VMware Server: Features and Operation
Contents:
VMware Server: Features and Operation
What is VMware Server?
How to Use VMware Server?
How Does VMware Server Work?
VMware Server Features
VMware Server is a free product for virtualizing Windows and Linux servers with enterprise-level support.
VMware Server allows companies to divide physical servers into multiple virtual machines, leveraging all the benefits of virtualization. VMware Server is powerful yet simple enough for new users. Over the past six years, VMware virtualization technologies have been trusted by thousands of clients.
What is VMware Server?
VMware is a virtual machine that resembles a server and software. Virtual machines run operating systems and applications as they would on a physical server. However, virtual machines offer users more advantages than physical servers.
A virtual machine:
- Is hardware-independent and runs on any physical x86 server.
- Can access all the hardware resources of the physical server, such as CPU, memory, disk, network, and peripherals.
- Is saved as a file, which can be licensed and quickly moved.
- Is fully isolated and secure.
- Can operate simultaneously and securely on one physical server.
- Is a mobile unit, allowing entire systems, including virtual hardware, operating systems, and fully configured applications, to be easily transferred from one physical server to another, even while active.
Can be created and distributed as plug-and-play virtual appliances, containing all the virtual hardware, operating system, and fully configured applications.
How to Use VMware Server?
VMware Server allows:
- Optimization of software development and testing, letting developers create multiple environments with different operating systems on one server.
- Simplifying testing of new OS and patches, applications, and OS, enabling system administrators to safely verify the environment of a virtual machine and have the ability to rollback using snapshot functionality.
- Simplifying server setup by creating a virtual machine once and deploying it multiple times.
- Evaluating software on ready-to-use virtual machines without installing and configuring.
- Handling legacy operating systems like Windows NT Server 4.0 and Windows 2000 Server in a virtual machine running on new hardware and operating systems.
- Taking advantage of pre-built, ready-to-run virtual appliances, including virtual hardware, operating systems, and application environments.
Virtual appliances for the Internet, file services, printing, DNS, email, proxy servers, and infrastructure services can be downloaded from the VMware Technology Network.
How Does VMware Server Work?
VMware Server is installed and runs as an application on top of Windows or Linux operating systems. The virtualization layer splits the physical server to allow multiple virtual machines to run simultaneously on one server.
The resources of the physical server are considered a single resource pool that can be assigned to virtual machines in a controlled manner.
VMware Server isolates each virtual machine from its server and other virtual machines, so that one machine won’t be affected by the failure of another. Data leakage on a virtual machine does not occur, and applications can only exchange data through configured network connections. VMware Server encapsulates the virtual machine environment as a set of files, simplifying backup, movement, and copying.
VMware Server Features
- Runs on all standard x86 hardware.
- Supports 64-bit operating systems, including Windows, Linux, and Solaris.
- Supports VMware VirtualCenter for effective infrastructure management with a central management console.
- Experimental support for dual-processor Virtual SMP.
- Supports Intel virtualization technology.
- Runs on many different Windows and Linux servers.
Standard operating systems, the most widespread product for server virtualization on the market.
- Supports any Windows or Linux applications, including ready-made virtual appliances.
- Install as an application, quickly and easily.
- Fast creation of a virtual machine.
- Support for any format of VMware or Microsoft virtual machines and Symantec LiveState Recovery images.
- Easy upgrade to VMware.
- Monitoring and managing virtual machines with an intuitive and simple remote management interface.
