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

The two core 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 manage multiple hosts continued in a network and pool host resources.

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

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Showtime in vSphere 7.0, yous can only 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, document direction, and licensing. All Platform Services Controller services are consolidated into vCenter Server, simplifying deployment and administration. Every bit these services are now function of vCenter Server, they are no longer described every bit a office of Platform Services Controller.

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

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

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

You can use centralized license direction to manage licenses for ESXi hosts, vCenter Server, vSAN clusters, and other VMware solutions. Learn how to utilize the VMware vSphere Customer 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 most critical components in your environs, as it is how your ESXi hosts and VMs communicate.

Y'all can learn about vSphere storage to help you program a storage strategy for your virtual data center. You can also acquire how to configure and use the virtualized and software-defined storage technologies that ESXi and vCenter Server provide. vSphere supports several storage technologies for both traditional and software-divers storage environments.

Learn how to secure your environment using vSphere security features and all-time practices to safeguard your environment from attack. vSphere provides comprehensive, congenital-in security, delivering secure applications, infrastructure, information, and access.

Yous can provide business continuity using vCenter High Availability (vCenter HA) and vSphere Error Tolerance (FT). vCenter HA provides failover protection against hardware and operating system outages inside your virtualized IT environment. If there is a host failure, Fault Tolerance provides continuous protection for a VM.

Y'all can utilize resource pools, clusters, vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), vSphere Distributed Ability Direction (DPM), and vSphere Storage I/O Control to manage and classify resources for ESXi hosts and vCenter Server.

Try Our Deployment and Planning Tools

The post-obit resources are designed to help yous plan your vSphere information center deployment, and effectively manage your vSphere environment.

  • vSphere Hardware and Guest Operating System Compatibility Guides. An online reference that shows what hardware, converged systems, operating systems, third-party applications, and VMware products are compatible with a specific version of a VMware software product.
  • VMware Product Interoperability Matrices. Provides details nearly 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 concrete equipment, you must stay at or below the maximums supported by your product. The limits presented in the Configuration Maximums tool are tested limits supported by VMware.

Access Developer and Automation Documentation

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

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

Explore Our Videos

Yous tin learn about deploying, managing, and administering vSphere by reading the documentation, and by watching videos on the VMware Information Feel video aqueduct.

Learn More Nigh vSphere

To acquire almost vSphere and data center virtualization, encounter the following resource.

  • Learn more well-nigh vSphere by visiting the vSphere Product Page.
  • Ask questions about vSphere past visiting the vSphere Community Forum. You lot tin can get assistance, opinions, and feedback from other VMware users past participating in the give-and-take forums.
  • Explore vSphere without having to install it using the VMware vSphere Easily-on Labs environs.
  • Learn about the solutions vSphere provides to aid you overcome your It challenges, and create a more efficient digital infrastructure by visiting Cloud Platform Tech Zone and vSphere White Papers and Technical Notes.
  • Read the latest products announcements, technical manufactures, and operations guidance from VMware on the vSphere Blog.
  • Learn near benchmarking, performance architectures, and other functioning-focused topics at the blog VMware VROOM!, maintained by VMware's Performance Engineering science team.
  • Visit the William Lam blog, which focuses on automation, integration, and operation of the VMware Software Defined Datacenter (SDDC). William Lam is a Staff Solutions Architect working at VMware.

Use vSphere Documentation

The vSphere documents in HTML reverberate the latest vSphere update release of each major vSphere version. For example, version 7.0 contains all the updates for 7.0.ten releases. All our documentation comes in PDF format, which you can access past selecting the Download PDF icon PDF download icon on any page in the HTML documentation. PDFs for previous releases of vSphere are available for download in a Goose egg annal format. The archive can be found nether the Archive Packages heading for each major version in the table of contents on the left.

You tin create custom documentation collections, containing only the content that meets your specific information needs, using MyLibrary.