VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture.
Platform virtualization software, specifically emulators and hypervisors, are software packages that emulate the whole physical computer machine, often providing multiple virtual machines on one physical platform. The table below compares basic information about platform virtualization hypervisors.
VMware ESXi is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that is installed on an operating system (OS); instead, it includes and integrates vital OS components, such as a kernel.
VMware VMFS is VMware, Inc.'s clustered file system used by the company's flagship server virtualization suite, vSphere. It was developed to store virtual machine disk images, including snapshots. Multiple servers can read/write the same filesystem simultaneously while individual virtual machine files are locked. VMFS volumes can be logically "grown" by spanning multiple VMFS volumes together.
Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is a cloud computing service model by means of which computing resources are supplied by a cloud services provider. The IaaS vendor provides the storage, network, servers, and virtualization (which mostly refers, in this case, to emulating computer hardware). This service enables users to free themselves from maintaining an on-premises data center. The IaaS provider is hosting these resources in either the public cloud (meaning users share the same hardware, storage, and network devices with other users), the private cloud (meaning users do not share these resources), or the hybrid cloud (combination of both).
VMware Infrastructure is a collection of virtualization products from VMware. Virtualization is an abstraction layer that decouples hardware from operating systems. The VMware Infrastructure suite allows enterprises to optimize and manage their IT infrastructure through virtualization as an integrated offering. The core product families are vSphere, vSAN and NSX for on-premises virtualization. VMware Cloud Foundation (VCF) is an infrastructure platform for hybrid cloud management. The VMware Infrastructure suite is designed to span a large range of deployment types to provide maximum flexibility and scalability.
Quest KACE, formerly Dell KACE, is a company that specializes in computer appliances for systems management of information technology equipment. It also provides software for security, application virtualization, and systems management products. Established in 2003, KACE was headquartered in Mountain View, California with offices in Europe and Asia.
VMDK is a file format that describes containers for virtual hard disk drives to be used in virtual machines like VMware Workstation or VirtualBox.
VMware Horizon is a commercial desktop and app virtualization product developed by VMware, Inc for Microsoft Windows, Linux and macOS operating systems. It was first sold under the name VMware VDM, but with the release of version 3.0.0 in 2008 it was changed to "VMware View". The name was updated to "Horizon View" with the launch of version 6 in April 2014 and is now referred to as "VMware Horizon" to represent desktop and app virtualization.
VMware vSphere is VMware's cloud computing virtualization platform.
libvirt is an open-source API, daemon and management tool for managing platform virtualization. It can be used to manage KVM, Xen, VMware ESXi, QEMU and other virtualization technologies. These APIs are widely used in the orchestration layer of hypervisors in the development of a cloud-based solution.
Software Freedom Conservancy, Inc. is an organization that provides a non-profit home and infrastructure support for free and open source software projects. The organization was established in 2006, and as of June 2022, had over 40 member projects.
Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) is a data center server computer product line composed of server hardware, virtualization support, switching fabric, and management software, introduced in 2009 by Cisco Systems. The products are marketed for scalability by integrating many components of a data center that can be managed as a single unit.
Wakame-vdc is an IaaS cloud computing framework, facilitating the provisioning and management of a heterogeneous virtualized infrastructure. Wakame-vdc virtualizes the entire data center; servers, storage, and networking. Wakame-vdc is managed via a native Web Interface, the Wakame-vdc CLI, or the powerful Wakame-vdc API.
In computer security, virtual machine escape is the process of a program breaking out of the virtual machine on which it is running and interacting with the host operating system. A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". In 2008, a vulnerability in VMware discovered by Core Security Technologies made VM escape possible on VMware Workstation 6.0.2 and 5.5.4. A fully working exploit labeled Cloudburst was developed by Immunity Inc. for Immunity CANVAS. Cloudburst was presented in Black Hat USA 2009.
ThunderLink is a legacy expansion adapter for the Thunderbolt computer bus interface, which added support for SAS, SATA, fibre optic and Ethernet interfaces.
openQRM is a free and open-source cloud-computing management platform for managing heterogeneous data centre infrastructures.
Dell PowerEdge VRTX is a computer hardware product line from Dell. It is a mini-blade chassis with built-in storage system. The VRTX comes in two models: a 19" rack version that is 5 rack units high or as a stand-alone tower system.
Hyperjacking is an attack in which a hacker takes malicious control over the hypervisor that creates the virtual environment within a virtual machine (VM) host. The point of the attack is to target the operating system that is below that of the virtual machines so that the attacker's program can run and the applications on the VMs above it will be completely oblivious to its presence.
vCenter Server is the centralized management utility for VMware, and is used to manage virtual machines, multiple ESXi hosts, and all dependent components from a single centralized location.
