VMware Virtual Server ConsultingVirtual servers were originally popularized by VMware, who remain the market leader. In keeping with the trend to offer free starter software in the intensely competitive virtualization market, VMware offers free entry-level versions of its bare-metal virtual product, VMware vSphere Hypervisor, and its hosted product, VMware Server.

VMware Server
VMware Server is a free virtualization product that can be installed like an application on more than 30 guest operating systems including Linux and Windows Servers. VMware Server enables companies to partition a physical server into multiple virtual machines and to start experiencing the benefits of virtualization with minimal investment. VMware Server is a robust yet easy-to-use product for organizations new to server virtualization technology and is based on VMware’s field-proven technology. VMware Server is ideal for developers, departments, workgroups, and branch offices who want to:

  • Streamline software development and testing
  • Evaluate software in ready-to-run virtual machines
  • Re-host legacy operating systems
  • Simplify server provisioning
  • Leverage pre-built, ready-to-run virtual appliances

VMware Server runs on any standard x86 hardware and supports 64-bit guest operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Solaris. You can manage VMware Server with VMware vCenter, which simplifies the tasks of provisioning, monitoring, and managing infrastructure by providing a central management console. Support for two-processor Virtual SMP enables a single virtual server to span multiple physical processors. VMware captures the entire state of a virtual machine and can roll back at any time. To protect your investment of time, VMware Server offers a smooth upgrade path to more powerful unhosted (known as "bare-metal") versions of VMware.

VMware ESX Server and vSphere Servers
VMware’s ESX and ESXi hypervisors are the foundation for the popular VMware ESX Server and the more recent VMware vSphere Server. An entry-level version, vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi), is available as a free download. ESX and the newer ESXi hypervisors install on “bare metal” and allow multiple unmodified operating systems and their applications to run in virtual machines that share physical resources. ESX and ESXi hypervisors abstract processor, memory, storage and networking resources into multiple virtual machines, giving you maximum hardware utilization and flexibility. VMware ESX Server and vSphere Server allow enterprise datacenters to implement large-scale solutions for:

  • Production server consolidation
  • Business continuity
  • Enterprise software development and testing
  • Enterprise desktop solutions
With the release of VMware vSphere 5.1, the live migration capabilities of vMotion were expanded with the ability to move live virtual machines (VMs) between pysical vSphere hosts without shared storage. This makes it economical for small organizations to benefit from non-disruptive migration without the high cost of installing and managing Storage Area Networks (SANs) and is an effective way to eliminate workload downtime for scheduled maintenance. This is similar to the shared nothing live migration feature introduced in Microsoft's Hyper-V 3.0. (Refer to Windows Server 2012 consulting services.)

VMware Infrastructure
VMware Infrastructure is a suite of advanced virtualization software based on VMware ESX and vSphere Servers. The VMware Infrastructure suite delivers comprehensive virtualization, management, resource optimization, application availability, and operational automation capabilities. A key component of VMware Infrastructure, called VMware VMotion, increases system uptime through the ability to migrate a running virtual server from one physical server to a different physical server with interrupting the operation of the physical server. This powerful feature allows IT personal to perform hardware maintenance or upgrades on physical servers without impacting production servers running line-of-business applications.

VMware vCenter Server
VMware Virtual Server consultingFor larger installations of virtual servers, powerful and unified management of the entire virtualized environment can be achieved with VMware vCenter Server technology, providing tools to control all facets of server deployment and configuration. There is a graphing system to easily view CPU, memory, network, and disk utilization trends of all servers over extended periods.

VMware vCenter Server, formerly VMware VirtualCenter, intelligently optimizes resources, ensures high availability for all applications in virtual machines, and provides virtualized distributed services such as VMware DRS, VMware HA, and VMware VMotion. VMware vCenter Server lets you automate routine management procedures through task scheduling and alerting. This allows you to improve IT responsiveness to business needs and prioritize actions needing the most urgent attention.

With VMware vCenter Server you can also monitor performance and utilization of physical servers and the virtual machines they are running with detailed reporting of CPU, memory, and I/O performance. For enhanced security that still provides management flexibility, you can limit access to authorized personnel using tiers of customizable roles, fine-grained permissions, and integration with Microsoft Active Directory.

Using Microsoft Data Protection Manager with VMware
For users of VMware, an effective way to reduce disaster recovery time drastically is to build a Data Protection Manager (DPM) server with enough CPU and RAM resources to create a system that allows you to recover from a failed virtual machine host server. Because the DPM server has an exact, up-to-date replica of all the virtual machine guest files, in case the virtual machine host fails you can choose to boot those replica images as running machines so that your network stays productive while restoring the original failed virtual machine host server. This means you could be back on line in minutes with all your virtual machine guests even with a complete failure of the original virtual machine host. Find out more about Progent's consulting support for Microsoft Data Protection Manager.

How Progent Can Help You with VMware Virtualization Solutions
Progent's certified VMware consultants can help you to analyze the possible benefits of VMware for your organization, perform pilot installations to verify operation with your workloads, optimize your infrastructure for VMware, help your company to migrate from outdated virtual software, train your support group to manage VMware installations, provide effective consulting assistance for improving the security of your virtualized network, create and document discovery procedures, configure VMware to increase system uptime, and deliver ongoing expertise and technical support via cost-effective online Help Desk services.

Contact Progent for Expert Help with VMware Virtual Server Technology
To find out how Progent's VMware consultants can help you with VMware virtualization technology, call Progent at 800-993-9400 or send email to server-management-help@progent.com.
















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