About This Guide; Intended Audience; System Requirements; Hardware Requirements - VMware VS4-STD-C - vSphere Standard - PC Evaluation Manual

About This Guide

The purpose of the VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide, Volume One, is to support a self-guided, hands-on
evaluation of VMware vSphere® 5.0 ("vSphere") features usable by all VMware vSphere customers. The
companion guide, the VMware vSphere 5.0 Evaluation Guide, Volume Two, is intended to highlight vSphere 5.0
features primarily targeted at larger, more complex deployment environments.

Intended Audience

This guide is intended to cover evaluation cases that are suitable for IT professionals who fulfill the following
requirements:
• They understand the basics of server virtualization and want to evaluate the features in vSphere in a small-
scale deployment.
• They have an existing VMware virtualization environment and want to evaluate features in vSphere that enable
greater consolidation while maintaining service levels.

System Requirements

To ensure the best experience when using this guide, the user will need to configure hardware and software as
detailed in the following section.

Hardware Requirements

This guide makes the following assumptions about your existing physical infrastructure:

Servers

You must have at least three dedicated servers capable of running VMware ESXi™ 5.0 to provide resources for
this evaluation.
1

Storage

You must have shared storage with enough space available to allow the creation of three 100GB dedicated
datastores. Shared storage can be SAN or NAS. This document assumes SAN-based storage.

Networking

You must have at least three virtual networks configured to separate virtual machine, vMotion, and vSphere
management. These networks can be set up on a single virtual switch with multiple port groups, or across
multiple virtual switches. For the purpose of this evaluation guide, the configuration includes a single vSphere
standard switch with three port groups.
1. These servers must be on the VMware vSphere 5.0 Hardware Compatibility List (HCL).
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