VMware vSphere Components and Features:

An introduction to the components and features of VMware vSphere helps you to understand the parts and how they interact.

VMware vSphere includes the following components and features:

VMware ESXi:- A virtualization layer works on the physical servers, divides processor, memory, storage, and other resources available into multiple virtual machines. ESXi is not a software application that one installs in an operating system (OS); instead, it includes and integrates vital OS components, such as a kernel.

VMware vCenter Server:- vCenter is the central point for configuring, provisioning, and managing virtualized IT environments. It provides essential datacenter services such as access control, performance monitoring, and alarm management.

VMware vSphere Client:- The vSphere Client is an interface for administering vCenter Server and ESXi. It allows users to remotely connect to ESXi or vCenter Server from any Windows to perform configuration and management activities.

VMware vSphere Web Client:- Web-based application that connects users to the vCenter Server to manage installations and handle inventory objects in a vSphere environment. The Web Client presents a graphical user interface (GUI) and the vSphere administrator can manage and supervise the objects listed in the virtualized data center.

vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS):- A high performance cluster files system for ESXi virtual machines. VMFS is a cluster file system that facilitates storage virtualization for multiple installations of VMware ESX Server, a hypervisor that partitions physical servers into multiple virtual machines.

vSphere Virtual SMP:- It provides the ability to a single virtual machine to use multiple physical processors simultaneously. So that performance of the machine can be increased.

vSphere vMotion:- This feature is for the migration of powered-on virtual machines from one physical server to another with zero down time, continuous service availability, and complete transaction integrity.

vSphere Storage vMotion:- This feature for migration of virtual machine files from one datastore to another without service interruption. You can place the virtual machine and all its disks in a single location, or select separate locations for the virtual machine configuration file and each virtual disk. The virtual machine remains on the same host during Storage vMotion.

Migration with Storage vMotion lets you move the virtual disks or configuration file of a virtual machine to a new datastore while the virtual machine is running. Migration with Storage vMotion enables you to move a virtual machine's storage without any interruption in the availability of the virtual machine.

vSphere High Availability (HA):- A feature that provides high availability for virtual machines. If a Host server fails, affected virtual machines are restarted on other available servers that have spare capacity.

vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS):- Allocates and balances computing capacity dynamically across collections of hardware resources for virtual machines. This feature includes distributed power management (DPM) capabilities that enable a data-center to significantly reduce its power consumption.

vSphere Storage DRS:- Allocates and balances storage capacity and I/O dynamically across collections of datastores. This feature includes management capabilities that minimize the risk of running out of space and the risk of I/O bottlenecks slowing the performance of virtual machines.

vSphere Fault  Tolerance:- Provides continuous availability by protecting a virtual machine with a copy. When this feature is enabled for a virtual machine, a secondary copy of the original, or primary, virtual machine is created. All actions completed on the primary virtual machine are also applied to the secondary virtual machine. If the primary virtual machine becomes unavailable, the secondary machine becomes immediately active.

vSphere Distributed Switch (VDS):- A virtual switch that can span multiple ESXi hosts, enabling significant reduction of on-going network maintenance activities and increasing network capacity. This increased efficiency enables virtual machines to maintain consistent network configuration as they migrate across multiple hosts.