VMware vSphere For Small and Midsize Business
For Small and Midsize Business

Overview:

VMware vSphere Essentials Kit and Essentials Plus Kit deliver the industry-leading virtualization platform at an affordable price for IT environments that run 20 or fewer server workloads. With vSphere Essentials Plus Kit, a small business can leverage a comprehensive and cost-effective virtualization solution to protect its business, reduce its IT footprint and save on IT costs.

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Key Benefits

• Provide business continuity and always-available IT.
• Reduce IT footprint and simplify management.
• Save on IT hardware costs.
• Improve service levels and application quality.
• Strengthen security and data protection.

What is VMware vSphere?

VMware vSphere is the industry's leading and most reliable virtualization platform. vSphere simplifies IT by separating applications and operating systems from the underlying hardware. Your existing applications see dedicated resources, but your servers can be managed as a pool of resources. The result is your business running on a simplified yet resilient IT environment.

What are vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus?

vSphere Essentials Kit and Essentials Plus Kit are designed for small businesses that are getting started with virtualization. Both provide virtualization and centralized management for up to three server hosts. vSphere Essentials Kit provides server consolidation to help you get the most out of your hardware and reduce hardware costs. vSphere Essentials Plus Kit provides business continuity with a smaller IT footprint, which reduces overall hardware costs.

Small businesses can ensure business continuity without shared storage hardware by using features such as vSphere High Availability (automatic restart of applications when server failures are detected) and vSphere vMotion (elimination of planned downtime during server maintenance). Protect your business applications and data with features such as vSphere Data Protection™ (agentless backup and recovery of virtual machines) and VMware vShield Endpoint™ (agentless antivirus and antimalware protection for virtual machines). vSphere Replication adds low-cost replication for your virtual machines and provides a foundation for small businesses to leverage a cloud-based disaster-recovery solution from a VMware Cloud Service Provider.

The result is an always-available IT environment that is more cost-effective, resilient and responsive to changing business needs. As small businesses grow and their needs increase, they can easily upgrade to vSphere Acceleration Kits for more-advanced capabilities.

Simplified Virtualization Deployment via VMware Go Pro

vSphere Essentials Kit and Essentials Plus Kit include VMware Go Pro™ for easy virtualization installation and management. With Go Pro, small businesses can leverage a wizard-based install to easily and quickly deploy virtualization from any Web browser. Go Pro optimizes your IT environment's uptime and reliability. It provides one-click IT assessments to identify performance, security, and downtime risks and recommendations. Monitor and secure your IT infrastructure health with automated patch management, and maximize your hardware resources throughout their life cycle with hardware asset management.

Smaller IT Footprint: Shared Storage Hardware Not Required

With vSphere Essentials Plus Kit, small businesses can use vSphere Storage Appliance to transform their servers' internal storage into a single shared storage resource that enables continuous application availability. As a result, they can provide business continuity in a smaller footprint, without investing in additional shared-storage hardware. The resiliency of vSphere Storage Appliance eliminates any single point of failure within your IT environment. If a vSphere server within the vSphere Storage Appliance cluster goes down, your data will seamlessly fail over to another vSphere server in the cluster.

How are vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus Used?

• Maximize application availability and protect information assets – Achieve always-available IT with live migration for virtual machines and high availability for applications in virtual-machine clusters. Protect your data with the reliability of vSphere and integrated backup, recovery and failover features.
• Consolidate and optimize IT investments – Achieve consolidation ratios of 10:1 or higher, and improve hardware utilization from 5–15 percent to 80 percent or more, without sacrificing application performance.
• Simplify management and enhance productivity – Provision new applications in minutes instead of days or weeks, monitor virtual-machine performance, and automate patch and update management.
• Streamline software development – Safely test complex multitier configurations in a secure, isolated sandbox environment while enabling test and development teams to share server, network and storage infrastructure.

VMware vSphere Essentials enable you to virtualize and consolidate many application
workloads onto three physical servers running vSphere and centrally manage them with
VMware vCenter™ Server for Essentials.

Key Features:

VMware vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus include the following key features and components:

• VMware ESXi™ hypervisor architecture provides a robust, production-proven, high-performance virtualization layer that enables multiple virtual machines to share hardware resources with performance that can match or exceed native throughput.
• VMware vCenter Server™ for Essentials provides centralized management and performance monitoring for all virtual machines and vSphere hosts with built-in physical-to-virtual (P2V) machine conversion and rapid provisioning, using virtual-machine templates.
• vSphere Virtual Symmetric Multiprocessing (Virtual SMP) enables the use of ultrapowerful virtual machines that have up to four virtual CPUs.
• vSphere Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) enables virtual machines to access shared storage devices (Fibre Channel, iSCSI, etc.) and is a key enabling technology for other vSphere components such as Storage vMotion.
• vSphere Thin Provisioning provides dynamic allocation of shared storage capacity, enabling IT organizations to implement a tiered storage strategy while reducing storage spending by up to 50 percent.
• vSphere vStorage APIs provide integration with supported third-party data protection.
• vCenter Update Manager™ automates tracking, patching and updating for vSphere hosts and for applications and OSs running in VMware virtual machines.
• vCenter Converter™ enables IT administrators to rapidly convert physical servers and third-party virtual machines to VMware virtual machines.
• vCenter Operations Manager Foundation™ enables you to leverage comprehensive views into health, risk and efficiency scores of your vSphere environment infrastructure. Quickly drill down to see what's causing current workload conditions, pinpoint potential problems in the future and identify areas with inefficient use of resources.
• vSphere VMsafe APIs enable the use of security products that work in conjunction with the virtualization layer to provide higher levels of security to virtual machines than are possible even with physical servers.
• Hardware compatibility is possible with the broadest range of 32- and 64-bit servers and OSs, storage and networking equipment, and enterprise management tools.
• Go Pro provides a wizard-based install from any Web browser for easy virtualization deployment, as well as patch management for optimizing the uptime and reliability of your IT environment.

In addition, VMware vSphere Essentials Plus includes the following business-continuity features and components for always available IT:

• vSphere High Availability provides cost-effective, automated restart within minutes for all applications in the event of hardware or OS failures.
• vSphere vMotion enables live migration of virtual machines across servers with no disruption to users or service loss, eliminating the need to schedule application downtime for server maintenance.
• vSphere Data Protection provides simple, cost effective backup and recovery for virtual machines. It is a newly architected solution based on EMC Avamar technology that enables agentless backups with built-in deduplication.
• vShield Endpoint provides agentless antivirus and antimalware protection to secure your virtual machines.
• vSphere Replication provides low-cost replication for your virtual machine and serves as the foundation for leveraging a cloud-based disaster-recovery solution from a VMware Cloud Service Provider.
• vSphere Storage Appliance enables business-continuity features (vSphere High Availability and vMotion) by adding shared storage capabilities to servers.

Benefits	VMware Essentials	VMware Essentials Plus
Make better use of existing infrastructure
Save time in managing infrastructure with vCenter central management
Improve application availability with vMotion (no planned downtime) High Availability (Business continuity)
Protect business data with VMware Data Recovery

What's New in VMware vSphere 5.1?:

VMware vSphere 5.1 is the latest release of the industry-leading virtualization platform from VMware. This new release contains the following new features and enhancements:

Infrastructure Services (Compute, Storage, and Network)

Compute

• Larger virtual machines – Virtual machines can grow two times larger than in any previous release to support even the most advanced applications. Virtual machines can now have up to 64 virtual CPUs (vCPUs) and 1TB of virtual RAM (vRAM).
• New virtual machine format – New features in the virtual machine format (version 9) in vSphere 5.1 include support for larger virtual machines, CPU performance counters and virtual shared graphics acceleration designed for enhanced performance.

Storage

• Flexible, space-efficient storage for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) – A new disk format enables the correct balance between space efficiency and I/O throughput for the virtual desktop.

Network

• vSphere Distributed Switch – Enhancements such as Network Health Check, Configuration Backup and Restore, Roll Back and Recovery, and Link Aggregation Control Protocol support and deliver more enterprise-class networking functionality and a more robust foundation for cloud computing.
• Single-root I/O virtualization (SR-IOV) support – Support for SR-IOV optimizes performance for sophisticated applications.

Application Services (Availability, Security, and Automation)

Availability

• vSphere vMotion – Leverage the advantages of vMotion (zero-downtime migration) without the need for shared storage configurations. This new vMotion capability applies to the entire network.
• vSphere Data Protection – Simple and cost effective backup and recovery for virtual machines. vSphere Data Protection is a newly architected solution based on EMC Avamar technology that allows admins to back up virtual machine data to disk without the need of agents and with built-in deduplication. This feature replaces the vSphere Data Recovery product available with previous releases of vSphere.
• vSphere Replication – vSphere Replication enables efficient array-agnostic replication of virtual machine data over the LAN or WAN. vSphere Replication simplifies management enabling replication at the virtual machine level and enables RPOs as low as 15 minutes.
• Zero-downtime upgrade for VMware Tools – After you upgrade to the VMware Tools available with version 5.1, no reboots will be required for subsequent VMware Tools upgrades.

Security

• VMware vShield Endpoint™ – Delivers a proven endpoint security solution to any workload with an approach that is simplified, efficient, and cloud-aware. vShield Endpoint enables 3rd party endpoint security solutions to eliminate the agent footprint from the virtual machines, offload intelligence to a security virtual appliance, and run scans with minimal impact.

Automation

• vSphere Storage DRS™ and Profile-Driven Storage – New integration with VMware vCloud® Director™ enables further storage efficiencies and automation in a private cloud environment.
• vSphere Auto Deploy™ – Two new methods for deploying new vSphere hosts to an environment make the Auto Deploy process more highly available then ever before.

Management Services

Management

• VMware vCenter™ Operations Manager Foundation enables you to leverage comprehensive views into health, risk and efficiency scores of your vSphere environment infrastructure. Quickly drill down to see what's causing current workload conditions, pinpoint potential problems in the future and identify areas with inefficient use of resources.

Management (with VMware vCenter Server™)

• vSphere Web Client –The vSphere Web Client is now the core administrative interface for vSphere. This new flexible, robust interface simplifies vSphere control through shortcut navigation, custom tagging, enhanced scalability, and the ability to manage from anywhere with Internet Explorer or Firefox-enabled devices.
• vCenter Single Sign-On – Dramatically simplify vSphere administration by allowing users to log in once to access all instances or layers of vCenter without the need for further authentication.
• vCenter Orchestrator – Orchestrator simplifies installation and configuration of the powerful workflow engine in vCenter Server. Newly designed workflows enhance ease of use, and can also be launched directly from the new vSphere Web Client.

How To Buy:

	VMware Essentials	VMware Essentials Plus
CapEx Savings
Business Continuity for planned and unplanned downtime vMotion, High Availability, VSA
Business Data Protection vSphere Data Protection, vShield Endpoint, vSphere Replication

*NOTE – The vSphere Essentials kit is the only offering that contains the option of per incident support and requirement of subscription for one year. All other kits and editions listed below have support and subscription requirements (SnS) for one year.

Prices listed for licenses only, Production and Basic Subscription and Support (SnS), and Incident Support (for vSphere Essentials Kit) are sold separately. All vSphere offerings below can also be upgraded to a higher vSphere kit or edition at any time.

VMware vSphere Essentials Kit - Subscription is required. VMware vSphere Essentials includes vCenter Server Essentials and ESXi for 3 hosts, plus the following features: vCenter agents, 8-way vSMP, and Update Manager. vSphere Essentials is limited for use on up to 3 hosts and on servers with up to two processors only. 192 GB total VRAM entitlement. The server hosts must be managed by the vCenter Server Essentials edition that is provided with this bundle, and that same vCenter Server Essentials edition cannot be used to manage other server hosts not included with this edition.

VMware vSphere Essentials Plus Kit - SnS is required. VMware vSphere Essentials Plus includes vCenter Server Essentials and ESXi for 3 hosts, plus the following features: vCenter agents, 8-way vSMP, Update Manager, Data Recovery and High Availability. vSphere Essentials Plus is limited for use on up to 3 hosts and on servers with up to two processors only. 192 GB total VRAM entitlement.The server hosts must be managed by the vCenter Server Essentials edition that is provided with this bundle, and that same vCenter Server Essentials edition cannot be used to manage other server hosts not included with this edition.

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials Plus with vSphere Storage Appliance Bundle PROMO- SnS is required and sold separately. Renewals will be based on the Bundle SnS prices instead of the individual components in the kit. Promo good from 8/5/11 thru 12/31/11.

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials to vSphere 5 Essentials Plus Kit for 3 hosts (Max 2 processors per host) Upgrade - vSphere 5 Essentials Plus SnS is required and sold separately. Renewals will be based on the Bundle SnS prices instead of the individual components in the kit.

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials to vSphere 5 Standard Acceleration Kit for 8 processors Upgrade - One purchase per customer site. Each VS5 Standard AK contains 8 VS5 Standard edition license, each of which contributes 1 CPU and 32 GB of vRAM (256 GB of VRAM total) entitlement towards total available vRAM pool. SnS is required. Renewals will be based on then current list SnS prices of the component products in the kit.

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials to vSphere 5 Enterprise Acceleration Kit for 6 processors Upgrade - One purchase per customer site. Each VS5 Enterprise AK contains 6 VS5 Enterprise edition license, each of which contributes 1 CPU and 64 GB of vRAM (384 GB of VRAM total) entitlement towards total available vRAM pool. SnS is required. Renewals will be based on then current list SnS prices of the component products in the kit. (Includes vSphere 5 Enterprise for 6 Processors, 1 vCenter Server 5 Standard)

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials to vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus Acceleration Kit for 6 processors Upgrade - One purchase per customer site. Each VS5 Enterprise Plus AK contains 6 VS5 Enterprise Plus edition license, each of which contributes 1 CPU and 96 GB of vRAM (384 GB of VRAM total) entitlement towards total available vRAM pool. SnS is required. Renewals will be based on then current list SnS prices of the component products in the kit. (Includes vSphere 5 Enterprise Plus for 6 Processors, 1 vCenter Server 5 Standard)

VMware vSphere 5 Essentials Plus to vSphere 5 Enterprise Acceleration Kit for 6 processors Upgrade - One purchase per customer site. Each VS5 Enterprise AK contains 6 VS5 Enterprise edition license, each of which contributes 1 CPU and 64 GB of vRAM (384 GB of VRAM total) entitlement towards total available vRAM pool. SnS is required. Renewals will be based on then current list SnS prices of the component products in the kit. (Includes vSphere 5 Enterprise for 6 Processors, 1 vCenter Server 5 Standard)

Support:

Per incident support available. Please contact us.

VMware Production Support & Subscription

Technical Support, 24 Hour Sev 1 Support -- 7 days a week.

Focused, 24-Hour Support For Production Environments

• Global, 24x7 support for Severity 1 issues
• Fast response times for critical issues
• Unlimited number of support requests
• Remote Support
• Online access to documentation and technical resources, knowledge base, discussion forums
• Product updates and upgrades

Overview

VMware Production Support is designed with your production environments in mind. Our global support centers are staffed around the clock to provide you access to our industry-leading expertise in virtualization and years of experience supporting virtual infrastructure products in real-world customer environments. We are committed to delivering enterprise-class, worldwide support with a single objective in mind: your success.

VMware Basic Support & Subscription Service

Technical Support, 12 Hours/Day, per published Business Hours, Mon. thru Fri.

Weekday Support for Test, Dev and Non-Critical Deployments

• Global, 12x5 access to support
• Unlimited number of support requests
• Remote Support
• Online access to documentation and technical resources, knowledge base, discussion forums
• Product updates and upgrades

Overview

VMware Basic Support is designed for non-critical applications and platforms that require support during normal business hours. Our global support centers have been strategically placed to provide you with fast and efficient access to the support center in your region. Each center is staffed with engineers that can provide industry-leading expertise in virtualization and years of experience supporting virtual infrastructure products in real-world customer environments. We are committed to delivering enterprise-class, worldwide support with a single objective in mind: your success.

Feature	Production Support	Basic Support
Hours of Operation	24 Hrs/Day 7 Days/Wk 365 Days/Yr 1	12 Hrs/Day Mon–Fri 1
Length of Service	1 or 3 Years	1 or 3 Years
Product Updates	Yes	Yes
Product Upgrades	Yes	Yes
Products Supported	All Products (excluding VMware Fusion and Player)	All Products (excluding VMware Fusion and Player)
Method of Access	Telephone/ Web	Telephone/ Web
Response Method	Telephone/ Email	Telephone/ Email
Remote Support	Yes	Yes
Access to VMware Web site	Yes	Yes
Access to VMware Discussion Forums and Knowledge Base	Yes	Yes
Max Number of Support Admins per Contract	6	4
Number of Support Requests	Unlimited	Unlimited
Target Response Times Critical (Severity 1 Major (Severity 2) Minor (Severity 3) Cosmetic (Severity 4)	30 minutes or less: 24x7 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours	4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours 12 business hours
Business Hours North America and Latin America Alaska, Hawaii South America (NASA) Europe, Middle East, Africa (EMEA Asia, Pacific Rim, Japan (APJ) Australia/New Zealand	Monday - Friday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (local time zone) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (EST/EDT) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (GMT/GMT+1) 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Singapore Time) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Sydney AET)	Monday - Friday 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (local time zone) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT) 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (EST/EDT) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (GMT/GMT+1) 8:30 a.m. to 8:30 p.m. (Singapore Time) 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (Sydney AET)

1Hours of operation for Gemstone are Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (PST/PDT) globally.
1Hours of operation for VMware Go Pro and vCenter Protect products are 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. (CST/CDT), except holidays.
1Hours of operation for VMware IT Business Management and IT Financial Management are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. (EST/EDT/GMT) except holidays.
1Hours of operation for Socialcast are 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. (PST/PDT).

Documentation:

Download the VMware vSphere Essentials and Essentials Plus Kits Datasheet (PDF).

Download the What's New in VMware vSphere 5.1? (PDF).