vSphere is a software product that virtualizes the company’s computing infrastructure. It combines several ESXi hosts, and is managed through a special application. The software is developed by VMware.

Opportunities

1. The client completely transfers the current infrastructure to the cloud in 1-2 hours. The service falls on the shoulders of the supplier, and the customer receives a ready-made solution.
2. Further scaling of computing resources or disk space will not be a problem. The customer specifies the required capacities to the provider and receives them within an hour.
3. Cloud infrastructure is provided to end users along with artificial intelligence, which simplifies administration and configuration. Software updates, installation of updates on operating systems, firmware upgrades on hardware platforms — all this comes under the control of AI on the provider’s side.
4. Reducing the financial costs of upgrading and maintaining equipment.
5. In the event of a failure of one of the servers (storage or switch), the service provider independently performs a replacement, and the end user will not know about it.
6. The addition of a virtual storage, computing platform, or switching equipment takes place on the principle of hot swapping. That is, the end user does not stop business processes in order to expand the current infrastructure.
7. vSphere is managed in specialized vCentre software, which provides administrators with a single entry point.

Licensing

The software is licensed over processor sockets or over physical hosts for virtualization. At the same time, several editions are available for each option.

The small business segment uses the Essential or Essential Plus options. The main difference between them is the addition of vMotion technology, which transfers a virtual host to another physical site without stopping the current one. The transfer speed is instantaneous, there is no load on computing power.

Essential grants the user the right to use 3 separate hypervisors with a single management point, and Plus also adds the HA Cluster option. The service restarts virtual machines on a non-working cluster in automatic mode. The number limit is 32 hosts.

The next option is the release of vSphere Standart. The editorial board differs from Essential Plus by having an unlimited number of hosts in the HA Cluster service. There is no RDS technology, which is a load balancer.

The latest options are Enterprise and Enterprise Plus. They include a full set of functions, for example, a virtual vDS switch or a virtual vSAN storage.

vSphere completely virtualizes the enterprise infrastructure and is delivered to the end user as a service. The customer receives the finished product out of the box and is only engaged in customization. A flexible licensing system reduces the financial costs of purchasing this service.