Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Virtual Machine Graphics
Depending on what kind of virtual machines you're deploying in your environment, you may
need to think about graphics performance. For backend systems, such as database systems or
email platforms, the graphics performance of the virtual machine is not important and is not
something you typically have to worry about. If you're deploying a virtual desktop infrastruc-
ture (VDI), however, the graphics performance and capabilities of the virtual machine are likely
to be a key consideration.
For VDI solutions like VMware Horizon View, end users no longer run a full desktop or lap-
top but instead connect to their virtual desktop (running on vSphere) from a variety of end-point
devices. These devices could be laptops, desktops, thin or zero clients, or even tablets and smart-
phones. The virtual desktop often acts as a complete desktop replacement for end users, so the
desktop needs to perform as well as (or better than) the physical hardware that is being replaced.
In order to provide high-end graphics capabilities to virtual machines, vSphere 5.5 supports
vSGA, or Virtual Shared Graphics Acceleration. This technology allows you to install graphics
cards into your ESXi host and then ofl oad the processing of 3D rendering to the physical graph-
ics cards instead of the host CPUs. This ofl oading helps to reduce overall CPU utilization by
allowing hardware that is purpose-built for rendering graphics to perform the processing.
Though the 3D rendering settings are coni gured in the settings of a virtual machine, they
are intended only for use with VMware Horizon View. If you are using a VDI solution other
than Horizon View, speak to the vendor to understand if 3D rendering on vSphere is supported.
Installing a Guest Operating System
A new VM is analogous to a physical computer with an empty hard drive. All the components are
there but without an operating system. After creating the VM, you're ready to install a supported
guest OS. The following OSes are some of the more commonly installed guest OSes supported by
ESXi (this is not a comprehensive list):
Windows 8 (32-bit and 64-bit)
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Windows 7 (32-bit and 64-bit)
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Windows Vista (32-bit and 64-bit)
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Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)
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Windows Server 2008 R2 (64-bit)
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Windows Server 2008 (32-bit and 64-bit)
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Windows Server 2003 (32-bit and 64-bit)
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Windows Small Business Server 2003
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Windows XP Professional (32-bit and 64-bit)
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Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3/4/5/6 (32-bit and 64-bit)
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CentOS 4/5 (32-bit and 64-bit)
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SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8/9/10/11 (32-bit and 64-bit)
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Ubuntu Linux (32-bit and 64-bit)
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NetWare 5.1/6.
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