I am beginner in VMware. I am trying to understand the VMware components and how it works.But I could not understand how vsphere Client access the EXSi host. Is it directly or through the VMWare VCenter server.please give any reference or explanation to get the understanding.
Using vSphere client you can connect to vCenter or directly to host. Of course if host is added to vCenter you should to connect ONLY to vCenter because vCenter should to know about any changes made on hosts. Connecting directly to host should be done ony in emergency situations (e.g. vCenter is down).
V-Center is the umbrella, under which all EXSI can be controlled. We can assume an example of a company where we have 3 physical servers installed ESXi on it and each server has as many processors cores so it can handle 5 virtual machines on it.
Now What is EXSi ---- EXSI is the product/OS/kernel which will allow you to create the environment to run multiple Servers/OS on the same hardware.
V-sphere client/V-sphere Web client --- If you have only one EXSI Server and you want to control that server functionality you need v-sphere because taking direct connection of EXSI Hardware machine will not allow you to do much with it. so the v-sphere client will give you many tools to play with it.
V-Center/VC ----- Now what if when your company has many ESXi servers as we taken for example. V-Sphere can not control all of those into one centralized platform. Here VC comes into play. VC allow you to manage all of these servers under one tool and many other functionalities which are not available in V-Sphere like Distribution switch, V-Motion(Which allow you to migrate one VM machine from Hardware to hardware in the fluctuation of time or not human noticeable time ).
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I have a environment where I have a huge pool of machines (60 thus far en growing each day), now these machines are used in a testing environment and machines do not need to be online around the clock as were paying for CPU time so I want to create a system where our users can turn on machines without having to logon through either vSphere desktop client or the vSphere site. Now i know there are systems such as plesk and similar but these are way over the top of what we need for an internal system.
Are there any API for VMWare that lets me remotely turn on virtual machines on demand?
We are running ESXi 5.1.0 on our hosts.
we are setting up new QE testing server. I guess host OS will be win2008
Which vmware server to choose - 1.x or 2.x ?
A year ago I tried vmware 1 server with Win2008 and it did not work at all.
However, Vmware server 2 did not seem to have the handy vmware console
VMware Server Console\vmware.exe
(is the new vmware server2 still just web based?)
we have a lot of vmware 1 images, are these ok for v2?
Or is it just better to go with HyperV?
Hyper-V Server or ESXi would probably be the best performing and most trouble free options - ie virtualisation not really dependant on the host operating system (but still free).
You can use tools like Vmdk2Vhd to convert image files. Be aware that you should boot the image in its old format first and uninstall vmware tools and some drivers like specific disk controller drivers (as per the instructions of the tool) before you convert it.
Going the enterprise route the System Center Virtual Machine Manager can do this mostly automatically, but then it's not a free solution anymore :) This platform can of course also do physical to virtual migrations for you...
...but alas, you can prepare a physical machine the same way as before converting a vmware image and then use normal imaging tools to clone it into a virtual machine. Or you can use Vmware's free converter tool and then convert the resulting vmdk image to vhd :)
Vmware Server v2 can use v1 images. Windows Server 2008 is supported only in v2. v2 also includes the Virtual Infrastructure Client which you can use instead of the web access ( the client replaces the old console from v1). This is the same client that is used with ESX.
vmware 2.0 crashed regularly on one server I have - however, hasn't crashed since the recent 2.0.1 update (but its only been a week).
I have w2K8 running under vmware 1.0.9 - by selecting Vista (experimental) as the OS setting. However, it's not under any load yet.
I'd recommend ESXi over VMware Server (you can migrate the images) purely for performance reasons. Server 2008 and Vista both run abysmally under VMware Server from my experience. With ESXi and a decent hardware RAID setup, things can be a bit more bearable.
Ok, so let's say that I want to try virtualization in my environment. I want to use ESXi to do that because it is free. I can use the install disk and setup a box to run the ESXi Host.
I'm not sure if the VMware Infrastructure Client is free for one thing. You can use it to attach an ovf file (a packaged VM). The problem I had is creating an ovf file that worked. The free converter didn't do the trick.
Does anyone have any tips or guidelines?
The VMware Infrastructure Client is free with certain restrictions. You just download it over the web from an installed ESXi host.
You need licenses to enable vMotion, but for a single host there's no problem.
We're using ESXi (free) with the VI Client (free) and getting tons better performance than VMware Server (also free). I wasn't so sure about the VI Client thing until I talked to someone else that had a working setup, it's a bit confusing and definitely not "obvious" if you're new to the various enterprise level VMware solutions.
Edit: This was true for ESX3, things change and it is no longer true. See comments for ESX4/5 solutions.
Yes, VI Client is free with ESXi, you just don't get advanced features.
For creating an OVF you should have a look at VMware Studio, a new Beta was released recently.
Sadly, no, the VMware client is not free:
"Further, managing a VMware ESXi host with VMware vCenter Server requires a VMware vCenter Server Agent for each host, only available with the purchase of a VMware Infrastructure license (Foundation, Standard, or Enterprise)."
From this VMware page:
http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/uses.html
We have 3 identical HP DL380 G5 server here, one of them is running vmware-server with one VM running on it.
I've begun the process to migrate these systems to be running ESXi (the $0, "embedded" system); two of the physical machines will have %99.99 of the time exactly 1 VM, the other will have 2.
For this, the major advantage I get Disaster Recovery ability. Our tape backup system doesn't have a "bare metal" ability. I can manually copy VM images to a different server, however. Even if they are months old, they provide pretty-close-to-instant up, further recovery they would be from tape.
Being the free version, I don't get the VMWare "consolidated backup" or VMotion. And I need to do per-physical machine management. But the ESXi takes 32MB of disk, and it specifically supports the server.
With that in mind, is there any reason not to always use ESXi, if the hardware supports it? Even if you only are planning on running 1 VM on that hardware?
Well, in your case ESXi is the better choice. There are cases where you want to use VMware Server but not really for this case. This is what ESXi is for. For instance, I use VMware Server on top of my development OS so I could do testing and use different distro's etc. I wouldn't do VMware Server for a production server like you are describing, but ESXi would be the best choice.
Is it an excellent idea to virtualize the whole OS to get the ability to make backups? NO! its not... Damn hype to virtualize without the real need for it.
There are free alternatives to make backups of pretty much any OS, image or archive of your choice.
To be more precise, XSIBackup will allow you to hot backup any ESXi edition from version 5.1 and up, it backs up the guest OS while it is running, and can even transfer it to a secondary ESXi box via IP and leave it ready to be switched on:
https://33hops.com/xsibackup-vmware-esxi-backup.html
I'm using VMware Workstation 6.0 for simulation of tight clusters of "blades" in a "chassis". Both the host and target OSs are Linux. Each "chassis" uses a vmnet switch as a virtual backplane, to which the virtual blades connect. Other vmnet switches are used to mediate point-to-point connections between mutiple virtual ethernet adapters on each blade VM. The chassis, and thus the VMs, are brought up and shutdown rather frequently. My scripts (python) make heavy use of the VIX api, and also manipulate the .vmx config file.
What do I gain and/or lose going from VMware Workstation to ESX? Do my scripts that use the VIX api still work? Do my rather complicated virtual network topologies, with lots of vmnet switches defined as "custom", still work the same way? Is the syntax and semantics of the .vmx config file the same between Workstation and ESX?Thanks in advance for your help.
The first thing you'll gain by switching will be a substantially more powerful platform that's running directly on the bare-metal of your server.
From my experience, moving up the VMware application stack has never been problematic (Server to Workstation to ESX). However, I would verify this by exporting all of your VMs from the workstation install to an ESX install to make sure you're not seeing any 'weird' issues related to running the high-end tool from VMware.
From my [limited] experience, scripts also carry-over cleanly: each offering moving up their product line doesn't break lower-level tools, but do add substantial improvements.
You get scalability and performance.
ESX scales much better and run much faster than any of VMware desktop products like Workstation or Player.
You should not lose anything. ESXi performs all the functions that Workstation does, plus a lot more. I use ESXi at home and Workstation on my laptop.
You will gain more fine-grained control over the virtual networks, over storage, snapshots, cloning, quiescing guest OSes, and many more advanced options in ESXi configuration.
One thing to note is the considerable expense of the ESX line compared to Workstation. If you're working for a successful company, though, the cost can easily be justified as ESX is (imho) da bomb. Also, FYI, the old free VMware Server options definitely had a whole different interface.