere

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Terminology (1)
Virtualization is associated with several key concepts, products, and features.

Term Definition Examples

Operating system Software designed to allocate physical Microsoft Windows,
resources to applications Linux
Application Software that runs on an operating system, Microsoft Office,
consuming physical resources Chrome
Hypervisor Specialized operating system designed to run ESXi, Workstation,
VMs Fusion
Virtual machine Specialized application that abstracts
hardware resources into software
Guest The operating system that runs in a VM (also Microsoft Windows,
called the guest operating system) Linux
Host Physical computer that provides resources to
the ESXi hypervisor

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Terminology (2)

Term Definition
vSphere Server virtualization product of VMware that combines the ESXi
hypervisor and the vCenter Server management platform
Cluster Group of ESXi hosts whose resources are shared by VMs
vSphere vMotion Feature that supports the migration of powered-on VMs from
host to host without service interruption
vSphere HA Cluster feature that protects against host hardware failures by
restarting VMs on hosts that are running normally
vSphere DRS Cluster feature that uses vSphere vMotion to place VMs
on hosts and ensure that each VM receives the resources
that it needs

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Data Center Physical Infrastructure

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About the Virtual Infrastructure

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About Virtual Machines
A virtual machine (VM) is a software representation of a physical computer and its
components.

The virtual machine includes the following

components:
• Guest operating system
• VMware Tools
• Virtual resources, such as:
– CPU and memory
– Network adapters
– Disks and controllers
– GPUs

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Benefits of Using Virtual Machines
Physical machines have the following Virtual machines provide the following
constraints: benefits:
• Difficult to move or copy • Easy to move or copy
• Bound to a specific set of hardware • Independent of physical hardware because
components VMs are encapsulated into files
• Often have a short life cycle • Isolated from other VMs running on the
same physical hardware
• Require personal contact to upgrade
hardware • Insulated from physical hardware changes

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About vSphere
vSphere is the virtualization platform that
includes two core administrative components
for running virtual machines:
• ESXi: Hypervisor on which you run virtual
machines
• vCenter: Central administration platform for
ESXi hosts, virtual machines, storage, and
networking

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Types of Virtualization
Virtualization is the process of
creating a software-based
representation of a physical
unit, such as a server,
desktop, network, or storage
device.
Virtualization is the single
most effective way to reduce
IT expenses while boosting
efficiency and agility for all
business sizes.

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About the Software-Defined Data Center
In a software-defined data center (SDDC), all infrastructure is virtualized, and the control of the
data center is automated by software. vSphere is the foundation of the SDDC.

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About vSphere+
VMware vSphere+ is a subscription-based offering that brings the benefits of cloud to on-
premises workloads.
vSphere+ consists of on-premises and cloud components that interact with each other.
vSphere+ lets you centrally manage your on-premises workloads from a cloud console, with
access to cloud services.

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vSphere+: Accessing Cloud Services
vSphere+ lets you access cloud services to
augment and enhance on-premises
capabilities:
• Admin Services
– Inventory management
– Events and alerts management
– VM provisioning
– Lifecycle management
– Configuration management
• Developer Services
– Tanzu Kubernetes Grid
– Tanzu integrated services
• Add-On Services
– Disaster recovery

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vSphere User Interfaces
You can use the vSphere Client, PowerCLI, VMware Host Client, vSphere ESXi Shell and ESXCLI
to interact with the vSphere environment.
For information about ports and protocols, see https://ports.vmware.com.

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Lab 1: Accessing the Lab Environment
Log in to the Console VM and access the vSphere Client and VMware Host Client:
1. Access the Student Console
2. Log In to an ESXi Host with VMware Host Client
3. Log In to vCenter with the vSphere Client

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Review of Learner Objectives
• Explain basic virtualization concepts
• Describe vSphere
• Describe how vSphere fits in the software-defined data center
• Describe vSphere+
• Recognize the user interfaces for accessing vSphere

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vSphere Virtualization of Resources

© 2019 VMware Inc. All rights reserved.

Learner Objectives
• Explain how ESXi interacts with resources:
– CPUs
– Memory
– Networks
– Storage
– GPUs

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Virtual Machine: Guest and Consumer of ESXi Host
Any application in any
supported OS can run in a VM
(guest) and use CPU, memory,
disk, and network from host-
based resources.

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Physical and Virtual Architecture
Virtualization technology abstracts physical components to software components and provides
solutions for many IT problems.

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Physical Resource Sharing
Multiple VMs, running on a
physical host, share
computing, memory, network,
and storage resources of the
host.

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CPU Virtualization
In a physical environment, the operating system assumes the ownership of all the physical
CPUs in the system.
CPU virtualization emphasizes performance and runs directly on the available CPUs.

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Physical and Virtualized Host Memory Usage
In a physical environment, the operating system assumes the ownership of all the physical
memory in the system.
Memory pages are allocated to virtual machines on first access.

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Physical and Virtual Networking
Virtual Ethernet adapters and virtual switches are key virtual networking components.

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Physical File Systems and Datastores
vSphere datastores provide a distributed storage architecture, where multiple ESXi hosts can
read or write to the shared storage concurrently.

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GPU Virtualization
GPU graphics devices optimize complex graphics operations. These operations can run at high
performance without overloading the CPU.

Virtual GPUs can be added to VMs for the

following use cases:
• Rich 2D and 3D graphics
• VMware Horizon virtual desktops
• Graphics-intensive applications
• Scientific computation applications
• Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine
learning (ML) workloads

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Sharing GPUs with vSphere Bitfusion
vSphere Bitfusion virtualizes hardware accelerators such as GPUs to provide a pool of shared,
network-accessible resources that support AI and ML workloads.

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Review of Learner Objectives
• Explain how ESXi interacts with resources:
– CPUs
– Memory
– Networks
– Storage
– GPUs

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Key Points
• Virtual machines are hardware independent.
• vSphere consists of two core components, ESXi and vCenter Server.
• The ESXi hypervisor runs directly on the host.
• VMs share the physical resources of the ESXi host on which they reside.
• vSphere abstracts CPUs, GPUs, memory, storage, and networking for VM use.
Questions?

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