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ESXi and vSphere

P

Poochie

n00b
Joined
Apr 10, 2005
Messages
17
I need a bit of clarification on vmware's product line.
First, a bit of background...

I'm an intern at a university, currently working for a grad student who will be teaching a pen testing class this fall. Basically, my job right now is to start researching how to use ESXi to set up a virtual network of around 8 workstations that can be used as a test environment.

I still need to talk with him more about what his goal is, so I'll try to keep this broad for now, and will probably make a couple of follow-up threads as I learn more.

For now, I'm trying to wrap my head around what exactly ESXi can do. VMware's website is confusing the heck out of me with their product naming schemes and descriptions.

So in the most simple case - say I want to virtualize two computers with a shared network connection. Is ESXi sufficient to accomplish this, or am I misunderstanding its purpose? I keep hearing things like, "VMware vSphere supports two versions of hypervisor - ESX and ESXi".

I understand the difference between ESXi and ESX, and I know the definition of a hypervisor, but I suppose what I don't understand is what vSphere is, and whether or not I'll be needing it.

This class has been taught before by some people who ran a similar setup - as far as I know their environment was all created with a server box running ESXi. Unfortunately, all of their documentation has been lost and the computer no longer boots, so I'm going to have to see if I can get anything useful from its drives.

Can anyone point me in the direction of some further reading? I feel like I keep hitting walls of management lingo and high-level product descriptions, instead of any practical instruction.
 
You don't need vSphere, vSphere is their full suite including ESXi...

All you need is the ESXi hypervisor for a lab/test environment.

vSphere comes into play when using multiple hosts with shared storage and wanting advanced features such as vMotion, svMotion, DRS, fault tolerance, etc...

The main piece to vSphere is vCenter which is used to manual multiple hosts, think hundreds, although obviously you can use it for less.

Again, if all you are doing is creating a lab environment you are good with the free ESXi. Obviously you'll just need the horsepower to get as many vms as you need going.
 
Really vsphere is just a name change, from virtual infrastructure to vsphere when they when to the 4.x line, and usually means a hypervisor (esx/esxi) with vCenter.

Easiest way to try it out is download esxi and the vsphere client (the management gui that runs on windows) and load it up. There are a lot of basic howto's out there, just search google. Or pick up a book, seems like I see "mastering vmware vsphere 4" by Scott Lowe recommended the most.
 
Thanks, it makes a lot more sense now. I also found a basic tutorial for installing ESXi and running the vSphere client, which also helped.

My next problem will be to get some quotes on appropriate server hardware.
Like I said, we'll run about 8 workstations with ESXi. But they don't have to do a whole lot besides "exist". I've never dealt with server hardware before, so I'll have to get some advice on that in the next few days.
 
Poochie said:
Thanks, it makes a lot more sense now. I also found a basic tutorial for installing ESXi and running the vSphere client, which also helped.

My next problem will be to get some quotes on appropriate server hardware.
Like I said, we'll run about 8 workstations with ESXi. But they don't have to do a whole lot besides "exist". I've never dealt with server hardware before, so I'll have to get some advice on that in the next few days.
Click to expand...

Best recommendation i can tell you for this is make sure your hard drive controller is supported and also NIC(S) are supported two. People will preach Intel for a reason(For nics) ;) :p
 
Shockey said:
Best recommendation i can tell you for this is make sure your hard drive controller is supported and also NIC(S) are supported two. People will preach Intel for a reason(For nics) ;) :p
Click to expand...

Roger that.
I guess what I'm not sure about is how beefy the processor will need to be.
From what I understand, say I want each of 8 workstations to have a 100gb hard drive, so I'd better make sure I've got 800gb + of space. If I want each one to have 1gb of RAM, I should ideally have 8gb of RAM in the server (though I suppose this isn't 100% necessary...).

But I don't know what kind of capability my processor would need. I can't imagine I would need one physical core per workstation for this kind of application?
 
Back-of-the-envelope calculation with no workload testing right now is 8 VDI VMs per core in a server. If you use like VMware view you don't need 100GB of space for each person. You use linked clones and thin provisioning.

If you aren't using VMware View (manual VM creation) you can still do thin provisioning and save on disk space.
 
It's going to depend on the workload. If you've got 8 1vCPU workstations and they all demand 100% CPU time because they're pounding the pavement with work to do... then yeah you could easily consume 8 physical cores. Most likely though if it is typical desktop work you're probably fine.

I'd have at least 8 GB of memory in there if you're going to give them 1 GB per. Most likely some amount will be TPS'd. It all depends on your CPU. This can explain it better than I can: http://www.kingston.com/redtech/articles/00004/00004.asp.
 
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