VMware vSphere 4.0 Overview

Product Support Engineering

VMware Confidential

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

2

Agenda

Module 0 - Product Overview

Module 1 - vSphere Installation/Upgrade

Module 2 – vCenter Server

Module 3 - Storage

Module 4 - Networking

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

4

Host Scalability64-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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

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 CPU’s 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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

6

Power ManagementPower 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 SpeedStep

Enhanced AMD PowerNow

DVFS - Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling

DPM – Dynamic Power Management

IPMI – Intelligent Platform Management Interface

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

7

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

8

Virtual Machine Hardware

New Virtual Hardware

Hardware version 7 is the default for new ESX/ESXi 4.0 VMs

VM’s 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 OS’s

VM’s with virtual hardware version 7features are not compatible with

ESX/ESXi releases prior to 4.0

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

9

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

11

Enhanced VMotion CompatibilityEnhanced 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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

12

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

13

Storage OptimizationThin 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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

15

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

16

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

17

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

18

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

19

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

20

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

X

VMware FT VMware FT

Primary Secondary SecondaryPrimary

X

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

21

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 )

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

22

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

23

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

24

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

25

vAppsvApps - 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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

26

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

27

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

28

Performance Chart Enhancements

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

29

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

30

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

31

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

32

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

33

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

34

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

35

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

36

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

37

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

38

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

39

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

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

40

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

41

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

42

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

43

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.

VI4 - Mod 0 - Slide

44

Lesson 1 Summary

64-bit Service Console and VMkernel.

512GB host Memory and 64 Logical CPU’s 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