VMWare Server Virtualisation

Introducing VMWare

VMWare has long been a dominant force in the virtualisation arena and, by many, isregarded as the benchmark against which all other virtualisation platforms must compare.

Launched in 1999, VMWare Workstation was VMWare’s major virtualisation product and allowed users to run multiple operating systems on standard desktop systems. Their product line up has evolved since the 90’s and their server virtualisation platforms VMWare Server and VMWare Server ESX, along with VI (Virtual Infrastructure) are held with the highest regard within the IT industry.

For many, VMWare® ESX Server is the foundation for today’s dynamic, self-optimising IT infrastructure and acts as a robust, production-proven virtualisation layer that abstracts processor, memory, storage and networking resources into multiple virtual machines. ESX Server delivers the highest levels of performance, scalability and robustness
required for enterprise IT environments.

How does VMWare ESX Server work?

ESX Server installs directly on the server hardware, or °™bare metal°¨, and inserts a robust virtualisation layer between the hardware and the operating system. ESX Server partitions a physical server into multiple secure and portable virtual machines that can run side by side on the same physical server. Each virtual machine represents a complete system — with processors, memory, networking, storage and BIOS — so that Windows, Linux, Solaris and NetWare operating systems and software applications run in virtualised environment without any modification.

Sharing the physical server resources among a number of virtual machines increases hardware utilisation and dramatically decreases capital cost. The bare metal architecture gives ESX Server complete control over the server resources allocated to each virtual machine and provides for near-native virtual machine performance and enterpriseclass scalability.

Virtual machines have built-in high availability, resource management and security features
that provide better service levels to software applications than static physical environments.

vm diagram

Performance & Scalability

Improved virtual machine performance-Benefit from improved virtual machine performance in ESX Server 3.Performance improvements have been achieved through:
multi-virtual machine scalability
improved memory management unit (MMU) handling
significant networking enhancements
Advanced memory management- RAM over-commitment. Increase memory utilisation by configuring virtual
machine memory that safely exceeds the physical server memory.
Memory ballooning- Shift memory dynamically from idle virtual machines to active ones. Memory ballooning artificially induces memory pressure within idle virtual machines, forcing them to use their own paging areas and release memory for active virtual machines
4-Way Virtual SMP-Enable a single virtual machine to use up to four physical processors
simultaneously. ESX Server 3 extends this unique feature from two to four processors. With 4-way Virtual SMP even the most processor intensive software applications like databases and messaging servers can be virtualised.
16GB RAM for virtual machines-Run the most memory-intensive workloads in virtual machines with a memory limit extended to 16GB.
Support for up to 128 powered on virtual machines-Take advantage of very large server systems for enterprise class server consolidation and containment. The maximum number of powered on virtual machines has been extended from 80 to 128.
Flexible virtual switches- Scale up to handle more virtual machines. Virtual switches can be created with any number of ports from 8 to 1016, and the maximum number of virtual switches
has been raised from 128 to 248.

Architecture

Bare-metal architecture-ESX Server inserts a robust virtualisation layer directly on the server hardware for near-native virtual machine performance, reliability and scalability.
CPU virtualization-Increase server utilisation without the risk of critical services being starved for CPU resources. ESX Server uses intelligent process scheduling and load balancing across available processors to manage the execution of virtual machine processing.
Virtualisation for storage-Leverage high performance shared storage to centralise virtual machine file storage for greater manageability, flexibility and availability.
Virtualisation for networking
Network virtual machines like physical machines. Build complex networks within a single ESX Server or across multiple installations of ESX Server for production deployments or development and testing purposes.

High Availability

Shared storage-Eliminate single points of failure by storing virtual machine files on shared storage such as Fibre Channel or iSCSI SAN, or NAS. Use SAN mirroring and replication features to keep updated copies of virtual disk at disaster recovery sites.
Enhanced NIC teaming
Give each networked virtual machine built-in NIC failover and load balancing enabling greater hardware availability and fault tolerance.
Support for Microsoft® clustering Services
Cluster virtual machines running Microsoft® Windows operating system across physical hosts.

VMware Virtualisation solutions – Entry Level

FENWAYVV108043
	FW-IVV108043	FW-AVV108043
CPU Included	Intel Xeon Quad Core (45nm)	AMD Opteron Quad Core
Chipset	Intel 5000P	nVidia MCP55 Pro
Bus Type/Speed	Intel FSB 1333MHz	AMD Hypertransport 1000MHz
Memory	4GB Standard	4GB Standard
RAID	Hardware RAID (RAID 0, 1, 5)	Hardware RAID (RAID 0, 1, 5)
HDDs	2 x 500GB SATA (RAID 1)	2 x 500GB SATA (RAID 1)
Network	2 x Gigabit Ethernet (Copper)	2 x Gigabit Ethernet (Copper)
IPMI	IPMI with Console Redirection	IPMI with Console Redirection
PSU	Dual Redundant 650W (Hot Swap)	Dual Redundant 650W (Hot Swap)

Hardware Upgrade Option
	FW-IVV108043	FW-AVV108043
Additional Xeon CPU	Available (2 CPUs Max)	-
Additional Opteron CPU	-	Available (2 CPUs Max)
Additional 500GB HDD	Available (4 HDDs Max)	Available (4 HDDs Max)
Additional 4GB RAM	Available (32GB Max)	Available (64GB Max)
IPMI Module with KVM	Available	Available
BBU for RAID Controller	Available	Available

VMware Virtualisation solutions – Mainstream

FENWAYVV208083
	FW-IVV208083	FW-AVV208083
CPU Included	Dual Intel Xeon Quad Core (45nm)	Dual AMD Opteron Quad Core
Chipset	Intel 5000P	nVidia MCP55 Pro
Bus Type/Speed	Intel FSB 1333MHz	AMD Hypertransport 1000MHz
Memory	16GB Standard	16GB Standard
RAID	Hardware RAID (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10)	Hardware RAID (RAID 0, 1, 5, 10)
HDDs	4 x 500GB SATA (RAID 5 or 10)	4 x 500GB SATA (RAID 5 or 10)
Network	2 x Gigabit Ethernet (Copper)	2 x Gigabit Ethernet (Copper)
IPMI	IPMI with Graphical Redirection	IPMI with Graphical Redirection
PSU	Dual Redundant 700W (Hot Swap)	Dual Redundant 700W (Hot Swap)

Hardware Upgrade Option
	FW-IVV208083	FW-AVV208083
Additional Xeon CPU	-	-
Additional Opteron CPU	-	-
Additional 500GB HDD	Available (8 HDDs Max)	Available (8 HDDs Max)
Additional 4GB RAM	Available (32GB Max)	Available (64GB Max)
IPMI Module with KVM	Provided as Standard	Provided as Standard
BBU for RAID Controller	Provided as Standard	Provided as Standard

More information

For additional information please contact one of our experienced sales or technical staff who will be more than happy to discuss the options with you.