Transcript ESX Server 3i version 3.5

VMware vSphere 4.0 Overview
Product Support Engineering
VMware Confidential
Agenda
Module 0 - Product Overview
Module 1 - vSphere Installation/Upgrade
Module 2 – vCenter Server
Module 3 - Storage
Module 4 - Networking
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Module 0 Lessons
Lesson 1 – Overview of new features in vSphere 4.0
What is vSphere 4.0?
VMware is renaming its flagship VMware VMware Infrastructure
product to VMware vSphere. VMware vSphere 4.0 corresponds
directly to the next major version of VMware Infrastructure 3, the
virtual datacenter operating system from VMware.
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Host Scalability
64-bit Service Console - The Linux-based Service Console for ESX 4.0 is
now 64-bit. The Service Console is derived from Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
64-bit VMkernel - The VMkernel, a core component of the ESX/ESXi 4.0
hypervisor, is 64-bit.
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Host Scalability
512GB Host Memory
ESX/ESXi 4.0 supports systems with up to 512GB of RAM.
See the Systems Compatibility Guide Additions and Modifications for
a list of systems for which 512GB host memory is supported.
64 Logical CPU’s and 256 Virtual CPUs Per Host
Providing headroom for more virtual machines per host
The ability to achieve even higher consolidation ratios on larger
machines.
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Power Management
Power Management — ESX/ESXi 4.0 supports Enhanced Intel
SpeedStep® and Enhanced AMD PowerNow! CPU power management
technologies.
With dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS), ESX/ESXi can save power
consumed by ESX hosts when they are not operating at maximum capacity.
DPM Full Support with IPMI / iLO Remote Power On — IPMI and iLO have
been added as a DPM remote power-on mechanism, an alternative to
Wake on LAN. DPM used with IPMI, iLO or Wake on LAN is now fully
supported in DRS Clusters
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep
Enhanced AMD PowerNow
DVFS - Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling
DPM – Dynamic Power Management
IPMI – Intelligent Platform Management Interface
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Virtual Machine Scalability and Functionality
New Virtual Hardware — ESX/ESXi 4.0 introduces a new
generation of virtual hardware (virtual hardware version 7) which
adds significant new features including:
New storage virtual devices:

Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) virtual device


Windows Server 2008 in a MSCS
IDE virtual device

Ideal for supporting older operating systems that lack SCSI drivers.
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Virtual Machine Hardware
New Virtual Hardware
Hardware version 7 is the default for new ESX/ESXi 4.0 VMs
VM’s running ESX 2.x/3.x continue to run
Enable hot add for Memory and CPU
VM needs to be powered off to enable
Supported in some Guest OS’s
VM’s with virtual hardware version 7
features are not compatible with
ESX/ESXi releases prior to 4.0
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Virtual Machine Hot Plug Support
Virtual Machine Hot Plug Support
The new virtual hardware introduced in ESX/ESXi 4.0 provides

Support for adding and removing virtual devices while the VM is
powered on
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Virtual Machine Scalability and Functionality
8-way Virtual SMP
ESX/ESXi 4.0 provides support for virtual machines with up to 8 virtual
CPUs allowing larger CPU-intensive workloads to be run on the VMware
ESX platform.
256GB RAM
Up to 256GB RAM can be assigned
to ESX/ESXi 4.0 virtual machines.
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Enhanced VMotion Compatibility
Enhanced VMotion Compatibility (EVC) – allows you to configure servers
whose CPUs feature Intel FlexMigration and AMD-V Extended Migration
technologies to be VMotion-compatible with servers that use older CPUs.
ESX/ESXi 4.0 adds additional flexibility when configuring EVC clusters over earlier
ESX releases that have EVC support
Allows you to apply preconfigured baselines (masks) feature sets to hosts in an ECV
Cluster
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VMDirectPath for Virtual Machines
VMDirectPath for Virtual Machines — VMDirectPath I/O device
access is primarily targeted to those applications that can benefit
from direct access by the guest operating system to the I/O
devices.
Other virtualization features, such as VMotion, hardware
independence and sharing of physical I/O devices will not be
available to the virtual machines using this feature.
VMDirectPath I/O is supported

Fully for Networking I/O with the Intel 82598 10 Gigabit Ethernet Controller

Experimentally for Storage I/O devices with the QLogic QLA25xx 8Gb
Fibre Channel and the LSI 3442e-R and 3801e (1068 chip based) 3Gb
SAS adapters.
Supported on Intel Nehalem platform and up to two passthrough
devices
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Storage Optimization
Thin Provisioning — VMware thin provisioning enables virtual machines to
utilize storage space on an as-needed basis, further reducing the cost of
storage for virtual environments.
It provides alarms and reports that specifically track allocation versus current
usage of storage capacity allowing storage administrators to optimize the
allocation of storage for virtual environments.
Thin provisioning allows users to optimally but safely utilize available storage
space by using advanced concepts such as over allocation.
Storage Stack Performance and Scalability — The combination of the new
in-guest virtualization-optimized SCSI driver, and additional ESX kernellevel storage stack optimizations dramatically improves storage I/O
performance
Making even the most I/O intensive applications such as databases and
messaging applications prime candidates for virtualization.
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Storage Optimization
iSCSI Support Improvements
An update of the iSCSI stack offers improvements to both software
iSCSI (iSCSI initiator runs at the ESX layer) and hardware iSCSI
(ESX leverages a hardware-optimized iSCSI HBA).
For both software and hardware iSCSI

CHAP support, digest acceleration and performance are
dramatically improved.
With software iSCSI in particular, improvements have been made to
significantly reduce the associated CPU overhead.
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Storage Optimization
Volume Grow - vCenter Sever 4 allows dynamic expansion of a
volume partition to add capacity to a running VMFS.
Volume Grow is a new method for expanding a VMFS datastore
without disrupting running virtual machines.
Once a LUN backing that datastore has been grown through an
array management utility, the vSphere administrator uses Volume
Grow to expand the VMFS partition on the expanded LUN.
The newly available space appears as a larger VMFS volume along
with an associated grow event in VMware vCenter Server.
Hot VMDK Extend - Hot extend is supported for VMFS flat virtual
disks in persistent mode and without any VMFS snapshots.
Used in conjunction with the new Volume Grow capability, the user
has maximum flexibility in managing growing capacity in VI 4.
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Storage Optimization
Native SATA - ESX/ESXi 4.0 further increases storage choices
for customers by providing support for internal disks connected
through the SATA interface.
This choice allows administrators to reduce storage costs by
supporting the lowest cost type of disk storage available.
Pluggable Storage Architecture (PSA) Support - A storage
partner plug-in framework enabling greater array certification
flexibility and improved array-optimized performance.
PSA is a multipath I/O framework that allows storage partners to
enable and certify their arrays relative to ESX release schedules and
deliver performance-enhancing multipath load-balancing behaviors
that are optimized per array.
PSA includes initial support for 3rd party multipathing software.

EMC is one of the pioneering partners in this space and is
planning the upcoming release of EMC PowerPath ESX.
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Network Optimization
vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) - is VMware's next generation
virtual networking management solution.
vNetwork Distributed Switch (vDS) spans many ESX/ESXi hosts
allowing you to reduce on-going network maintenance activities and
quickly scale up networking capacity.
vNetwork embeds new network VMotion technology and associated set
of APIs that enables partners to build rich, VMotion-aware networking
applications on top of vSphere. DVN includes:

Private VLAN Support - Private VLAN support enables broader compatibility
with existing networking environments deploying Private VLAN technology.

Network VMotion - vDS enables tracking of a virtual machine's networking
state as it moves around in the virtual infrastructure, greatly simplifying
network monitoring and troubleshooting activities.

3rd Party Virtual Switch Support - VDS includes initial support for 3rd party
virtual switches from Cisco
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Network Optimization
VMXNET Generation 3 — VMXNET3 is the third generation
virtual NIC emulation from VMware.
VMXNET3 builds on Enhanced VMXNET, VMware's second
generation virtual NIC emulation which was made available in
VMware Infrastructure 3.5.
VMXNET3 features include:

MSI/MSI-X support (subject to guest kernel support)

Receive Side Scaling (supported in Windows 2008)

IPv6 checksum and TCP segmentation offloading (TSO) over IPv6

VLAN off-loading
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Network Optimization
IPv6 Support - vSphere 4.0 adds new support for IPv6 for the
Service Console and VMkernel.
IPv6 support is limited for ESX 4.0 when you are logged in to the
ESX 4.0 using the vSphere Client.
IPv6 is not supported for vCenter Server
Refer to the ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0 configuration Guides
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VMware Fault Tolerance
Fault Tolerance - VMware fault tolerance provides zero
downtime and zero data loss availability for all virtual machines
against x86 hardware failures.
Enabling fault tolerance for a specific virtual machine enables that
workload to run on two different ESX hosts simultaneously and
allows the virtual machine to run seamlessly in the event of hardware
failures on either host.
Primary
Fault Tolerance in action
Secondary
Primary
Secondary
X
VMware FT VMware FT
X
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Enhanced Storage VMotion
Enhanced Storage VMotion — Storage VMotion can now be
administered through vCenter Server and will work across NFS in
addition to Fibre Channel and iSCSI.
In addition, Storage VMotion is enhanced to minimize resource consumption.
Storage VMotion migration of virtual machines in snapshot mode is not
supported in this release.
The conversion of disk formats as part of a Storage VMotion session is now
supported ( for example, thick to thin )
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vCenter Simplified Management
vCenter Server 4 - Simplifies management for large environments, improves
performance management, reduces storage management costs, and
reduces the complexity involved with setup and ongoing management of
virtual environments.
One-time setup and configuration,
search-based navigation,
and a single-pane-of-glass
view for multiple vCenter Servers.
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vCenter Simplified Management
vCenter Servers can be
inter-connected in Linked Mode
which allows administrators to
share roles and licenses across
multiple, connected
vCenter Servers.
Multiple vCenter inventories can
be viewed and managed from a
single vSphere Client
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Host Profiles
Host Profiles - Simplify host configuration management through userdefined configuration policies.
Reduce per-host, manual, or UI-based host configuration and efficiently maintain
configuration consistency and correctness across the entire datacenter by using
host profile policies.
Host profile policies can capture the blueprint of a known, validated “golden”
configuration and use this to configure networking, storage settings, security
settings etc., on multiple hosts.
Host profile policies also monitor compliance to standard host configuration
settings across the datacenter.
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vApps
vApps - Simplify the deployment and ongoing management of an n-tier
application in multiple virtual machines by encapsulating it into a single
virtual service entity.
vApps encapsulate their interdependencies and resource allocations
allowing for single-step power operations, cloning, deployment, and
monitoring of the entire application.
vCenter Server now includes support for importing and exporting them in
compliance with Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) 1.0 standard.
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vCenter Licensing
Licensing - In vSphere 4.0, license reporting and management are
centralized.
If you upgrade all of your ESX hosts to 4.0, you no longer need a license
server or host license files.
All product and feature licenses are encapsulated in 25-character license
keys that you can manage and monitor from vCenter 4.0.
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Performance Chart Enhancements
Performance Charts Enhancements — Performance charts have been
enhanced to provide a single view of all performance metrics such as
CPU, memory, disk, and network without navigating through multiple
charts.
The performance charts also include the following improvements:
Aggregated charts show high-level summaries of resource distribution that is
useful to identify the top consumers.
Thumbnail views of hosts, resource pools, clusters, and datastores allow for
easy navigation to the individual charts.
Drill down capability across multiple levels in the inventory helps in isolating
the root-cause of performance problems quickly.
Detailed datastore level views show utilization by file type and unused
capacity.
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Performance Chart Enhancements
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Events and Alarms Enhancements
Events and Alarms Enhancements — Expanded support for
vCenter Server alarms on managed entities, such as datastores
and clusters, provides better monitoring of infrastructure resources.
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Permissions for Networks and Datastores
Granular Permissions for Network and Datastores — vCenter
Server 4 supports permissions at the datastore and network level.
Access to a datastore or network can be granted or denied for a specific
set of users.
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Storage Awareness Enhancements
Storage Awareness Enhancements — VMware provides increased
visibility into vSphere interaction with shared storage through
customizable reports and topology maps.
Virtual Machine, Datastore Reporting.
Physical configuration issues can be examined using topology maps
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Remote Management
vSphere Command-Line Interface - The vSphere Command-Line
Interface (vSphere CLI) included with this release is supported on
both ESX 4.0 and ESXi 4.0.
The vCLI has a significant number of new commands, including vicfgdns, vicfg-ntp, vicfg-user and vicfg-iscsi.
vSphere Management Assistant - The vSphere Management
Assistant (vMA) is a virtual machine which includes vSphere
Command-Line Interface and other pre-packaged software that
developers and administrators can use to run agents and scripts to
manage ESX and ESXi systems.
One important function of vMA is non-interactive login. You can use vMA
to perform many of the tasks commonly performed in the ESX service
console.
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GOS Customization Improvements
Guest Operating System Customization Improvements - vCenter
Server now supports the ability to customize the following new
guest OS platforms:
Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)
Ubuntu 8.04
Debian 4.0
Note: It is now possible for administrators to customize time zone
information for Linux guests.
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Resource Usage Statistics
Resource Usage Statistics — vCenter Server now displays detailed CPU
and memory usage statistics at both the Virtual Machine & Resource Pool
aggregation levels in a cluster.
Statistics include: CPU usage and demand, Memory usage breakdown:
private, shared, ballooned, swapped.
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vSphere Host Update Utility
Upgrade ESX hosts (versions
3.0 and later) to ESX 4.0
remotely using the enhanced
vSphere Host Update Utility
The intuitive user interface
provides real-time status of the
remote upgrade, and allows you
to specify custom post-installation
scripts.
New features include rollbacks
after failed upgrades. This
rollback feature allows easy
manageability of smaller
environments.
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Guided Consolidation Enhancements
Guided Consolidation Enhancements - Guided Consolidation service is
now a modular plug-in to vCenter
Can be installed on a different system than the vCenter Server
Guided Consolidation service provides better scalability by concurrently
analyzing and making consolidation recommendations for up to 500 physical
machines at a given time.
Guided Consolidation service by virtue of being internationalized is also able to
discover and analyze systems running non-English versions of Windows.
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VMFS Volume Management
Managing VMFS Volumes with Array-based LUN Snapshots The mounting of array-based LUN snapshots (and array-based
LUN clones) now occurs easily and in well-managed way in
vSphere 4.0
These LUNs are automatically discovered after a storage "rescan" and
single snapshots or clones may be selected for mounting and use by
the ESX host.

For disaster recovery scenarios, in which the replicated volume is
not in the same datacenter, LUNs can be mounted without writing a
new signature.
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Service Management Plug-ins
Service Management of vCenter
Server Components and Plug-ins
vCenter Server features a service
management console that displays
the health of the components of
vCenter Server and its associated
extensions.
Based on the health status,
administrators can quickly identify
and correct failures in the
management infrastructure.
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Compatibility and 3rd Party Extensibility
Record and Replay Virtual Machine Execution — ESX/ESXi 4.0 provides
the ability to record and replay the execution of a virtual machine for
forensic or debugging purposes.
APIs enable third parties to control this functionality.
Additional Guest Operating System Support — ESX/ESXi 4.0 adds
support for guest operating systems not previously supported on the
ESX platform. Support has been added for the following guest operating
systems:
Asianux 3.0
CentOS 4
Debian 4
FreeBSD 6
FreeBSD 7
OS/2
MS-DOS 6.22
Windows 3.1
Windows 95
Windows 98
Windows 2000
Netware 6
RHEL 5
OpenServer 5
Unixware 7
Solaris 8 (exp )
Solaris 9 (exp )
Solaris 10
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VMware VMsafe
VMware VMsafe — VMware VMsafe is a new technology that
leverages the properties of vSphere to protect virtual machines
in ways previously not possible with physical machines.
VMware VMsafe provides an application program interface (API)
sharing program to enable partners to develop VMware-aware
security products.
The VMsafe Security API gives security vendors the insight to
leverage the inherent properties of virtualization in their security
offerings.
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VMkernel Protection
VMkernel Protection - To protect the hypervisor from common attacks
and exploits, mechanisms were introduced to assure the integrity of the
VMkernel and loaded modules as they reside on disk and in memory.
Disk integrity techniques protect the boot-up of the hypervisor by utilizing the
Trusted Platform Module (TPM), a hardware device embedded in servers.

To ensure the authenticity and integrity of dynamically loaded code,
VMkernel modules are digitally signed and then validated during load.

These disk integrity mechanisms protect against malware, which may
attempt to overwrite or modify VMkernel as it persists on disk.
VMkernel also uses memory integrity techniques at load-time coupled with
microprocessor capabilities to protect itself from common buffer-overflow
attacks used to exploit running code.
These techniques create a stronger barrier of protection around the
hypervisor.
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Virtual Machine Communication Interface
Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI) - ESX/ESXi 4.0
introduces a new virtual device which facilitates high-speed
communication between the virtual machine and the hypervisor as well
as between virtual machines. VMCI does not rely on guest networking.
The VMCI Sockets library provides a convenient interface for using this
device.
Virtual Machine Communication Interface Sockets API - VMCI Sockets
is a convenience Application Programming Interface (API) for the
Virtual Machine Communication Interface (VMCI).
Virtual Infrastructure Component Framework - Virtual Infrastructure
Component Framework (VICF) is a secure, standards-compliant,
language and platform neutral application framework for writing
distributed applications in guest virtual machines.
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Compatibility and 3rd Party Extensibility
Virtual Assertions —ESX/ESXi provides ISVs and developers
with a new tool for improving code quality through the use of
virtual assertions (VAsserts).
Unlike traditional assertions, VAsserts can be left in shipping code
and operate only when replaying a recorded virtual machine.
CIM SMASH — VMware hypervisors implement the industrystandard Common Information Model (CIM) interface to monitor
and manage the health of server hardware.
The implementation is based on the System Management
Architecture for Server Hardware (SMASH) profiles defined by DMTF
- http://www.dmtf.org/home
This interface is supported on ESX/ESXi 4.0. Please refer to the CIM
SMASH/Server Management API Programming Guide for more
information.
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Lesson 1 Summary
64-bit Service Console and VMkernel.
512GB host Memory and 64 Logical CPU’s and 256 Virtual CPUs Per
Host
8-way Virtual SMP and 256GB RAM per VM
Hot Plug Support for Memory and CPU
Storage – Volume Grow, Hot VMDK Extend
vNetwork Distributed Switch
Fault Tolerant Virtual Machines
Enhancements to Storage vMotion and vMotion Compatibility
Host Profiles
vApps
Licensing Changes
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