FirstDayNotes - echadbourne/SYS-350 GitHub Wiki
vSphere
Represents one of the many enterprise virtualization offerings
- Xen, HyperV, Redhat Virtualization, and more
- We are using vSphere because it is very popular, widely deployed, and we enjoy licenses... for now
We will cover
- licensing
- features
- support
- the esxi hypervisor
- eventually vcenter
Nomenclature
VSphere is a suite of products which:
- ESXi is the hypervisor operating system that you install on a bare metal server (most of the time)
- vCenter is used to manage ESXi host(s)
Hypervisor Installation and Management
Hypervisor Type 1 - Installed directly on the server, does not require another OS (Is its own OS)
Hypervisor Type 2 - Runs on an OS (ex VMWare Workstation)
ESXi
- VMWare's bare metal type 1 hypervisor
- Previously known as ESX until version 4.1
- Latest version is 8.x
- Features depend on vSphere license purchased
- Completely free version WAS available for download
- Equivalent to vSphere
API - Application Program Interface
- Programatic way to interface with software or a system
Installation
- ISO - standard boot to disk
- Thumb Drive
- PXE (AutoDeploy)
- Scripted installed
- Host Profiles in vCenter (Centralized Configuration)
- Prepare hardware (is it compatible? Enable virtualization support in bios)
- Down