Tech Kaizen: VMware software products - ESXi, vCenter, vMotion

ESX Server

VMware’s ESX server is at the highest end of features and price of all the VMware server applications. The ESX actually loads right on to “bare-metal” servers. Thus, there is no need to first load an underlying operating system prior to loading VMware ESX. What is unique about ESX is that it comes with its own modified Linux Kernel called VMKernel (based on Red Hat Enterprise Linux). ESX is now sold in a suite of products called VMware Infrastructure.

VMWare Server

VMware’s Server is a FREE VMware virtualization product built for use in production servers. Unlike ESX, VMware Server still uses the underlying host operating system. With VMware Server, you loose the some of the functionality and performance of the ESX server but don’t have as great of price tag (its free!)

Workstation

VMware’s Workstation is for use on a client workstation. For example, say that I want to run both Windows 2003 server and Linux Fedora Core 5 on my desktop workstation, which is running Windows XP. VMware Workstation would be the program I would use to do this. This would allow me the flexibility to run these guest operating systems to test various applications and features. I could also create snapshots of them to capture their configuration at a certain point in time and easily duplicate them to create other virtual machines (such as moving them to a VMware Server).

VirtualCenter

Virtual Center provides a centralized management console for all VMware servers. If you plan to grow your farm of virtualized servers into the ten’s and hundreds, over time, you should have Virtual Center in your plans.

Vmotion

Like magic, VMotion can move a running virtual server to another physical server, without interrupting that server’s requests. This can be done for maintenance of hardware or to better balance workload. VMotion requires a SAN be used for these virtual machines. Both Virtual Center and VMotion are part of the VMWare vManage offering.

VMware Converter

The VMware Converter is used to move physical machine operating systems to virtual machines. This tool automates the migration to virtual machines. Besides migrating, the Converter can be used to create images of physical systems for disaster recovery purposes. Currently in Beta, the VMware Converter will replace the P2V Assistant.