VMware vSphere 4.0 Overview

1
VMware vSphere 4.0 Overview

• Product Support Engineering

• VMware Confidential

2
Agenda

• Module 0 - Product Overview
• Module 1 - vSphere Installation/Upgrade
• Module 2 vCenter Server
• Module 3 - Storage
• Module 4 - Networking

3
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.

4
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.

5
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 CPUs 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.

6
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 SpeedStepEnhanced AMD
  PowerNowDVFS - 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
• VMs 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 OSs
• VMs with virtual hardware version 7features are
  not compatible withESX/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

10
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 kernel-level 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.

14
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. Fault
  Tolerance in action

Primary
Secondary
Secondary
Primary
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VMware FT
VMware FT
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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 user-defined 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 vicfg-dns, 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
  industry-standard 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 CPUs 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