Virtualization with VMware vSphere 4

Virtualization is not the "next big thing", it's the big thing. As in, right now, tens of thousands of organizations are beginning to utilize it in ways that were undreamed of a decade ago. Thousands of organizations have already implemented it to help cut costs, unify management, and harness the full power of their hardware. In the training course Virtualization with VMware vSphere 4, VMware employees Rupen Sheth and Shridhar Deuskar explained how to leverage vSphere to enhance the virtualization path of companies looking at VMware.

As you may or may not know, VMware ESXi is a free product offered by VMware which consists of a bare-metal hypervisor and a thin management console that doesn't allow much except for the ability to run and configure VMs via remote login by the vSphere client. With a purchased license, however, a vCenter server can be utilized, which allows exponentially more options.

By itself, VMware ESXi is very capable, however with vCenter, it really shines. Features such as fault tolerance and high availability become possible, and with multiple storage arrays, even storage vmotion is possible.

Rupen and Shridhar spent a lot of time going through the vSphere interface, which was informational to me, at least, because I don't currently have a vCenter license. I am getting one soon, however, and seeing the hierarchy of VM objects was very educational.

VMware (and virtualization in general) is all about layers of abstraction. You abstract the OS from the hardware, you abstract away from the individual VM with a group, and you abstract from groups using resource pools. Each step can be individually managed, with resources divided between available entities in the hierarchy. Mastering the proper division of resources takes time and experience, but understanding how it works helps a lot in that regard.

The most valuable part of this class for me was definitely the question/answer section. While the standard presentation was more a walk-through of the vSphere interface, the deep-dives whenever my classmates asked questions really showed the impressive amount of knowledge the presenters had. They admitted when they didn't know the answers, and they weren't afraid to give deeply technical responses when called for. This aspect of the class was worth it alone.

I'm looking forward to implementing much of what I learned when I build my own VMware cluster very shortly. I suspect that most of the people in the class came out with knowledge that they didn't have coming in, and although the presentation drifted toward the non-technical at times, the highlights more than made up for it.