VMware vSphere leverages the power of virtualization to transform datacenters into simplified cloud computing infrastructures and enables IT organizations to deliver flexible and reliable IT services. VMware vSphere virtualizes and aggregates the underlying physical hardware resources across multiple systems and provides pools of virtual resources to the datacenter. As a cloud operating system, VMware vSphere manages large collections of infrastructure (such as CPUs, storage, and networking) as a seamless and dynamic operating environment, and also manages the complexity of a datacenter.

The following component layers make up VMware vSphere:

• Infrastructure Services
• Application Services
• VMware vCenter Server
•  Clients

Figure: Courtsey of VMware

VMware Vsphere consists of following products

VMware ESX and ESXi

VMware Virtual Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP)

VMware vCenter Server

VMware vCenter Update Manager

VMware vSphere Client

VMware vSphere Web Access

VMware VMotion and Storage VMotion

VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

VMware High Availability

VMware Fault Tolerance

VMware Consolidated Backup

VMware vShield Zones