vSphere

In the Ultra Transcenders books

2V0-17.25

Each book explains vSphere in context, with comparison tables and the common traps.

Terms in this definition

• vCenter

  Management software for VMs, clusters and ESX hosts. Each domain in VCF gets a dedicated one.

• ESX

  VMware's bare-metal hypervisor, installed on each host in a VCF fleet. Up to version 9.0 it was known as ESXi.

• VMware Cloud Foundation

  Broadcom's platform for private cloud. It unifies management of NSX, vSAN, vSphere, VCF Automation and VCF Operations as one fleet; VVF, by contrast, lacks automation and cloud management.

Related terms

• Azure VMware Solution

  Lets an organisation lift VMware workloads into Azure and keep managing them with the VMware tools it already knows, because vSphere private clouds run there on hardware dedicated to that customer.

• Configuration server

  Appliance that orchestrated replication of VMware machines for the older Site Recovery experience; you ran it on-premises, importing an OVF template into vSphere. Microsoft retired that classic approach in March 2026.

• Default project

  Lets VPCs be used in NSX without setting up any tenant projects. From the vSphere Client, vCenter admins can make VPCs, subnets and external IPs inside it.

• Distributed switch profile

  Decides how many vSphere Distributed Switches a new cluster or domain gets: one shared by all traffic (Default, recommended), two that split off storage or NSX, three that split off both, or a custom layout.

• OVF

  Short for Open Virtualization Format. VM templates are packaged to this open standard; one use is deploying Site Recovery appliances onto VMware vSphere.

• PowerCLI

  Scripting toolkit of PowerShell modules for VCF and vSphere; it can also produce custom ESX installation ISOs.

• primary licence

  VCF or vSphere Foundation entitlement, measured per core, which vCenter needs before it will accept add-ons like vSAN TiB capacity.

• Proactive HA

  When a hardware vendor's monitoring reports degraded health on a host, for instance a dead power supply, this vSphere capability clears VMs off it and moves the host into quarantine or maintenance mode. DRS has to be enabled for it to work.