VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI) is a suite

Software suite

A software suite or application suite is a collection of computer programs, usually application software and programming software of related functionality, often sharing a more-or-less common user interface and some ability to smoothly exchange data with each other.Sometimes software makers...

 of computer

Computer

A computer is a programmable machine designed to sequentially and automatically carry out a sequence of arithmetic or logical operations. The particular sequence of operations can be changed readily, allowing the computer to solve more than one kind of problem...

 hardware virtualization

Hardware virtualization

Computer hardware virtualization is the virtualization of computers or operating systems. It hides the physical characteristics of a computing platform from users, instead showing another abstract computing platform...

 products from VMware, Inc.

VMware

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 ....

 (a division of 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...

). The suite includes:

• VMware ESX Server
  VMware ESX Server
  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...
  
   version 3
• VMware ESXi version 3.x
• VMware vCenter version 2 (formally VMware VirtualCenter)
• Virtual SMP (which allows a guest 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...
  
   to "see" up to four CPUs in the virtual machine
  Virtual machine
  A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
  
  ).

Users can supplement this software bundle

Product bundling

Product bundling is a marketing strategy that involves offering several products for sale as one combined product. This strategy is very common in the software business , in the cable television industry Product bundling is a marketing strategy that involves offering several products for sale as...

 by purchasing optional products, such as VMotion, as well as distributed services such as:

• VMware High Availability (HA)
• VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)
• VMware Consolidated Backup

VMware Inc. released VMware Infrastructure 3 in June 2006. The suite comes in three "editions": Starter, Standard and Enterprise.

Known limitations

Known limitations in VMware Infrastructure 3 may constrain the design of data center

Data center

A data center is a facility used to house computer systems and associated components, such as telecommunications and storage systems...

s:

limitations in VMware Infrastructure 3 version 3.5 include the following:

• Guest system maximum RAM: 64 GB
  Gigabyte
  The gigabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information storage. The prefix giga means 109 in the International System of Units , therefore 1 gigabyte is...
  
  
• Number of guest CPUs: 4
• Number of hosts in an HA cluster: 32
• Number of hosts in a DRS cluster: 32
• Size of RAM per server: 256 GB
• Number of hosts managed by Virtual Center Server: 200
• Number of virtual machines managed by Virtual Center Server: 2000

Other limitations exist, for example, volume size is limited to 64 TB

Terabyte

The terabyte is a multiple of the unit byte for digital information. The prefix tera means 1012 in the International System of Units , and therefore 1 terabyte is , or 1 trillion bytes, or 1000 gigabytes. 1 terabyte in binary prefixes is 0.9095 tebibytes, or 931.32 gibibytes...

 with no more than 6 SCSI controllers

SCSI

Small Computer System Interface is a set of standards for physically connecting and transferring data between computers and peripheral devices. The SCSI standards define commands, protocols, and electrical and optical interfaces. SCSI is most commonly used for hard disks and tape drives, but it...

 per virtual machine; maximum number of remote consoles to a virtual machine is 10. It is also not possible to connect fibre-channel driven tape-drives, which hinders the ability to do backups using these drives.

Future

VMware is now moving towards a 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 ....

 model with their 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...

 4 release.

See also

• Comparison of platform virtual machines: a list of related virtualization software products
• List of VMware software
• Virtual appliance
  Virtual appliance
  A virtual appliance is a virtual machine image designed to run on a virtualization platform ....
  
  
• VMware VMFS
  VMware VMFS
  VMware 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...
  
  , the VMware SAN file system
• x86 virtualization
  X86 virtualization
  In computing, x86 virtualization is the facility that allows multiple operating systems to simultaneously share x86 processor resources in a safe and efficient manner, a facility generically known as hardware virtualization...
  
  

External links

• VMware Infrastructure product page - VMware, Inc.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 documentation
• VMware Infrastructure 3 demo - YouTube