Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
interface for managing a virtual infrastructure and enables vSphere administrators to manage
their infrastructure without needing to install the Windows-based vSphere Client on a system.
In its initial release, the vSphere Web Client provided a subset of the functionality available
to the “full” Windows-based vSphere Client. However, in subsequent releases—including the
5.5 release—the vSphere Web Client has been enhanced and expanded to include almost all
the functionality a vSphere administrator needs to manage a vSphere environment. Further,
VMware has stated that the vSphere Web Client will eventually replace the Windows-based
vSphere Client entirely. For this reason, we'll use screen shots of the vSphere Web Client
throughout this topic unless it is impossible to do so.
The Windows-based vSphere Client is still available to allow you to manage ESXi hosts,
either directly or through an instance of vCenter Server, but VMware's development efforts
are focused on the vSphere Web Client. You can install the vSphere Client by browsing to the
URL of an ESXi host or vCenter Server and selecting the appropriate installation link (although
keep in mind that Internet access might be required in order to download the client in some
instances). The vSphere Client provides a rich graphical user interface (GUI) for all day-to-day
management tasks and for the advanced coni guration of a virtual infrastructure. While you can
connect the vSphere Client either directly to an ESXi host or to an instance of vCenter Server,
the full set of management capabilities are available only when you are connecting the vSphere
Client to vCenter Server.
As we mentioned earlier, the vSphere Web Client is the stated future direction for VMware
vSphere's management interface. For that reason, we focus primarily on how to use the vSphere
Web Client throughout this topic. Tasks in the vSphere Client should be similar, but note that
some tasks can be performed only in the vSphere Web Client, not the Windows-based vSphere
Client.
VMware vCenter Orchestrator
VMware vCenter Orchestrator is a workl ow automation engine that is automatically installed
with every instance of vCenter Server. Using vCenter Orchestrator, vSphere administrators can
build automated workl ows for a wide variety of tasks available within vCenter Server. The
automated workl ows you build using vCenter Orchestrator range from simple to complex.
VMware also makes vCenter Orchestrator plug-ins to extend the functionality to include manip-
ulating Microsoft Active Directory, Cisco's Unii ed Computing System (UCS), and VMware
vCloud Director. This makes vCenter Orchestrator a powerful tool to use in building automated
workl ows in the virtualized data center.
Now that we've discussed the specii c products in the VMware vSphere product suite, we'd
like to take a closer look at some of the signii cant features.
Examining the Features in VMware vSphere
In the following sections, we'll take a closer look at some of the features that are available in the
vSphere product suite. We'll start with Virtual SMP.
vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multi-Processing
The vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multi-Processing (vSMP or Virtual SMP) product allows vir-
tual infrastructure administrators to construct VMs with multiple virtual processors. vSphere
Virtual SMP is
not
the licensing product that allows ESXi to be installed on servers with multiple
processors; it is the technology that allows the use of multiple processors
inside
a VM. Figure
