TABLE OF CONTENTS The following is a brief introduction to the main tools you ll use to manage your virtual infrastructure. Depending on the size and scope of your VM deployment, you may not require VirtualCenter at this point and time. Without VirtualCenter, however, you will need to become very familiar with the MUI, the Service Console, and VMware Remote Console. It would be in your best interest to become familiar with those interfaces regardless of whether you deploy VirtualCenter or not. The three interfaces you ll utilize to manage your environment are:
VMware VirtualCenter
VMware Management Interface (MUI) and the Service Console
VMware Remote Console
Now we ll give a brief description of each of the management interfaces you ll be using.
The ESX Server Management Interface is the out-of-the-box administration option available to you to administer your virtual infrastructure. When you re working with a small VM deployment such as a test lab, these tools will be adequate and cost-effective. When you start consolidating and migrating more physical servers into a production virtualized environment, using the out-of-the-box tools to administer your environment will be difficult to manage in the long run. Security becomes more complex, and the ability to understand the placement and function of all your VMs will grow cumbersome. The MUI and Service Console give you the following capabilities:
Review system status information for VMs hosted on ESX Server
Start, stop, suspend and reset VMs
View memory usage and...
