VMWARE Products And Features Over View

VMware's products  mainly divided into two parts.

A.Data center/server virtualization

B.Desktop virtualization

VMware's core server virtualization hypervisor is ESX Server, but it is offered as the vSphere suite and in various editions with associated features 

(vSphere was previously known as VMware Infrastructure). A requirement for implementing VMware's vSphere is one of the editions of vSphere, plus VMware's virtualization management software, vCenter.

A. Data center/server virtualization

1.Free ESXi edition
2.vSphere 4/ESX Server
3.vCenter Server
4.VMware Server
5.vCenter Site Recovery Manager
6.VMware Data Recovery
7.Cloud products

Cloud Products such as - VMware vCloud Suite & vCloud Networking and Security & vCloud Automation Center


1.Free ESXi edition: the free version of VMware ESX/ESXi that allows you to consolidate servers while still using VMware's enterprise-grade hypervisor

2.vCenter Server: the centralized management server that manages all ESX servers and enables most vSphere features

3.VMware Server: a free virtualization platform that runs in an existing Windows or Linux operating system

4.vSphere 4/ESX Server: Includes ESX and ESXi plus a number of features, depending on the edition of the vSphere suite that you select. 
                      Note that all these features require you to purchase vCenter Server (outlined below). 

   Some vSphere features are the following:

   VMotion: moved running virtual machines (VMs) from one server to another

   Storage VMotion (SVMotion): moves the virtual disks of a running virtual machine from one        data store to another

   VMware High Availability (or VMware HA, VMHA): reboots running VMs on another ESX server    if an ESX host goes down

   Fault Tolerance (FT): moves a running VMs from one ESX server to another if the server they    run on goes down

   Distributed Power Management (DPM): when demand is low on a virtual infrastructure,            running VMs are consolidated onto fewer servers, and unused servers are powered off

   VMware Consolidated Backup (or VCB): this VMware backup tool enables you to back up        running virtual machines using an existing backup application

   vShield Zones: creates a virtual firewall within your virtual infrastructure

5.Vcenter site recovery :  Mainly used for disaster recovery purpose.

6.Vmware data recovery  VDP: (VDP) is the ideal backup and re and recovery solution to protect small vSphere environments, enabling fast and efficient backups to disk and, more importantly, fast and reliable recovery.


B.Desktop virtualization
    

1.VMware View (includes VMware VDI): used to consolidate desktop PCs into your virtual infrastructure
    
2.VMware Workstation: allows you to run multiple operating systems on your desktop PC

In further post will see more about the VMWARE products.