Esx Datasheet

8/4/2019 Esx Datasheet

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a t a g l a n c e

VMware® ESX™ and VMware ESXi provide the

oundation or building and managing a virtualized IT

inrastructure. These market leading, production-proven

hypervisors abstract processor, memory, storage and

networking resources into multiple virtual machines

that run unmodifed operating systems and applications.

VMware ESX and ESXi are the most widely deployedhypervisors, delivering the highest levels o reliability and

perormance to companies o all sizes.

b e n e f i t s

• Decreasehardware,powerandcoolingcostsby

running multiple operating systems on the same

physical server.

• Lowermanagementoverheadcostsbyreducingthe

hardware ootprint in the datacenter.

• Guaranteehighlevelsofperformanceforthemost

resource-intensive applications.

• Consolidatehardwareresourceswiththepeaceofmind that comes with the industry’s most widely

deployed, production-proven and secure server

virtualization platorm.

k e y f e a t u r e s

• Record-settingperformancewithupto8,900database

transactionspersecond,200,000I/Ooperationsper

second,andupto16,000Exchangemailboxesona

single physical host

• Uptoeight-wayvirtualSMP(symmetric

multiprocessing), enabling the virtualization o

multiprocessor workloads

• Memoryovercommittmentanddeduplication,

allowing higher consolidation ratios

• BroadestOSsupportofanyhypervisor,enablingIT

tovirtualizenumerousversionsofWindows®,Linux®,

Solaris®, NetWare®, and other operating systems.

• Built-inhighavailabilitythroughNICteamingandHBA

multipathing to protect against hardware component

ailures

• Upto64logicalprocessingcores,256virtualCPUs,and

512GBRAMperhost,enablinghigherconsolidation

ratios

What are VMware ESX and VMware ESXi?

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi provide the oundation or

building a reliable and dynamic IT inrastructure. These market-

leading, production-proven hypervisors abstract processor,

memory, storage and networking resources into multiple virtual

machines that each can run an unmodiied operating system

and applications. VMware ESX and ESXi are the most widely

deployed hypervisors, delivering the highest levels o reliability and

perormance to companies o all sizes.

VMware ESXi is the latest hypervisor architecture rom VMware. It

has an ultra-thin architecture with no reliance on a general-purpose

OS, yet still oers all the same unctionality and perormance o

VMware ESX. VMware ESXi sets a new bar or security and reliability

because its smaller code base represents a smaller “attack surace”

with less code to patch. This small ootprint and hardware-like

reliability also enable VMware ESXi to be built directly into industry

standard x86 servers rom leading server manuacturers such as

Dell, IBM, HP, and Fujitsu-Siemens. VMware ESXi was designed

with simplicity in mind. Its menu-driven startup and automatic

conigurations make it the easiest way to get started with VMware

virtualization.

VMware ESX

VMVM

VM VMware ESXi

VMVM

VM

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi virtualize server, storage and networking, allowing multiple applications

to run in virtual machines on the same physical server.

VMw esX d VMw esX

The Market Leading Production-Proven Hypervisors

B R O C H U R E



B R O C H U R EV M w a r e E S X a n d E S X i

How are VMware ESX and VMware ESXi Used in theEnterprise?

VMware ESX and ESXi can be deployed as part o the

VMware vSphere™ platorm or VMware View™ suite o

products to enable centralized management and betterquality o service to datacenter applications and enterprise

desktops, enabling IT administrators to:

• Implementproductionserverconsolidationandcontain-

ment. Contain server sprawl by running sotware applica-

tions in virtual machines on ewer physical servers.

• Provideadvancedbusinesscontinuityprotectionatlower

cost. Ensure application availability during hardware

ailures or server and storage maintenance and upgrades.

• Manageandcontrolcentralizedvirtualdesktops.Provide

standardized enterprise desktop environments hosted in

virtual machines that end users can access through thinclients or PCs.

• Streamlinesoftwaredevelopmentandtesting.Consolidate

disparate development, testing and staging environments

involving multiple operating systems and multi-tier appli-

cations on the same hardware.

• Re-hostlegacyapplications.Migratelegacyoperating

systems and sotware applications to virtual machines

running on new hardware or better reliability.

VMware ESXi is also available as a ree download or

deployment as a single-server virtualization solution. IT

administrators can use the reely available VMware vSphere™

Client to manage VMware ESXi to create and manage virtualmachines.

How Do VMware ESX and VMware ESXi Work?

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi install directly on the server

hardware, inserting a robust virtualization layer between

the hardware and the operating system. VMware ESX and

ESXi partition a physical server into multiple secure and

portable virtual machines that can run side by side on the

same physical server. Each virtual machine represents a

complete system—with processors, memory, networking,

storage and BIOS—so that an operating system and

sotware applications can be installed and run in the virtualmachine without any modication. Virtual machines are also

completely isolated rom each other by the virtualization

layer, thus preventing a crash or conguration error in one

virtual machine rom aecting the others.

Sharing the physical server resources among a number

o virtual machines increases hardware utilization and

dramatically decreases capital costs. The bare-metal

architecture gives VMware ESX and ESXi complete control

over the server resources allocated to each virtual machine

and provides or near-native virtual machine perormance

and enterprise-class scalability. VMware ESX and ESXi

provide virtual machines with built-in high availability,

resource management and security eatures to deliver

improved service levels to sotware applications than static

physical environments.

What is the diference between VMware ESX andVMware ESXi?

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are both bare-metal

hypervisors that install directly on the server hardware. Both

provide industry-leading perormance and scalability; the

dierence resides in the architecture and the operational

management o VMware ESXi. VMware ESX relies on a Linux

operating system, called the service console, to perorm

some management unctions including executing scripts

and installing third-party agents or hardware monitoring,backup or systems management. The service console has

been removed rom VMware ESXi, dramatically reducing

its ootprint. By removing the service console, VMware ESXi

completes an ongoing trend o migrating management

unctionality rom this local command-line interace to

remote management tools. The unctionally o the service

console is replaced by remote command-line interaces and

adherence to system management standards.

Key Features o VMware ESX and VMware ESXi

Summary of Key New Features

• 64-bitarchitecture.Beneit rom improved perormance

andsupportforupto512GBRAMonphysicalhosts.

• Performanceoptimizationsforvirtualizedworkloads.

VMware ESX and ESXi 4.0 have undergone perormance

optimizations or speciic business-critical applications

such as Oracle Database, Microsot SQL Server, and

Microsot Exchange. Get up to 8,900 database

transactions per second, 200,000 I/O operations per

second, and up to 16,000 Exchange mailboxes per host.

• PerformanceimprovementsforiSCSIstorage.

Leverage a combination o new in-guest virtualization-

optimized SCSI drivers and VMkernel-level storage stack optimizations to dramatically improve perormance

or I/O-intensive applications such as databases and

messaging applications.

• Supportforlargervirtualmachinesandpowerful

serverhardware. Take advantage o hardware systems

with up to 64 physical CPU cores, 256 virtual CPUs, 512GB

RAM,anduptohundredsofvirtualmachinesonasingle

host to acilitate large-scale consolidation and disaster

recovery projects. Conigure virtual machines with as

muchas255GBRAM.




• Supportforeight-wayvirtualSMP. VMware Virtual

Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) enhances virtual

machine perormance by enabling a single virtual

machine to use up to eight physical processors,

simultaneously. VMware Virtual SMP enables virtualization

o the most CPU-intensive enterprise applications such asdatabases,ERPandCRM.

• VMwareVMsafe™.VMware VMsae is a new security

technology that helps protect virtualized workloads in

ways previously not possible with physical machines.

VMsafeprovidesasetofsecurityAPIsthatenable

third-party security products to gain the same visibility

as VMware ESX or ESXi into the operation o a virtual

machine to identiy and eliminate malware, such as

viruses, trojans and key-loggers. This advanced protection

is achieved by granular visibility into the virtual machine’s

hardware resources such as memory, CPU and disk and its

I/O systems.

• VMDirectPathforvirtualmachines. Enhance CPU

eiciency or applications that require requent access to

I/O devices by allowing select virtual machines to directly

access underlying hardware devices.

• Improvedpowermanagement. Improve energy

eiciency with dynamic voltage and requency scaling

andsupportforIntelSpeedStep®andAMDPowerNow!.

Architecture

• Bare-metal,64-bithypervisorarchitecture.Achieve

near-native virtual machine perormance, reliability andscalability with production-proven hypervisor technology

that runs directly on server hardware, without the need

or a host operating system.

• Virtualdiskfiles.Use virtual machine disk (VMDK) iles

to provide virtual machines access to their own private

datastores while giving IT administrators the lexibility to

create, manage and migrate virtual machine storage as

separate, sel-contained iles that can reside on shared

storage equipment.

• VMwarevStorageVMFS. Eliminate single points o

ailure and balance storage resources by implementingshared storage or virtual machines with VMware vStorage

Virtual Machine File System (“VMFS”), a cluster ile system

that allows multiple VMware ESX hosts to access a single

VMDK ile concurrently. VMFS is supported on a mix o

FibreChannelSAN,iSCSISAN,andNASstoragearraysin

a manner that is transparent to application owners and

end users. Download the VMFS datasheet to learn more

about VMFS, which provides new enhancements such as

dynamic increase o VMFS volume size.

• BootfromSAN.Eliminate the need to separately backup

local attached server disks by running VMware ESX hosts

on diskless conigurations o blade and rack mount

servers.

• Virtualnetworking. The virtual networking capabilitiesin VMware ESX and ESXi allow customers to build

complex networks between virtual machines residing on

a single host or across multiple installations o VMware

ESX and ESXi hosts or production deployments or

development and testing purposes. Conigure each

virtualmachinewithoneormorevirtualNIC,eachwith

itsownIPandMACaddress,tomakevirtualmachines

indistinguishable rom physical machines. Create a

simulated network within a VMware ESX host with virtual

switchesthatconnectvirtualmachines.UsevirtualLANs

(VLANs)tooverlayalogicalLANontopofphysicalLANs

to isolate network traic or security and load segregation.

Modiy network conigurations without having to changeactual cabling and switch setups.

AdvancedResourceManagement

VMware ESX oers advanced resource management

capabilities to improve perormance and increase

consolidation ratios.

• Resourcemanagementforvirtualmachines.Deine

advanced resource allocation policies or virtual machines

to improve service levels to sotware applications.

Establish minimum, maximum and proportional resource

shares or CPU, memory, disk and network bandwidth.

Modiy allocations while virtual machines are running.

• IntelligentCPUvirtualization.Manage the execution

o virtual machine processes with intelligent process

scheduling and load balancing across all available CPUs

on the physical host.

• RAMovercommitment.Increase memory utilization by

coniguring virtual machine memory that saely exceeds

the physical server memory, enabling a greater number

o virtual machines to run on a VMware ESX or ESXi host.

• Transparentpagesharing(memoryde-duplication).

UsephysicalRAMmoreefficientlybystoringmemory

pages identical across multiple virtual machines onlyonce.

• Memoryballooning.ShiftRAMdynamicallyfromidle

virtual machines to active workloads. Memory ballooning

artiicially induces memory pressure within idle virtual

machines, orcing them to use their own paging areas

and release memory or active virtual machines.




• Networktrafficshaping.Ensure that critical virtual

machines receive priority access to network bandwidth.

Networktrafficfromvirtualmachinescanbeprioritized

ona“fairshare”basis.NetworkTrafficShapermanages

virtual machine network traic to meet peak bandwidth,

average bandwidth and burst size constraints.

• StorageI/Otrafficprioritization. Ensure that critical

virtual machines receive priority access to storage devices

by prioritizing I/O traic on a “air share” basis.

• Improvedpowermanagement. Improve energy

eiciency with dynamic voltage and requency scaling

andsupportforIntelSpeedStep®andAMDPowerNow!.

PerformanceandScalability

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi deliver unparalleled

perormance and scalability, enabling even the most

resource intensive production applications to be virtualized.• Performanceoptimizationsforvirtualizedworkloads.

VMware ESX and ESXi 4.0 have undergone perormance

optimizations or speciic business-critical applications

such as Oracle databases, Microsot SQL Server,

and Microsot Exchange. Get up to 8,900 database

transactions per second, 200,000 I/O operations per

second, and up to 16,000 Exchange mailboxes per host.

• PerformanceimprovementsforiSCSIstorage.

Leverage a combination o new in-guest virtualization-

optimized SCSI drivers and VMkernel-level storage stack

optimizations to dramatically increase perormance

or I/O-intensive applications such as databases andmessaging applications.

• Supportforpowerfulserverhardware. Take advantage

o hardware systems with up to 64 physical CPU cores,

256virtualCPUs,512GBRAM,anduptohundredsof

virtual machines on a single host to acilitate large-scale

consolidation and disaster recovery projects.

• Supportforlargervirtualmachines.Conigure virtual

machineswithasmuchas255GBRAM.

• Supportforeight-wayvirtualSMP.VMware Virtual

Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) enhances virtual

machine perormance by enabling a single virtual

machine to use up to eight physical processors,

simultaneously. VMware Virtual SMP enables virtualization

o the most CPU-intensive enterprise applications such as

databases,ERPandCRM.

• Rawdevicemapping.Optionally,mapSANLUNsdirectly

to a virtual machine in order to enable application

clustering and array-based snapshot technology while

proiting rom the manageability beneits o VMware

vStorage VMFS.

• Supportforhardwarevirtualization.VMware ESX and

ESXi provide industry-leading support or next-generation

virtualizationhardwareassisttechnologiessuchasAMD’s

RapidVirtualizationIndexing®orIntel’sExtendedPage

Tables.

• Supportforlargememorypages.VMware ESX and

ESXi are the only hypervisors that support large memory

pages to improve eiciency o memory access or guest

operating systems.

• Networkingperformanceoptimizations.VMware

ESX and ESXi support a variety o perormance oload

technologies including TCP Segmentation Oloading

(TSO),VLANandchecksumoffloading,andjumboframes

to reduce the CPU overhead associated with processing

networkI/O.Additionally,virtualizationoptimizedI/O

performancefeaturessuchasNetQueueissupported

which signiicantly improves perormance in 10 GigabitEthernet virtualized environments.

• Supportfornewhighperformancedevicesand

protocols:VMware ESX and ESXi support 10Gb Ethernet

network cards and storage arrays and Ininiband

technology to improve virtual machine perormance.

• Supportforparavirtualization. VMware ESX and ESXi

support para-virtualized Linux guest operating systems

(Linux kernel 2.6.21 onwards) to improve virtual machine

perormance.

• VMDirectPathI/Oforvirtualmachines.Enhance CPU

eiciency or applications that require requent access toI/O devices by allowing select virtual machines to directly

access underlying hardware devices. Other virtualization

eatures, such as VMware VMotion™, hardware

independence and sharing o physical I/O devices will not

be available to the virtual machines using this eature.

HighAvailability

VMware ESX delivers datacenter-class high availability or

virtual machines.

• Built-instorageaccessmultipathing. Ensure shared

storageavailabilitywithSANmultipathingforFibre

ChanneloriSCSISAN.

• NICteaming. Give each networked virtual machine

built-inNICfailoverandloadbalancingenablinggreater

hardwareavailabilityandfaulttolerance.NICteaming

policies allow users to conigure multiple active and

standby adapters.




• SupportforMicrosoftClusteringServices.Cluster

virtual machines running Microsot Windows operating

system across physical hosts.

Interoperability

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are optimized, rigorouslytested and certied across the complete IT stack o servers,

storage, operating systems, and sotware applications

allowing or enterprise-wide standardization.

• Serverhardware.VMware ESX and ESXi have been

certiied with industry-leading rack, tower and blade

serversfromDell,FujitsuSiemens,HP,IBM,NEC,Sun

Microsystems and Unisys.

• Storagehardware.VMware ESX and ESXi are certiied

with a wide range o storage systems rom Dell, EMC,

Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, HP, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM,

NEC,NetworkAppliance,StorageTek,SunMicrosystemsand3PAR.InternalSATAdrives,DirectAttachedStorage

(DAS),NetworkAttachedStorage(NAS)andbothfibre

channelSANandiSCSISANaresupported.

• Operatingsystems.VMware ESX and ESXi support

the broadest range o unmodiied operating systems,

includingWindows,Linux,Solaris,NovellNetWareand

more. VMware recently added support or 20 new guest

operating systems.

• Softwareapplications.Runanysoftwareapplicationin

VMware virtual machines without the need to modiy the

application.

• Virtualmachineformats. VMware ESX and ESXi can run

virtual machines created in non-VMware ormats. Using

the ree VMware vCenter Converter, users can convert and

run Microsot Virtual Server and Virtual PC, and Symantec

LiveStateRecoveryvirtualmachinesonVMwareESXand

ESXi hosts.

Security

AdvancedsecurityfeaturesinVMwareESXandESXiprotect

stored data within the virtual environment.

• VMwareVMsafe™.VMware VMsae is a new security

technology that helps protect virtualized workloads inways previously not possible with physical machines.

VMsafeprovidesasetofsecurityAPIsthatenable

third-party security products to gain the same visibility

as VMware ESX or ESXi into the operation o a virtual

machine to identiy and eliminate malware, such as

viruses, trojans and key-loggers. This advanced protection

is achieved by ine-grained visibility into the virtual

machine’s hardware resources such as memory, CPU and

disk and its I/O systems.

• VMkernelProtection.VMware ESX and ESXi are

protected rom common attacks and exploits by assuring

the integrity o the VMkernel, a core component o

the hypervisor. Disk integrity techniques in ESX and

ESXi protect the boot-up o the hypervisor by utilizing

the Trusted Platorm Module (TPM), a hardware deviceembedded in servers. VMkernel modules that load onto

disk and memory are digitally signed and validated

during load to ensure the authenticity and integrity o

dynamically loaded code and protect against malware

attempting to modiy VMkernel as it persists on disk.

VMKernel also uses memory integrity techniques at load-

time coupled with microprocessor capabilities to protect

itsel rom common buer-overlow attacks used to

exploit running code.

• Encryption: Ensure secure connection to VMware ESX

and ESXi hosts with SSL encryption.

• EnableauthenticationforiSCSIDevices:VMware ESX

and ESXi secure iSCSI devices rom unwanted intrusion

by requiring that either the host or the iSCSI initiator be

authenticated by the iSCSI device or target whenever the

hostattemptstoaccessdataonthetargetLUN.

• NetworkSecurityPolicies. Enorce security or virtual

machines at the Ethernet layer. Disallow promiscuous

modesniffingofnetworktraffic,MACaddresschanges

andforgedsourceMACtransmits.

Manageability

Several management interaces are available to more

efciently manage VMware ESX and ESXi environments. The

core management interaces used by VMware ESX and ESXi

administrators are:

• VMwarevSphere™Client.Manage VMware ESX or ESXi

hosts, virtual machines and (optionally) VMware vCenter

Server with the common user interace o the VMware

vSphere Client. The vSphere Client is available as a ree

download and can be pointed at a VMware ESX or ESXi

host or single host management, or it can be pointed at

VMware vCenter™ Server or multi-host management.

• VMwarevCenterServer.Enable centralized

management or VMware ESX and ESXi hosts andtheir virtual machines. To manage an ESX or ESXi host

withVMwarevCenterServer,aVMwarevCenterAgent

license, included in all editions o VMware vSphere™, is

required or that host. VMware vSphere includes many

more management capabilities that improve business

continuity and maximize operational eiciency such

as live migration, automatic load balancing, protection

against hardware ailures, and virtual machine back up

and restore capabilities.



VMw, i. 3401 Hvw av Po ao ca 94304 usa t 877-486-9273 fx 650-427-5001 www.vmw.omCopyright©2009VMware,Inc.Allrightsreserved.ThisproductisprotectedbyU.S.andinternationalcopyrightandintellectualpropertylaws.VMwareproductsarecoveredbyoneormore

patents listed at http://www.vmware.com/go/patents.

VMwareisaregisteredtrademarkortrademarkofVMware,Inc.intheUnitedStatesand/orotherjurisdictions.Allothermarksandnamesmentionedhereinmaybetrademarksoftheirrespectivecompanies. ItemNo:VMW_09Q1_BRO_ESX_ESXi_EN_P6_R2

V M w a r e E S X a n d E S X i B R O C H U R E

AdditionalmanagementtoolsforVMwareESXandESXi

include:

• VMwarevSphere™Command-LineInterface4.0

(vCLI). Manage VMware ESX and ESXi through a remote

execution environment. The latest version o vCLI has anumber o new commands and is supported on both

VMware ESX 4.0 and VMware ESXi 4.0. See the vSphere

Command-LineInterfaceInstallationandReferenceGuide

<http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-9247>.

• VMwarevSphere™PowerCommand-LineInterface

4.0(PowerCLI). Manage and conigure thousands

o Virtual Machines with this powerul yet easy to

use interace that is based on Microsot PowerShell

technology. PowerCLI allows IT administrators to manage

VMware ESX or ESXi through a scripting interace

managing the same tasks done with the VMware vSphere

Client.• VMwarevSphere™ManagementAssistant. The

VMwarevSphereManagementAssistantisavirtual

machine that includes a VMware vSphere command-

line interace and other prepackaged sotware that

developers and administrators can use to run agents and

scripts to manage VMware ESX and ESXi hosts.

• Agent-lessHardwareManagementwithCIM.

Common Inormation Model (CIM) provides a protocol or

monitoring hardware health and status through VMware

vCenter Server or CIM-compatible third-party tools.

Find Out More

HowCanIPurchaseVMwareESXandVMwareESXi?

VMware ESX and ESXi are included in all editions o VMware

vSphere™. To try a ree 60-day evaluation o VMware

vSphere or or more inormation on how to purchase

VMware vSphere visit the How to Buy page at http://www.

vmware.com/go/vsphere.

The standalone version o VMware ESXi is also available as a

ree download at http://www.vmware.com/go/esxi.

ProductSpecificationsandSystemRequirements

For detailed product specications and system

requirements, reer to the VMware ESX or VMware ESXi

hardware compatibility guide at http://www.vmware.com/

resources/compatibility/.

For inormation or to purchase VMware products, call 1-877-4VMWARE(outsideofNorthAmericadial+1-650-427-5000),

visit www.vmware.com/products, or search online or an

authorized reseller.

Documents

Esx Datasheet