Vcenter Server Installation - VMware ESX 4.0 - GETTING STARTED UPDATE 1 Getting Started

vSphere includes the following components in addition to the ESX host and vSphere Client you have already
setup:
VMware vCenter Server
Datacenter
Virtual Machine
Figure 3 shows the relationships among the basic components of vSphere and how vCenter Server can be used
to manage hosts and run virtual machines.
Figure 3. vSphere Components

vCenter Server Installation

Install vCenter Server to manage multiple hosts.
To get started with vCenter Server quickly and manage the host you set up, you can installed vCenter Server
on a desktop or laptop. You must install vCenter Server on a Windows machine that has network access to the
ESX host. For production use, VMware recommends that you install vCenter Server on a dedicated server
system.
VMware, Inc.
vCenter Server unifies resources from individual hosts so that those resources
can be shared among virtual machines in the entire datacenter. It accomplishes
this by managing the assignment of virtual machines to the hosts and the
assignment of resources to the virtual machines within a given host based on
the policies that the system administrator sets.
vCenter Server allows the use of advanced vSphere features such as VMware
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), VMware High Availability (HA), and
VMware VMotion.
A datacenter is a structure under which you add hosts and their associated
virtual machines to the inventory.
A virtual machine is a software computer that, like a physical computer, runs
an operating system and applications. Multiple virtual machines can run on
the same host at the same time. Virtual machines that vCenter Server manages
can also run on a cluster of hosts.
Getting Started with ESX
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