VMware vSphere is VMware'south virtualization platform, which transforms information centers into aggregated computing infrastructures that include CPU, storage, and networking resources. vSphere manages these infrastructures every bit a unified operating environment, and provides you with the tools to administer the data centers that participate in that environment.

The two cadre components of vSphere are ESXi and vCenter Server. ESXi is the virtualization platform where you create and run virtual machines and virtual appliances. vCenter Server is the service through which you lot manage multiple hosts connected in a network and pool host resource.

Want to know what is in the current release of vSphere? Look at the latest vSphere release notes.

Learn About Some of Our Features

Beginning in vSphere 7.0, you tin can but deploy or upgrade to vCenter Server 7.0 using an appliance. The new vCenter Server appliance contains all the Platform Services Controller services from earlier releases, preserving all previous functionality, including authentication, certificate management, and licensing. All Platform Services Controller services are consolidated into vCenter Server, simplifying deployment and administration. As these services are now part of vCenter Server, they are no longer described as a part of Platform Services Controller.

vSphere seven.0 introduces vSphere Lifecycle Manager, a centralized and simplified lifecycle management mechanism for VMware ESXi 7.0 hosts. This new feature includes the functionality that Update Manager provided in previous vSphere releases. With vSphere Lifecycle Manager you lot can manage ESXi hosts by using images and baselines at the cluster level.

Acquire how to employ vSphere with Tanzu to transform vSphere into a platform for running Kubernetes workloads natively on the hypervisor layer. With this functionality, you can enable a vSphere cluster to run Kubernetes workloads past configuring it as a Supervisor Cluster. Inside the Supervisor Cluster, you can create resources pools, called Supervisor Namespaces, and configure them with dedicated memory, storage, and CPU. You lot can directly deploy containers natively on ESXi within a Supervisor Namespace. These containers alive inside a special type of pod chosen a vSphere Pod. You tin likewise leverage the Tanzu Kubernetes Filigree Service to easily provision Kubernetes clusters that run within dedicated Supervisor Namespaces.

You can view available vCenter Server updates and upgrades and produce interoperability reports virtually VMware products associated with vCenter Server using Update Planner. You tin can also generate pre-update reports that let you make sure your arrangement meets the minimum software and hardware requirements for a successful upgrade of vCenter Server. The report provides data about problems that might preclude the completion of a software upgrade, and actions y'all tin take to remedy those problems.

Yous tin utilise centralized license direction to manage licenses for ESXi hosts, vCenter Server, vSAN clusters, and other VMware solutions. Acquire how to use the VMware vSphere Client to manage licenses in your vCenter Server environs.

Learn how to configure networking for vSphere, including how to create vSphere distributed switches and vSphere standard switches, monitor networks to analyze the traffic between virtual machines (VMs) and hosts, and manage network resource. vSphere networking is one of the nearly critical components in your environment, as information technology is how your ESXi hosts and VMs communicate.

Yous tin learn about vSphere storage to help you lot plan a storage strategy for your virtual data center. You tin can also learn how to configure and apply the virtualized and software-defined storage technologies that ESXi and vCenter Server provide. vSphere supports several storage technologies for both traditional and software-defined storage environments.

Larn how to secure your environs using vSphere security features and best practices to safeguard your surround from attack. vSphere provides comprehensive, built-in security, delivering secure applications, infrastructure, data, and admission.

You can provide concern continuity using vCenter High Availability (vCenter HA) and vSphere Mistake Tolerance (FT). vCenter HA provides failover protection confronting hardware and operating organization outages within your virtualized IT environment. If in that location is a host failure, Fault Tolerance provides continuous protection for a VM.

You can utilize resource pools, clusters, vSphere Distributed Resources Scheduler (DRS), vSphere Distributed Power Direction (DPM), and vSphere Storage I/O Command to manage and allocate resources for ESXi hosts and vCenter Server.

Try Our Deployment and Planning Tools

The following resource are designed to help y'all program your vSphere information center deployment, and effectively manage your vSphere environment.

  • vSphere Hardware and Guest Operating Organization Compatibility Guides. An online reference that shows what hardware, converged systems, operating systems, tertiary-political party applications, and VMware products are uniform with a specific version of a VMware software production.
  • VMware Production Interoperability Matrices. Provides details about the compatibility of current and earlier versions of VMware vSphere components, including ESXi, vCenter Server, and other VMware products.
  • VMware Configuration Maximums. When you configure, deploy, and operate your virtual and physical equipment, yous must stay at or below the maximums supported by your production. The limits presented in the Configuration Maximums tool are tested limits supported by VMware.

Admission Developer and Automation Documentation

VMware {code} is a website dedicated to our developer and automation community. To larn about vSphere APIs, SDKs, and command-line interfaces, visit these VMware {lawmaking} resources:

  • VMware SDKs and APIs
  • VMware command-line interfaces under Automation Tools

Explore Our Videos

You can learn virtually deploying, managing, and administering vSphere by reading the documentation, and by watching videos on the VMware Data Experience video aqueduct.

Learn More Nearly vSphere

To learn most vSphere and information center virtualization, meet the following resource.

  • Learn more about vSphere by visiting the vSphere Product Page.
  • Inquire questions well-nigh vSphere by visiting the vSphere Community Forum. You lot can get assist, opinions, and feedback from other VMware users by participating in the discussion forums.
  • Explore vSphere without having to install it using the VMware vSphere Easily-on Labs surround.
  • Acquire most the solutions vSphere provides to assistance you overcome your IT challenges, and create a more than efficient digital infrastructure by visiting Cloud Platform Tech Zone and vSphere White Papers and Technical Notes.
  • Read the latest products announcements, technical articles, and operations guidance from VMware on the vSphere Blog.
  • Learn virtually benchmarking, functioning architectures, and other performance-focused topics at the blog VMware VROOM!, maintained by VMware's Performance Technology team.
  • Visit the William Lam web log, which focuses on automation, integration, and operation of the VMware Software Divers Datacenter (SDDC). William Lam is a Staff Solutions Architect working at VMware.

Employ vSphere Documentation

The vSphere documents in HTML reflect the latest vSphere update release of each major vSphere version. For instance, version seven.0 contains all the updates for 7.0.x releases. All our documentation comes in PDF format, which you tin can access by selecting the Download PDF icon PDF download icon on whatsoever page in the HTML documentation. PDFs for previous releases of vSphere are available for download in a ZIP archive format. The archive can be institute nether the Archive Packages heading for each major version in the tabular array of contents on the left.

Y'all can create custom documentation collections, containing simply the content that meets your specific data needs, using MyLibrary.