What Are the Components and Services of the
vSphere Environment
At the core of
vSphere
Automation
is vSphere,
which provides the virtualization layer of the software-defined data center. vCenter
Server
is a preconfigured virtual machine
optimized for running the vCenter
Server
service and the vCenter
Server
components. vCenter
Server
service acts as a central administrator for ESXi
hosts. Authentication Services Installed
with vCenter
Server
vCenter
Server
The
vCenter
Server
group of authentication services includes vCenter
Single Sign-On
, License Service, Lookup Service, and VMware Certificate
Authority. The services installed with the vCenter
Server
appliance are common to the entire virtual environment. A
vCenter
Server
can be connected to
one or more vCenter
Server
instances. In a deployment that
consists of more than one vCenter
Server
,
the data of each service is replicated across all vCenter
Server
instances. In the client applications that use the
vSphere
Automation
API, you use the vCenter
Single Sign-On
and the Lookup Service on the vCenter
Server
to provide a range of functionality. - Authentication and Session Management
- You use thevCenter Single Sign-Onservice to establish an authenticated session with thevSphere AutomationAPI endpoint. You send credentials to thevCenter Single Sign-Onservice and receive a SAML token that you use to retrieve a session ID from thevSphere AutomationAPI endpoint. Alternatively, you can access thevSphere AutomationAPIs in a sessionless manner. You must simply include the SAML token in every request that you issue to thevSphere AutomationAPI endpoint.
- Service Discovery
- You use the Lookup Service to retrieve the endpoint URL for thevCenter Single Sign-Onservice on thevCenter Server, the location of thevCenter Serverinstances, and thevSphere AutomationAPI endpoint.
Components Installed with
vCenter
Server
vCenter
Server
vCenter
Server
is a central administration point for ESXi
hosts. The group of components installed when you install
vCenter
Server
include the
vCenter
Server
service, vSphere Client
, VMware vSphere®Auto Deploy™, VMware vSphere®ESXi™ Dump Collector, VMware vSphere® Syslog Collector,
and vSphere Lifecycle Manager
service. You can use the
vSphere
Automation
API endpoint to access the following services
running on vCenter
Server
. - Content Library
- You can use content libraries to share virtual machines, vApps, and other files, such as ISO, OVA, and text files, across the software-defined data center. You can create, share, and subscribe to content libraries on the samevCenter Serverinstance or on a remote instance. Sharing content libraries promotes consistency, compliance, efficiency, and automation in deploying workloads at scale.You can also create OVF and VM templates from virtual machines and vApps in hosts, resource pools, and clusters. You can then use the OVF and VM templates to deploy new virtual machines and vApps.Starting with vSphere 7.0, you can edit the contents of a VM template. You can check out the library item that contains the VM template. After editing the VM template, check in the library item to save the changes to the virtual machine.
- Virtual Machine
- You can use thevSphere AutomationAPIs to create, configure, and manage the life cycle of virtual machines in your environment.Starting with vSphere 7.0, you can also clone, create an instant clone, migrate, register, and unregister a virtual machine.
- vSphere Lifecycle Manager
- Starting with vSphere 7.0, the life cycle ofESXihosts and clusters can be managed through the VMware vSphere®Lifecycle Manager™ feature. Based on the current state of the hosts in a cluster, you can easily create a desired software specification by using the contents of a software depot. Then you validate the desired software specification and you apply the specification on all hosts in the cluster.
- vSphere Tags
- With vSphere tags you can attach metadata to vSphere objects, and as a result, make it easier to filter and sort these objects. You can use thevSphere AutomationAPIs to automate the management of vSphere tags.
- vSphere Supervisor
- Starting with vSphere 7.0, you can enablevSphere Supervisoron an existing vSphere cluster in your environment. Create and configure namespaces on theSupervisorsto run Kubernetes workloads in dedicated resource pools.