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VMware vSphere Fundamentals

VMware vSphere is a platform for running and managing virtual machines on physical servers. ESXi supplies the hypervisor on each host, while vCenter Server organizes hosts, clusters, storage, networks, and virtual machines through one management plane.

itVirtualization, containers, and orchestration

VMware vSphere Fundamentals

VMware vSphere is a server virtualization platform. It separates an operating system and its applications from a physical server by running them inside a virtual machine, or VM. Each VM receives virtual CPUs, memory, disks, and network adapters while sharing the host's physical resources with other VMs.

Two components form the core of a vSphere environment. ESXi is the bare-metal hypervisor installed on each physical host. It schedules VM workloads on the host's processors and memory, connects virtual adapters to networks, and reads or writes VM files on storage. vCenter Server supplies centralized inventory, policy, authentication, monitoring, and orchestration across multiple ESXi hosts.

A standalone ESXi host can run and manage VMs. Adding the host to vCenter creates the management context needed for coordinated cluster services. This distinction matters during an outage: VMs already running on an ESXi host can continue when vCenter becomes unavailable, but vCenter-driven tasks and services may be limited until management returns.

The inventory model

vCenter presents infrastructure as a hierarchy:

  1. A datacenter is a logical inventory boundary for hosts, networks, and datastores.
  2. A cluster groups compatible ESXi hosts so vSphere can treat their compute capacity as a pool.
  3. A resource pool partitions a host or cluster's CPU and memory entitlement.
  4. A folder organizes inventory objects and can help scope permissions.
  5. A virtual machine is registered on one ESXi host at a time, even when its files reside on shared storage.

The inventory is a management view, not the physical infrastructure itself. A VM's configuration file and virtual disks live on a datastore. If vCenter loses an inventory record while those files remain intact, an administrator can register the VM again. If storage becomes inaccessible, the inventory entry alone cannot keep the guest running or power it on.

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