Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Performance of vSphere Client vs. vSphere Web Client
Author Nick Marshall recalls the following experience: “In 2012, I did some work helping a business
upgrade from vSphere 4.1 to 5.1. While the environment where this upgrade took place had signifi -
cant investments in vSphere and the underlying hardware, one administrator was quite unhappy
with the performance. As I became more involved in this project, I learned that his frustrations lay
with the day-to-day performance of the vSphere Client, not with the actual hosts or 1,000+ VMs.
As I migrated VMs between the two environments, this administrator was expecting to experi-
ence the same performance issues that bugged him in their older vSphere 4.1 environment. To his
surprise, although the hardware being used was identical and the workloads being managed were
the same, the general responsiveness of the newer vSphere Web Client was signifi cantly better than
the older client he was used to. h e architecture of the newer vSphere Web Client simply performs
better at scale than the older vSphere Client.”
Providing an Extensible Framework
Just as centralized authentication is not a core vCenter Server service, we don't include vCen-
ter Server's extensible framework as a core service. Rather, this extensible framework provides
the foundation for vCenter Server's core services and enables third-party developers to create
applications built around vCenter Server. Figure 3.3 shows some of the components that revolve
around the core services of vCenter Server.
A key aspect for the success of virtualization is the ability to allow third-party companies
to provide additional products that add value, ease, and functionality to existing products. By
building vCenter Server in an extensible fashion and providing an application programming
interface (API) to it, VMware has shown its interest in allowing third-party software developers
to play an integral part in virtualization. The vCenter Server API allows companies to develop
custom applications that can take advantage of the virtual infrastructure created in vCenter
Server. For example, numerous companies have created backup utilities that work off the exact
inventory created inside vCenter Server to allow for advanced backup options of VMs. Storage
vendors use the vCenter API to create plug-ins that expose storage details, and other third-party
applications use the vCenter Server APIs to provide management, monitoring, life cycle man-
agement, or automation functionality.
You can i nd more information on vCenter Server functionality in Chapter 10, which pro-
vides a detailed look at templates along with VM deployment and management, and Chapter
8, which goes deeper into vCenter Server's access controls. Chapter 11 discusses resource
management, while Chapter 13 offers an in-depth look at ESXi host and VM monitoring as
well as alarms.
You're almost ready to take a closer look at installing, coni guring, and managing vCenter
Server. First, however, we'll discuss how to choose which version of vCenter Server you should
deploy in your environment.
