What is VMware for the world of IT professionals?

Organizations all over the world are in a need of virtualization experts who can help run and manage their business’ virtualization programs. As of present, VMware vSphere is one of the most popular virtualization systems for businesses and corporations, not only in desktop virtualization but also server virtualization. Many companies are paying good money for even an entry-level VMware professional.
For those reasons, there is ample evidence to say that becoming a VMware Professional Certifiaction, or VCP certification, will ensure you that your services will always be in demand and money will not be an issue anytime soon. VCP-Data Center Virtualization certification is in demand, and it pays very well. Other than this, VMware Certification has some other benefits…
 It proves your competency and commitment to the IT business, it also develops your personal growth by providing you with good IT professional connections that can help advance your job. Becoming a VMware Certified Professional is an excellent decision, no matter how you look at it.

Still not convinced??
Here are some more reasons that could change your mind…

Trustworthiness and Credibility
Above all else, VMware is a name that is trusted in IT services. Thousands of companies avail of their products every day, and many of them are in desperate need of trained professionals who can service the products. Becoming a VMware Certified Professional makes sure that you join the short-list of top priority servicers, should you wish to apply for a job as a servicer for a company.  Once certified the industry will be more interested in you, since your certification is proof that you take IT and the IT industry seriously.
Your own Identity
Once certified, you are entitled to utilize the VMware logo and trademarks on your business cards, websites, or anywhere you would like people to know that you are a VCP. Being certified is an honor unto itself, but being able to be identified as a certified professional is a little bonus as it earns the respect of fellow colleagues. Being able to install, deploy and troubleshoot a program as complex and ingenious as the VMware vSphere is nothing to be sneezed at, especially in the IT industry.

Complementary License of the VmWare Workstation 9
Every technical professional deserves an easy-to-use system support that can be accessed at any time and at any place. It also needs to have enough power behind it to meet the high-maintenance operating system needs of a working IT professional. The VMware Workstation 9 is a cutting-edge system that ensures high-quality system support for anybody’s possible needs. It is a name trusted across the world for operating system performance and excellent features – and it can be yours for absolutely free. Becoming a VMware Certified Professional automatically entitle you to usage of this amazing product that has won scores of awards in the industry for its quality.

Other VMware Perks
VMware also gives you several benefits and incentives for passing their certification exam. As a VCP, you can immediately access the VCP Portal and store for all your VCP needs. The company will also offer you money-saving discounts at any VMware event that you attend, and will give you invitations to try out beta exam programs.
Finally, passing the VCP qualifies you for higher forms of certification and training in VMware vSphere virtualization. The VCP certification program is an entry-level certification in which introduces the VCAP, or VMware Certified Advanced Professional, and the VCDX, or VMware Certified Design Expert. Becoming a Vmware Certified Professional can be a step on your way to advanced IT professional work, higher salaries, and even more opportunities for you to exploit.

How to Create a Virtual Machine?

In order to create a virtual machine Start the vSphere Client by opening Start > All Programs > VMware > VMware Sphere Client. This will open up the vSphere Client login page, shown in the figure below. On this page, provide the IP address for your ESXi  host and also provide the root user name and password that you specified during the setup of your server

Once you’ve granted access to the vSphere Client it will look like this in the figure given below

Now right click your server IP address and choose New Virtual Machine or there is another option under basic task “Create a virtual machine”.

The first step do you want to use Custom settings for your new virtual machine or do you want to use settings that typically work well based on the operating system you use? I’m choosing the Custom option as it will elaborate more options inside.

The second step it will ask you to provide the name of the virtual machine.

Files that make a Virtual Machine........

A virtual machine consists of many types of files(depending on the configuration of the Virtual Machine), that are stored on a storage device. These files are recognized by their extension.

The important files that make up a virtual machine are:

• The Configuration File (.vmx)
• Virtual Disk file (.vmdk)
• NVRAM File (.nvram)
• log file (vmware#.log)

You can configure virtual machine settings using the vSphere Web Client or the vSphere Client. 

List of other common files...

.

File	Usage	Description
.vmx	server1.vmx	Virtual Machine Configuration File
.vmxf	server1.vmxf	Additional Virtual Machine Configuration File
.vmdk	server1.vmdk	Virtual disk Characteristics File
-flat.vmdk	server1-flat.vmdk	Pre-allocated virtual disk File
.nvram	server1.nvram	Virtual Machine BIOS File
.vmsd	server1.vmsd	Virtual Machine snapshot File
.vmsn	server1.vmsn	Virtual Machine Snapshot Data File
.vswp	server1.vswp	Virtual Machine swap File
.vmss	server1.vmss	Virtual Machine Suspend State File
.log	server1.log	Current Virtual Machine log File
-#.log	vmware-#.log (where # is a number starting with 1)	Old virtual Machine log entry File

What is a Virtual Machine?

A virtual machine (VM) is a set of files which emulates of a physical computer. Popek and Goldberg defined Vritual Machine as "an efficient, isolated duplicate of a real machine".

A Vitrual Machine is created on top of a virtual layer or a virtual platform(Hypervisor) or a virtual layer (VMware work station) that runs on top of an operating system(Windows XP,etc)

The guest operating system  and programs running inside a Virtual Machine, are not aware of on which hardware platform they are running on. Therefore the Virtual Machine's virtual platform is supported by the guest operating system, and this OS can be installed in the same way it would be deployed to physical server hardware. For example, to the guest OS, it appears to have a physical hard disk attached to it, but actual I/O requests are translated by the virtualization layer so they actually occur against a file that is accessible by the host OS

Virtual machines isolated to ensures that applications and services that run inside a Virtual Machine cannot interfere with the Host OS or with anyother Virtual Machine(s). 

What is Hypervisor?

A hypervisor is an operating system that enables virtulization, or in other words it is a software or firmware running on a physical hardware which enables creation of virtual machines.
The hypervisor provides a box of virtual hardware for the guest operating systems, we install the guest operating system and manage the execution of the guest operating systems. We can have multiple instances and different flavors of operating systems on the same physical hardware running, all sharing the same physical hardware resources. Sometimes hypervisor is also referred to as the virtual layer.


Types of Hypervisor…

In 1974 Gerald J. Popek and Robert P. Goldberg classified hypervisor in their article name "Formal Requirements for Virtualizable Third Generation Architectures”.
According to this article there are two types of hypervisors, Type 1 and Type 2.

Type 1 Hypervisor or Bare Metal Hypervisor:

Type 1 (or native, bare metal) hypervisors are installed and run directly on the physical machine (host's hardware). They control the physical hardware, provide virtual hardware to the guest operating systems. In other words, the first operating system installed on a physical server is hypervisor and the guest operating-system runs on another level above the hypervisor. Hence we can say that the virtual layer or the virtualization platform is on level one and a layer above gust operating system runs. 

Examples of Type 1 Hypervisor:

Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Oracle VM Server for x86, the CitrixXenServer, VMware ESX/ESXi and Microsoft Hyper-V 2008/2012.


Type 2 or Hosted Hypervisor:

Type 2 (or hosted) hypervisors run inside an operating-system. The hypervisor layer or the virtual layer is  a distinct second software level. The guest operating-systems run at the third level above the hardware. In other words, first you install a regular operating system like Windows 7, and then you install the hosted hypervisor as an application on that. Then this hosted hypervisor or the virtual layer provides you a virtualized platform, now you can create virtual machines and run different flavor of operating systems on different virtual machines.

Examples of Type 2 or Hosted Hypervisor:
VMware Workstation and VirtualBox

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Why we need Virtualization?

Because…

• Run multiple operation systems on one server

• You can have multiple flavors of OS on one server. For example, you can run Linux OS, 1 Windows server 2008 R2 OS  and mackintosh on the same server

• Optimize the use of physical hardware

• Allocate hardware resources to different applications based on the utilization. For example, if you have 20GB of RAM(physical) on your host, you may assign variable RAM virtual machines i.e. 8GB to R & D Server VM  and 12GB RAM to Production Server VM

• High availability and business continuity gives you the ability to have 99.999% up time

• You can migrating virtual machine(s) from one  physical server to another physical server without any downtime.

• It will reduce the operational IT cost and power consumption. For example, instead of buying and running six physical servers, you may be using only two physical servers.

What is Virtualization?

Virtualization, in computing, means creating a virtual (rather than actual) version of something, like to create a virtual computer hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or computer network resources, etc.

Virtualization started with 1960's mainframes, during which it was a method of logically dividing the mainframes' resources for several different applications running on it.

In short Virtualization software solves the problem by enabling several operating systems and applications to run on one physical server or “host.” Each self-contained “virtual machine” is isolated from the others, and uses as much of the host’s computing resources as it requires.

Hardware virtualization or platform virtualization refers to the creating virtual machine(s) that acts like a real computer with an operating system. Software executed on these virtual machines is separated from the underlying hardware resources. For example, a computer that is running Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 may host a virtual machine that looks like a computer with the Ubuntu Linux operating system; Ubuntu-based software can be run on the virtual machine.

In hardware virtualization, the host machine is the actual machine on which the virtualization takes place, and the guest machine is the virtual machine. The words host and guest are used to distinguish the software that runs on the physical machine from the software that runs on the virtual machine. The software or firmware that creates a virtual machine on the host hardware is called a hypervisor or Virtual Machine Manager.

Types of Hardware Virtualization:

The different types of hardware virtualization are as follows:

1) Full virtualization: Almost complete simulation of the actual hardware to allow software, which typically consists of a guest operating system, to run unmodified.

2) Partial virtualization: Some but not all of the target environment is simulated. Some guest programs, therefore, may need modifications to run in this virtual environment.
Paravirtualization: A hardware environment is not simulated; however, the guest programs are executed in their own isolated domains, as if they are running on a separate system. Guest programs need to be specifically modified to run in this environment.

3) Hardware-assisted virtualization is a way of improving the efficiency of hardware virtualization. It involves employing specially designed CPUs and hardware components that help improve the performance of a guest environment.

Hardware virtualization can be viewed as part of an overall trend in enterprise I.T. that includes autonomic computing, a scenario in which the IT environment will be able to manage itself based on perceived activity, and utility computing, in which computer processing power is seen as a utility that clients can pay for only as needed. The goal of virtualization is to centralize administrative tasks while improving scalability and overall hardware-resource utilization.

With virtualization, several operating systems can be run in parallel on a single central processing unit (CPU). This parallelism tends to reduce overhead costs and differs from multitasking, which involves running several programs on the same OS. Using virtualization, an enterprise can better manage updates and rapid changes to the operating system and applications without disrupting the user.

Virtualization dramatically improves the efficiency and availability of resources and applications in an organization. The old model of one server, one operating system that leads to under utilized resource, with virtual resources we can achive one server and may operating systems and achive best utilization of hardware resources.

Hardware virtualization is not the same as hardware emulation. In hardware emulation, a piece of hardware imitates another, while in hardware virtualization, a hypervisor (a piece of software) imitates a particular piece of computer hardware or the entire computer.The hypervisor is not the same as an emulator; both are computer programs that imitate hardware, but their domain of use in language differs.