vSphere accelerates the shift to cloud computing for existing datacenters and also underpins compatible public cloud offerings, forming a foundation for the industry’s only hybrid cloud model. With more than 250,000 customers worldwide and the support of more than 2,500 applications from more than 1,400 ISV partners, VMware vSphere is the trusted platform for any application.
Key Features
Infrastructure Services
- VMware vSphere ESXi™ hypervisor architecture provides a robust, production-proven, high-performance virtualization layer. It allows multiple virtual machines to share hardware resources with performance that can match (and in some cases exceed) native throughput.
- vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multiprocessing (SMP) enables the use of ultrapowerful virtual machines that possess up to eight virtual CPUs.
- VMware virtual hardware can support 1TB RAM, and a variety of next-generation hardware, such as 3D graphics processors and USB 3.0 devices.
- vSphere Storage Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) 5 allows virtual machines to access shared storage devices(Fibre Channel, iSCSI, etc.) and is a key enabling technology for other VMware vSphere components, such as VMwarevSphere Storage vMotion.
- vSphere Storage APIs provide integration with supported third-party data-protection solutions.
- vSphere Storage Thin Provisioning provides dynamic allocation of shared storage capacity, allowing IT organizations to implement a tiered storage strategy while reducing storage spending by up to 50 percent.
Application Services
- VMware vSphere vMotionenables live migration of virtual machines between servers with no disruption to users or loss of service, eliminating the need to schedule application downtime for server maintenance.
- vSphere High Availability (HA) provides cost-effective, automated restart within minutes for all applications in the event of hardware or operating-system failures.
- Hot plug enables virtual storage and network devices to be connected to or disconnected from virtual machines without disruption or downtime.
- Hot extend of virtual disks allows virtual storage to be added to running virtual machines without disruption or downtime.
Editions:
- VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus 5 delivers the full range of VMware vSphere features, transforming datacenters into dramatically simplified environments, offering the next generation of flexible, reliable IT services.
- VMware vSphere Advanced 5 provides a strategic consolidation solution, protecting business-critical applications against planned and unplanned downtime, providing superior application availability.
- VMware vSphere Standard 5 offers an entry solution for basic consolidation of applications, reducing hardware costs while accelerating application deployment.