What is Vcenter Server?

What is vCenter Server?

VMware vCenter Server provides a convenient single point of control to the datacenter. It runs on top of a Windows server to centrally manage your VMware ESX/ESXi hosts and provide essential datacenter services such as access control, performance monitoring, and configuration.

vCenter Server unifies resources from individual hosts to 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 vSphere DRS, vSphere HA, and vMotion.

What is the vSphere Web Client?

The vSphere Web Client is the primary interface for creating, managing, and monitoring virtual machines, their resources, and their hosts. It also provides console access to virtual machines.

The vSphere Web Client is a web application installed on a machine with network access to your vCenter Server. You can install the vSphere Web Client on a Windows machine, or deploy it as part of the Linux-based vCenter Server Appliance. You access the vSphere Web Client using a Web browser.

Although vCenter Server performs all vSphere activities, you use the vSphere Web Client to monitor, manage, and control vCenter Server.

What are the inventory tree views?

Inventory tree views provide hierarchical views of all the objects that the vCenter Server manages, such as datacenters, resource pools, clusters, networks, datastores, datastore clusters, templates, hosts, and virtual machines.

The four inventory views are:

• Hosts and Clusters
  Displays the inventory hierarchy of all inventory objects except templates, networks, and datastores.
• Virtual Machines and Templates
  Displays the list of virtual machines and templates.
• Networks
  Displays the list of networks.
• Datastores and Datastore Clusters
  Displays the list of datastores and datastore clusters.

Access the inventory tree views by clicking Virtual Infrastructurefrom the vSphere Web Client Home page.

Explore the inventory

The inventory is a hierarchy of objects that allow you to manage your virtual enterprise. These objects are either containers of other objects, such as folders and datacenters, or objects that you manage, such as hosts and virtual machines. The inventory shows you all objects and object relationships and allows you to organize these objects and access the vCenter operations that manage them.

Two methods of navigating the inventory are available in the vSphere Web Client. The first of these is the navigator. In the navigator, objects are grouped into categories in the left panel of the vSphere Web Client. Selecting a category allows you to view all of the objects in that category. Selecting an individual object and clicking the Related Objects tab allows you to view and browse to all other objects associated with that object.

Inventory trees are the second method of navigating the inventory. In these trees, objects are arranged hierarchically in one of four views: Hosts and Clusters, VMs and Templates, Storage, andNetworking.