VMware
Encyclopedia
VMware, Inc. is a company providing virtualization software founded in 1998 and based in Palo Alto, California
, USA. The company was acquired by EMC Corporation
in 2004, and operates as a separate software subsidiary .
VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows
, Linux
, and Mac OS X
, while VMware's enterprise software
hypervisor
s for servers, VMware ESX
and VMware ESXi, are bare-metal embedded hypervisor
s that run directly on server
hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system
.
, Mendel Rosenblum
, Scott Devine, Edward Wang and Edouard Bugnion
. Greene and Rosenblum, who are married, first met while at the University of California, Berkeley
. Edouard Bugnion remained the chief architect and CTO of VMware until 2005, and went on to found Nuova Systems (now part of Cisco
).
VMware developed a range of products, most notable of which are their hypervisor
s. VMware became well known for their first type 2 hypervisor known as GSX. This product has since evolved into two hypervisor products lines, VMware's type 1 hypervisors running directly on hardware, along with their hosted type 2 hypervisors.
The company has its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, United States, and established an R&D Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as one at the Time Warner Center
in New York City
, in 2005.
VMware operated throughout 1998 in stealth mode
with roughly 20 employees by the end of that year. The company was launched officially in February 1999 at the DEMO Conference
organized by Chris Shipley
.
VMware delivered its first product, VMware Workstation
, in May 1999 and entered the server market in 2001 with VMware GSX Server (hosted) and VMware ESX Server (hostless).
In 2003 VMware launched VMware Virtual Center, the VMotion and Virtual SMP technology. 64-bit support appeared in 2004. The company was also acquired by EMC Corporation that same year for $625 million.
In June 2006, VMware acquired privately-held Akimbi Systems.
In August 2007, EMC Corporation released 10% of the company's shares in VMware in an initial public offering
on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock debuted at US$
29 per share and closed the day at $51.
On July 8, 2008, VMware co-founder, president and CEO Diane Greene was unexpectedly fired by the VMware Board of Directors and replaced by Paul Maritz
, a retired 14-year Microsoft veteran who was heading EMC's cloud computing
business unit. In the same news release VMware stated that 2008 revenue growth will be "modestly below the previous guidance of 50% growth over 2007." As a result, market price of VMware dropped nearly 25%. Then on September 10, 2008, Rosenblum, the company's chief scientist, resigned.
On September 16, 2008, VMware announced that they are collaborating with Cisco
to provide joint data center solutions. One of the first results of this is the Cisco Nexus 1000V, a distributed virtual software switch that will be an integrated option in the VMware infrastructure.
VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics, a company with core expertise in 3D graphics driver development on November 26, 2008.
On August 10, 2009, VMware announced the acquisition of SpringSource
, a leader in enterprise and web application development and management. The acquisition is seen by the industry as a strategic move of VMware to become a leader in offering platform as a service
(PaaS). The acquisition also resulted in the expansion of VMware's education services portfolio by the inclusion of SpringSource University and its authorized training partner, SpringPeople Technologies.
On January 12, 2010, VMware acquired Zimbra
, an open-source collaboration software tool, from Yahoo. On May 6, 2010, VMware acquired GemStone, to be operated under VMware's SpringSource division.
On 12 April 2011, they released an open source
platform-as-a-service system called Cloud Foundry
, and a hosted version of the service. This supports application deployment for Java
, Ruby on Rails
, Sinatra
, Node.js
and support for MySQL
, MongoDB
and Redis
.
On 26 April 2011, VMware acquired SlideRocket
a startup which developed a SaaS application for building business presentations that are stored online. Through a Web-based interface, users can handle all parts of the process, from designing slides and compiling content, to reviewing documents and publishing and delivering them
On 31 May 2011, VMware acquired Socialcast, a group workstream service.
VMware Workstation, Server, and ESX take a more optimized path to running target operating systems on the host than emulator
s (such as Bochs
) which simulate the function of each CPU instruction on the target machine one-by-one, or dynamic recompilation
which compiles blocks of machine-instructions the first time they execute, and then uses the translated code directly when the code runs subsequently (Microsoft Virtual PC
for Mac OS X
takes this approach.) VMware software does not emulate an instruction set
for different hardware not physically present. This significantly boosts performance, but can cause problems when moving virtual machine guests between hardware hosts using different instruction-sets (such as found in 64-bit Intel and AMD CPUs), or between hardware hosts with a differing number of CPUs. Stopping the virtual-machine guest before moving it to a different CPU type generally causes no issues.
VMware's products predate the virtualization extensions to the x86 instruction set, and do not require virtualization-enabled processors. On such older processors, they use the CPU to run code directly whenever possible (as, for example, when running user-mode
and virtual 8086 mode
code on x86). When direct execution cannot operate, such as with kernel-level and real-mode
code, VMware products re-write the code dynamically, a process VMware calls "binary translation" or BT. The translated code gets stored in spare memory, typically at the end of the address space
, which segmentation
mechanisms can protect and make invisible. For these reasons, VMware operates dramatically faster than emulators, running at more than 80% of the speed that the virtual guest operating-system would run directly on the same hardware. In one study VMware claims a slowdown over native ranging from 0–6 percent for the VMware ESX Server.
VMware's approach avoids some of the difficulties of virtualization on x86-based platforms. Virtual machines may deal with offending instructions by replacing them, or by simply running kernel-code in user-mode. Replacing instructions runs the risk that the code may fail to find the expected content if it reads itself; one cannot protect code against reading while allowing normal execution, and replacing in-place becomes complicated. Running the code unmodified in user-mode will also fail, as most instructions which just read the machine-state do not cause an exception and will betray the real state of the program, and certain instructions silently change behavior in user-mode. One must always rewrite; performing a simulation of the current program counter
in the original location when necessary and (notably) remapping hardware code breakpoint
s.
Although VMware virtual machines run in user-mode, VMware Workstation itself requires the installation of various driver
s in the host operating-system, notably to dynamically switch the Global Descriptor Table (GDT)
and the Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT)
.
The VMware product line can also run different operating systems on a dual-boot system simultaneously by booting one partition natively while using the other as a guest within VMware Workstation.
s:
VMware vCenter Converter (VMware Converter) comes in both Enterprise ($, bundling and entitlement with vCenter Server) and Standalone (free) versions and is designed primarily for the following tasks:
Converted VMs are compatible with VMware ESX/ESXi, VMware Server and VMware Workstation. A P2V conversion can be done from any physical machine running Microsoft Windows (XP or later) or Linux based (Linux only works on Standalone version). Conversions can be managed from a centralized console allowing for multiple conversions at the same time (using the Enterprise version). VMware vCenter Converter the older VMware products "P2V Assistant" and "Importer". P2V Assistant allowed users to convert physical machines into virtual machines; and Importer allowed the import of virtual machines from other products into VMware Workstation.
VMware Capacity Planner, an information technology
(IT) capacity planning
tool, collects utilization-data in heterogeneous computing environments and compares it to industry-standard reference-data to provide analysis and decision-support modeling.
VMware ACE provides a means of distributing secured virtual desktops to networked client PCs.
VMware ThinApp
, formerly Thinstall, is a virtualization suite capable of creating portable software ("portable apps"). This software enables applications to execute without being previously installed.
VMware Infrastructure
is a collection of VMware products used to manage a VMware ESX/ESXi server environment.
VMware vSphere
is a "cloud OS". VMware vSphere 4 was originally named VMware Virtual Infrastructure (VI) 4 and is capable of managing large pools of infrastructure, including software and hardware both from internal and external networks.
The VMware Tools package adds drivers and utilities to improve the graphical performance for different guest operating systems, including mouse tracking. The package also enables some integration between the guest and host systems, including shared folder
s, plug-and-play
devices, clock
synchronisation, and cutting-and-pasting across environments. VMware Inc makes VMware Tools available for Microsoft Windows
, Linux
, Sun Solaris, FreeBSD
, and Novell NetWare
guest systems.
On September 11 at VMworld 2007, VMware announced that large portions of VMware Tools for Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD guests were released under GPL and GPL-compatible licenses. They also announced the creation of the Open Virtual Machine Tools ("open-vm-tools") project on Sourceforge.net.
Palo Alto, California
Palo Alto is a California charter city located in the northwest corner of Santa Clara County, in the San Francisco Bay Area of California, United States. The city shares its borders with East Palo Alto, Mountain View, Los Altos, Los Altos Hills, Stanford, Portola Valley, and Menlo Park. It is...
, USA. The company was acquired by EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation
EMC Corporation , a Financial Times Global 500, Fortune 500 and S&P 500 company, develops, delivers and supports information infrastructure and virtual infrastructure hardware, software, and services. EMC is headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, USA.Former Intel executive Richard Egan and his...
in 2004, and operates as a separate software subsidiary .
VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, and Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
, while VMware's enterprise software
Enterprise software
Enterprise software, also known as enterprise application software , is software used in organizations, such as in a business or government, contrary to software chosen by individuals...
hypervisor
Hypervisor
In computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
s for servers, VMware ESX
VMware ESX
VMware ESX is an enterprise-level computer virtualization product offered by VMware, Inc. ESX is a component of VMware's larger offering, VMware Infrastructure, and adds management and reliability services to the core server product...
and VMware ESXi, are bare-metal embedded hypervisor
Embedded Hypervisor
Software virtualization has been a major topic in the enterprise space for quite some time, but has become an important technology for embedded systems only in the last few years. The application of the technology to the enterprise space has been well described elsewhere by companies such as...
s that run directly on server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
.
History
In 1998 VMware was founded by Diane GreeneDiane Greene
Diane Greene was a founder of VMware and the CEO from 1998 to 2008.Greene, Mendel Rosenblum, Scott Devine, Edward Wang and Edouard Bugnion founded VMware in 1998....
, Mendel Rosenblum
Mendel Rosenblum
Mendel Rosenblum is an associate professor of Computer Science at Stanford University, and one of the co-founders of VMware. Since 2008 he is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery "for contributions to reinventing virtual machines", and had previously received the ACM SIGOPS Mark...
, Scott Devine, Edward Wang and Edouard Bugnion
Edouard Bugnion
Edouard Bugnion was raised in Neuchâtel, Switzerland.Bugnion graduated with a bachelor's degree in engineering from ETH Zurich in 1994 and a master's degree from Stanford University in 1996. He was one of the five founders of VMware in 1998 and was the chief architect until 2004. He had been a...
. Greene and Rosenblum, who are married, first met while at the University of California, Berkeley
University of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
. Edouard Bugnion remained the chief architect and CTO of VMware until 2005, and went on to found Nuova Systems (now part of Cisco
Cisco Systems
Cisco Systems, Inc. is an American multinational corporation headquartered in San Jose, California, United States, that designs and sells consumer electronics, networking, voice, and communications technology and services. Cisco has more than 70,000 employees and annual revenue of US$...
).
VMware developed a range of products, most notable of which are their hypervisor
Hypervisor
In computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
s. VMware became well known for their first type 2 hypervisor known as GSX. This product has since evolved into two hypervisor products lines, VMware's type 1 hypervisors running directly on hardware, along with their hosted type 2 hypervisors.
The company has its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, United States, and established an R&D Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, as well as one at the Time Warner Center
Time Warner Center
The Time Warner Center is a mixed-use skyscraper developed by AREA Property Partners and The Related Companies in New York City. Its design, by David Childs of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, consists of two 750 ft towers bridged by a multi-story atrium containing upscale retail shops...
in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, in 2005.
VMware operated throughout 1998 in stealth mode
Stealth mode
In business, stealth mode is a company's temporary state of secretiveness, usually undertaken in order to avoid alerting competitors to a pending product launch or other business initiative...
with roughly 20 employees by the end of that year. The company was launched officially in February 1999 at the DEMO Conference
DEMO conference
The DEMO conference is a technology conference that focuses on showcasing new products from both entrepreneurs and established companies. It is held by IDG....
organized by Chris Shipley
Chris Shipley
Chris Shipley is a writer, analyst, commentator, and strategist, and has tracked the technology industry for more than 25 years....
.
VMware delivered its first product, VMware Workstation
VMware Workstation
VMware Workstation is a virtual machine software suite for x86 and x86-64 computers from VMware, a division of EMC Corporation, which allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual machines and use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system...
, in May 1999 and entered the server market in 2001 with VMware GSX Server (hosted) and VMware ESX Server (hostless).
In 2003 VMware launched VMware Virtual Center, the VMotion and Virtual SMP technology. 64-bit support appeared in 2004. The company was also acquired by EMC Corporation that same year for $625 million.
In June 2006, VMware acquired privately-held Akimbi Systems.
In August 2007, EMC Corporation released 10% of the company's shares in VMware in an initial public offering
Initial public offering
An initial public offering or stock market launch, is the first sale of stock by a private company to the public. It can be used by either small or large companies to raise expansion capital and become publicly traded enterprises...
on the New York Stock Exchange. The stock debuted at US$
United States dollar
The United States dollar , also referred to as the American dollar, is the official currency of the United States of America. It is divided into 100 smaller units called cents or pennies....
29 per share and closed the day at $51.
On July 8, 2008, VMware co-founder, president and CEO Diane Greene was unexpectedly fired by the VMware Board of Directors and replaced by Paul Maritz
Paul Maritz
Paul Maritz is CEO of VMware Corporation , and a past senior executive at Microsoft.Born and raised in Rhodesia , his family later moved to South Africa where he was schooled at Highbury Preparatory School and Hilton College. He received a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Natal,...
, a retired 14-year Microsoft veteran who was heading EMC's cloud computing
Cloud computing
Cloud computing is the delivery of computing as a service rather than a product, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices as a utility over a network ....
business unit. In the same news release VMware stated that 2008 revenue growth will be "modestly below the previous guidance of 50% growth over 2007." As a result, market price of VMware dropped nearly 25%. Then on September 10, 2008, Rosenblum, the company's chief scientist, resigned.
On September 16, 2008, VMware announced that they are collaborating with Cisco
Cisco
Cisco may refer to:Companies:*Cisco Systems, a computer networking company* Certis CISCO, corporatised entity of the former Commercial and Industrial Security Corporation in Singapore...
to provide joint data center solutions. One of the first results of this is the Cisco Nexus 1000V, a distributed virtual software switch that will be an integrated option in the VMware infrastructure.
VMware acquired Tungsten Graphics, a company with core expertise in 3D graphics driver development on November 26, 2008.
On August 10, 2009, VMware announced the acquisition of SpringSource
SpringSource
SpringSource is a division of VMware that provides a suite of software products that accelerate the entire enterprise Java application life cycle of build, run, and manage. SpringSource employs open source leaders who created and drive innovation for Spring, a programming model for enterprise Java...
, a leader in enterprise and web application development and management. The acquisition is seen by the industry as a strategic move of VMware to become a leader in offering platform as a service
Platform as a service
Platform as a service is a category of cloud computing services that provide a computing platform and a solution stack as a service...
(PaaS). The acquisition also resulted in the expansion of VMware's education services portfolio by the inclusion of SpringSource University and its authorized training partner, SpringPeople Technologies.
On January 12, 2010, VMware acquired Zimbra
Zimbra
Zimbra Collaboration Suite is a groupware product created by Zimbra, Inc., located in Palo Alto, California, USA. The company was purchased by Yahoo! in September 2007, and subsequently purchased by VMware on Tuesday, January 12, 2010. The software consists of both client and server components...
, an open-source collaboration software tool, from Yahoo. On May 6, 2010, VMware acquired GemStone, to be operated under VMware's SpringSource division.
On 12 April 2011, they released an open source
Open source
The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...
platform-as-a-service system called Cloud Foundry
Cloud Foundry
Cloud Foundry is free, open source cloud computing platform as a service software developed by VMware released as free software under the terms of the Apache License 2.0. Written in Ruby....
, and a hosted version of the service. This supports application deployment for Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
, Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails
Ruby on Rails, often shortened to Rails or RoR, is an open source web application framework for the Ruby programming language.-History:...
, Sinatra
Sinatra (software)
Sinatra is a free and open source web application library and domain-specific language written in Ruby. It is an alternative to other Ruby web application frameworks such as Ruby on Rails, Merb, Nitro, Camping, and Rango. It is dependent on the Rack web server interface.Designed and developed by...
, Node.js
Node.js
Node.js is a software system designed for writing highly-scalable internet applications, notably web servers.Programs are written in JavaScript, using event-driven, asynchronous I/O to minimize overhead and maximize scalability....
and support for MySQL
MySQL
MySQL officially, but also commonly "My Sequel") is a relational database management system that runs as a server providing multi-user access to a number of databases. It is named after developer Michael Widenius' daughter, My...
, MongoDB
MongoDB
MongoDB is an open source, high-performance, schema-free, document-oriented database written in the C++ programming language...
and Redis
Redis
Redis is used to refer to Romani people.Redis may also refer to:* Redis , an advanced key-value store...
.
On 26 April 2011, VMware acquired SlideRocket
SlideRocket
SlideRocket is an online presentation platform that lets users create, manage, share and measure presentations. SlideRocket is provided via a SaaS model offered via monthly or annual subscription plans. Users initially sign up for a free 14-day trial then decide which plan to subscribe to...
a startup which developed a SaaS application for building business presentations that are stored online. Through a Web-based interface, users can handle all parts of the process, from designing slides and compiling content, to reviewing documents and publishing and delivering them
On 31 May 2011, VMware acquired Socialcast, a group workstream service.
Core product design
VMware software provides a completely virtualized set of hardware to the guest operating system. VMware software virtualizes the hardware for a video adapter, a network adapter, and hard disk adapters. The host provides pass-through drivers for guest USB, serial, and parallel devices. In this way, VMware virtual machines become highly portable between computers, because every host looks nearly identical to the guest. In practice, a system administrator can pause operations on a virtual machine guest, move or copy that guest to another physical computer, and there resume execution exactly at the point of suspension. Alternatively, for enterprise servers, a feature called VMotion allows the migration of operational guest virtual machines between similar but separate hardware hosts sharing the same storage. Each of these transitions is completely transparent to any users on the virtual machine at the time it is being migrated.VMware Workstation, Server, and ESX take a more optimized path to running target operating systems on the host than emulator
Emulator
In computing, an emulator is hardware or software or both that duplicates the functions of a first computer system in a different second computer system, so that the behavior of the second system closely resembles the behavior of the first system...
s (such as Bochs
Bochs
Bochs is a portable x86 and x86-64 IBM PC compatible emulator and debugger mostly written in C++ and distributed as free software under GNU Lesser General Public License...
) which simulate the function of each CPU instruction on the target machine one-by-one, or dynamic recompilation
Dynamic recompilation
In computer science, dynamic recompilation is a feature of some emulators and virtual machines, where the system may recompile some part of a program during execution...
which compiles blocks of machine-instructions the first time they execute, and then uses the translated code directly when the code runs subsequently (Microsoft Virtual PC
Microsoft Virtual PC
Windows Virtual PC is a virtualization program for Microsoft Windows. In July 2006 Microsoft released the Windows-hosted version as a free product...
for Mac OS X
Mac OS X
Mac OS X is a series of Unix-based operating systems and graphical user interfaces developed, marketed, and sold by Apple Inc. Since 2002, has been included with all new Macintosh computer systems...
takes this approach.) VMware software does not emulate an instruction set
Instruction set
An instruction set, or instruction set architecture , is the part of the computer architecture related to programming, including the native data types, instructions, registers, addressing modes, memory architecture, interrupt and exception handling, and external I/O...
for different hardware not physically present. This significantly boosts performance, but can cause problems when moving virtual machine guests between hardware hosts using different instruction-sets (such as found in 64-bit Intel and AMD CPUs), or between hardware hosts with a differing number of CPUs. Stopping the virtual-machine guest before moving it to a different CPU type generally causes no issues.
VMware's products predate the virtualization extensions to the x86 instruction set, and do not require virtualization-enabled processors. On such older processors, they use the CPU to run code directly whenever possible (as, for example, when running user-mode
User space
A conventional computer operating system usually segregates virtual memory into kernel space and user space. Kernel space is strictly reserved for running the kernel, kernel extensions, and most device drivers...
and virtual 8086 mode
Virtual 8086 mode
In the 80386 microprocessor and later, virtual 8086 mode allows the execution of real mode applications that are incapable of running directly in protected mode while the processor is running a protected mode operating system.VM86 mode uses a segmentation scheme identical to that of real mode In...
code on x86). When direct execution cannot operate, such as with kernel-level and real-mode
Real mode
Real mode, also called real address mode, is an operating mode of 80286 and later x86-compatible CPUs. Real mode is characterized by a 20 bit segmented memory address space and unlimited direct software access to all memory, I/O addresses and peripheral hardware...
code, VMware products re-write the code dynamically, a process VMware calls "binary translation" or BT. The translated code gets stored in spare memory, typically at the end of the address space
Address space
In computing, an address space defines a range of discrete addresses, each of which may correspond to a network host, peripheral device, disk sector, a memory cell or other logical or physical entity.- Overview :...
, which segmentation
Segmentation (memory)
Memory segmentation is the division of computer memory into segments or sections. Segments or sections are also used in object files of compiled programs when they are linked together into a program image, or when the image is loaded into memory...
mechanisms can protect and make invisible. For these reasons, VMware operates dramatically faster than emulators, running at more than 80% of the speed that the virtual guest operating-system would run directly on the same hardware. In one study VMware claims a slowdown over native ranging from 0–6 percent for the VMware ESX Server.
VMware's approach avoids some of the difficulties of virtualization on x86-based platforms. Virtual machines may deal with offending instructions by replacing them, or by simply running kernel-code in user-mode. Replacing instructions runs the risk that the code may fail to find the expected content if it reads itself; one cannot protect code against reading while allowing normal execution, and replacing in-place becomes complicated. Running the code unmodified in user-mode will also fail, as most instructions which just read the machine-state do not cause an exception and will betray the real state of the program, and certain instructions silently change behavior in user-mode. One must always rewrite; performing a simulation of the current program counter
Program counter
The program counter , commonly called the instruction pointer in Intel x86 microprocessors, and sometimes called the instruction address register, or just part of the instruction sequencer in some computers, is a processor register that indicates where the computer is in its instruction sequence...
in the original location when necessary and (notably) remapping hardware code breakpoint
Breakpoint
In software development, a breakpoint is an intentional stopping or pausing place in a program, put in place for debugging purposes. It is also sometimes simply referred to as a pause....
s.
Although VMware virtual machines run in user-mode, VMware Workstation itself requires the installation of various driver
Device driver
In computing, a device driver or software driver is a computer program allowing higher-level computer programs to interact with a hardware device....
s in the host operating-system, notably to dynamically switch the Global Descriptor Table (GDT)
Global Descriptor Table
The Global Descriptor Table or GDT is a data structure used by Intel x86-family processors starting with the 80286 in order to define the characteristics of the various memory areas used during program execution, including the base address, the size and access privileges like executability and...
and the Interrupt Descriptor Table (IDT)
Interrupt descriptor table
The Interrupt Descriptor Table is a data structure used by the x86 architecture to implement an interrupt vector table. The IDT is used by the processor to determine the correct response to interrupts and exceptions....
.
The VMware product line can also run different operating systems on a dual-boot system simultaneously by booting one partition natively while using the other as a guest within VMware Workstation.
Products
]vCenter Server ($) (license manager) |
Server Hardware |
ESX ($) (vMotion, DRS, HA, Storage vMotion) |
Guest OS Guest OS Guest OS... |
||
ESXi (freeware) (ESXi freeware is managed by the Virtual Infrastructure (or vSphere) Client) ESXi ($) (vMotion, DRS, HA, Storage vMotion) |
Guest OS Guest OS Guest OS... |
||||
Workstation Hardware |
Windows or Linux OS |
VMware Server VMware Server VMware Server is a free-of-charge virtualization-software server suite developed and supplied by VMware, Inc.... (freeware) |
Guest OS Guest OS Guest OS... |
||
User Session |
VMware Workstation VMware Workstation VMware Workstation is a virtual machine software suite for x86 and x86-64 computers from VMware, a division of EMC Corporation, which allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual machines and use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system... ($) VMware Player VMware Player VMware Player is a freeware virtualization software package from VMware, Inc. . VMware Player can run virtual appliances. VMware Player can also create virtual machines since version 3.0... (freeware) |
||||
| vSphere Client for managing ESX(i) hosts (freeware) |
|||||
Desktop software
- VMware WorkstationVMware WorkstationVMware Workstation is a virtual machine software suite for x86 and x86-64 computers from VMware, a division of EMC Corporation, which allows users to set up multiple x86 and x86-64 virtual machines and use one or more of these virtual machines simultaneously with the hosting operating system...
(first product launched by VMware in 1999). This software suite allows users to run multiple instances of x86X86 architectureThe term x86 refers to a family of instruction set architectures based on the Intel 8086 CPU. The 8086 was launched in 1978 as a fully 16-bit extension of Intel's 8-bit based 8080 microprocessor and also introduced segmentation to overcome the 16-bit addressing barrier of such designs...
or x86-64X86-64x86-64 is an extension of the x86 instruction set. It supports vastly larger virtual and physical address spaces than are possible on x86, thereby allowing programmers to conveniently work with much larger data sets. x86-64 also provides 64-bit general purpose registers and numerous other...
-compatible operating systems on a single physical PCPersonal computerA personal computer is any general-purpose computer whose size, capabilities, and original sales price make it useful for individuals, and which is intended to be operated directly by an end-user with no intervening computer operator...
. - VMware FusionVMware FusionVMware Fusion is a virtual machine software product developed by VMware for Macintosh computers with Intel processors. Fusion allows Intel-based Macs to run x86 and x86-64 "guest" operating systems, such as Microsoft Windows, Linux, NetWare and Solaris as virtual machines simultaneously with Mac OS...
provides similar functionality for users of the Intel Mac platform, along with full compatibility with virtual machines created by other VMware products. - VMware PlayerVMware PlayerVMware Player is a freeware virtualization software package from VMware, Inc. . VMware Player can run virtual appliances. VMware Player can also create virtual machines since version 3.0...
is for users without a license to use VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion. VMware offers this software as a freeware product for personal use. While initially not able to create virtual machines, this limitation was removed in version 3.0.1.
Server software
VMware markets two virtualization products for serverServer (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
s:
- VMware ESXVMware ESXVMware ESX is an enterprise-level computer virtualization product offered by VMware, Inc. ESX is a component of VMware's larger offering, VMware Infrastructure, and adds management and reliability services to the core server product...
(formerly called "ESX Server"), an enterprise-levelEnterprise softwareEnterprise software, also known as enterprise application software , is software used in organizations, such as in a business or government, contrary to software chosen by individuals...
product, can deliver greater performance than the freewareFreewareFreeware is computer software that is available for use at no cost or for an optional fee, but usually with one or more restricted usage rights. Freeware is in contrast to commercial software, which is typically sold for profit, but might be distributed for a business or commercial purpose in the...
VMware Server, due to lower system overheadComputational overheadIn computer science, overhead is generally considered any combination of excess or indirect computation time, memory, bandwidth, or other resources that are required to attain a particular goal...
. VMware ESX is a "bare-metal" product, running directly on the server hardware, allowing virtual servers to also use hardware more or less directly. In addition, VMware ESX integrates into VMware vCenter, which offers extra services to enhance the reliability and manageability of a server deployment, such as- VMotion - the capability to move a running virtual machine from one ESX host to another and faster than some other editions
- Storage VMotion - the capability to move a running virtual machine from one storage device to another
- DRS - Distributed Resource Scheduler - automatic load balancing of a ESX cluster using VMotion
- HA - High Availability - In case of hardware failure in a cluster, the virtual servers will automatically restart on another host in the cluster
- VMware ESXi (formerly called "VMware ESX 3i"), is quite similar to ESX, but differentiates in that the Service Console is removed, and replaced with a minimal BusyBoxBusyBoxBusyBox provides several stripped-down Unix tools in a single executable. It runs in a variety of POSIX environments such as Linux, Android, FreeBSD and others, such as proprietary kernels, although many of the tools it provides are designed to work with interfaces provided by the Linux kernel. It...
installation. Disk space requirements are much lower than for ESX and the memory footprintMemory footprintMemory footprint refers to the amount of main memory that a program uses or references while running.This includes all sorts of active memory regions like code, static data sections , heap, as well as all the stacks, plus memory required to hold any additional data structures, such as symbol...
is reduced. ESXi is intended to be run from flash disks in servers but can be run from normal disks. VMware ESXi hosts can't be managed directly from the console, all management is performed through a VirtualCenter Server. In July 2008, VMware decided to give away ESXi for free.
- VMware ServerVMware ServerVMware Server is a free-of-charge virtualization-software server suite developed and supplied by VMware, Inc....
(formerly called "GSX Server", now both obsolete) is also provided as freeware for non-commercial use, like VMware PlayerVMware PlayerVMware Player is a freeware virtualization software package from VMware, Inc. . VMware Player can run virtual appliances. VMware Player can also create virtual machines since version 3.0...
, and it is also possible to create virtual machines with it. It is a "hosted" application, which runs within an existing LinuxLinuxLinux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
or WindowsMicrosoft WindowsMicrosoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
operating systemOperating systemAn operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
.
Other products
- Convert a physical machine into a virtual machine; referred to as Physical-to-VirtualPhysical-to-VirtualPhysical-to-Virtual describes the process of decoupling and migrating a physical server's operating system , applications, and data from a physical server to a virtual machine guest hosted on a virtualized platform.-Manual P2V:...
or P2V. - Convert a virtual machine of one type into another (V2V)
- Run automated configuration tasks on VMware ESX/ESXi servers.
Converted VMs are compatible with VMware ESX/ESXi, VMware Server and VMware Workstation. A P2V conversion can be done from any physical machine running Microsoft Windows (XP or later) or Linux based (Linux only works on Standalone version). Conversions can be managed from a centralized console allowing for multiple conversions at the same time (using the Enterprise version). VMware vCenter Converter the older VMware products "P2V Assistant" and "Importer". P2V Assistant allowed users to convert physical machines into virtual machines; and Importer allowed the import of virtual machines from other products into VMware Workstation.
VMware Capacity Planner, an information technology
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...
(IT) capacity planning
Capacity planning
Capacity planning is the process of determining the production capacity needed by an organization to meet changing demands for its products. In the context of capacity planning, "capacity" is the maximum amount of work that an organization is capable of completing in a given period of time...
tool, collects utilization-data in heterogeneous computing environments and compares it to industry-standard reference-data to provide analysis and decision-support modeling.
VMware ACE provides a means of distributing secured virtual desktops to networked client PCs.
VMware ThinApp
VMware ThinApp
VMware ThinApp is an application virtualization and portable application creator suite by VMware that can package conventional applications so that they become portable applications...
, formerly Thinstall, is a virtualization suite capable of creating portable software ("portable apps"). This software enables applications to execute without being previously installed.
VMware Infrastructure
VMware Infrastructure
VMware Infrastructure 3 is a suite of computer hardware virtualization products from VMware, Inc. . The suite includes:* VMware ESX Server version 3* VMware ESXi version 3.x...
is a collection of VMware products used to manage a VMware ESX/ESXi server environment.
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere
VMware vSphere is VMware's cloud computing virtualization operating system.-History:While VMware Infrastructure 3.5 was in development, vSphere was conceived as an enhanced suite of tools with cloud computing utilizing VMware ESX/ESXi 4.The cloud computing-enabled tool suite was spun off as VMware...
is a "cloud OS". VMware vSphere 4 was originally named VMware Virtual Infrastructure (VI) 4 and is capable of managing large pools of infrastructure, including software and hardware both from internal and external networks.
The VMware Tools package adds drivers and utilities to improve the graphical performance for different guest operating systems, including mouse tracking. The package also enables some integration between the guest and host systems, including shared folder
Directory (file systems)
In computing, a folder, directory, catalog, or drawer, is a virtual container originally derived from an earlier Object-oriented programming concept by the same name within a digital file system, in which groups of computer files and other folders can be kept and organized.A typical file system may...
s, plug-and-play
Plug-and-play
In computing, plug and play is a term used to describe the characteristic of a computer bus, or device specification, which facilitates the discovery of a hardware component in a system, without the need for physical device configuration, or user intervention in resolving resource conflicts.Plug...
devices, clock
Clock
A clock is an instrument used to indicate, keep, and co-ordinate time. The word clock is derived ultimately from the Celtic words clagan and clocca meaning "bell". A silent instrument missing such a mechanism has traditionally been known as a timepiece...
synchronisation, and cutting-and-pasting across environments. VMware Inc makes VMware Tools available for Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows
Microsoft Windows is a series of operating systems produced by Microsoft.Microsoft introduced an operating environment named Windows on November 20, 1985 as an add-on to MS-DOS in response to the growing interest in graphical user interfaces . Microsoft Windows came to dominate the world's personal...
, Linux
Linux
Linux is a Unix-like computer operating system assembled under the model of free and open source software development and distribution. The defining component of any Linux system is the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released October 5, 1991 by Linus Torvalds...
, Sun Solaris, FreeBSD
FreeBSD
FreeBSD is a free Unix-like operating system descended from AT&T UNIX via BSD UNIX. Although for legal reasons FreeBSD cannot be called “UNIX”, as the direct descendant of BSD UNIX , FreeBSD’s internals and system APIs are UNIX-compliant...
, and Novell NetWare
Novell NetWare
NetWare is a network operating system developed by Novell, Inc. It initially used cooperative multitasking to run various services on a personal computer, with network protocols based on the archetypal Xerox Network Systems stack....
guest systems.
On September 11 at VMworld 2007, VMware announced that large portions of VMware Tools for Linux, Solaris, and FreeBSD guests were released under GPL and GPL-compatible licenses. They also announced the creation of the Open Virtual Machine Tools ("open-vm-tools") project on Sourceforge.net.
See also
- Comparison of platform virtual machines
- List of VMware software
- Virtualization
- VMware VMFSVMware VMFSVMware VMFS is VMware, Inc.'s cluster file system. It is used by VMware ESX Server and the company's flagship server virtualization suite, VMware Infrastructure. It was developed and is used to store virtual machine disk images, including snapshots...
- HypervisorHypervisorIn computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
External links
- Company home page
- Google Maps view of VMware headquarters
- VMware IT Virtualization Solutions