Performance Support

Virtualization: What Makes Up a Virtual Machine

Transcript
For our demonstration today, well be using the vSphere Client from VMware to access a physical machine that has had VMware ESX loaded on it !hat e"actly is a virtual machine and what are the different components of a virtual machine# $ virtual machine is a software implementation of a machine or computer, that is able to e"ecute programs in the same way that a physical machine can $ virtual machine has all the same components as a physical machine, and the operating system and programs %or applications& are simply layered on top of it and have all the same capabilities as if they were loaded on a physical bo" $ virtual machine is made up of similar components as the physical server, although these components are implemented in slightly different ways 'nstead of being made up of physical components, the way the traditional servers are, a virtual machine is mostly made up of files 'n our e"ample, VM (umber ), which we*ve chosen to call the virtual machine we could really call it anything has been installed, and its actually sitting on the physical data store, as we can see here in the Resources portion of the window +y right,clic-ing on the data store and selecting Browse Datastore, we can go and have a loo- at the actual virtual machine and the files that ma-e up that virtual machine So, there*s a folder it matches the name of the virtual machine that we created we double,clic- on it and we see a set of files .his set of files actually ma-es up the virtual machine .here*s a configuration file 'n the e"ample were using here, it ends in the file e"tension vm", because it*s a VMware virtual machine .he actual hard dis- itself is simulated through the use of a flat file a single file with a vmde"tension So this virtual dis- actually represents the entire hard drive that is presented to the virtual machine So, as you can see, the virtual machine has access to C/0 resources, memory resources, storage resources 'f ' go down here into the Commands portion of the window, clic- on Edit Settin s we can see all of the settings and configuration components that ma-e up the virtual machine From here, we can edit these settings, add and remove resources, increase or decrease the amount of memory, the amount of virtual C/0s, and other hardware virtual hardware components that the virtual machine can see So, these are the components that ma-e up a virtual machine

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