Recently I have taken, failed later taken and passed my VMware 2V0–620 – vSphere 6 Foundations Exam and passed. I am now in the process of practicing and studying for proctored exam(s) for the VMware Certified Professional 6 – Data Center Virtualization Certificate.
With that there are many terms, acronyms, and Glossary items I will need to remember.
I am adding a list of terms and will expand on them as I come across new ones.
VM: Virtual Machine – a software computer that, like a physical computer, runs an operating system and applications. https://pubs.vmware.com/vsphere-50/topic/com.vmware.vsphere.vm_admin.doc_50/GUID-CEFF6D89-8C19-4143-8C26-4B6D6734D2CB.html
ESXi: The vSphere Hypervisor from VMware (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor.
VMFS: Virtual Machine File System for ESXi hosts, a clustered file system for running VMs
DCUI: Direct Console User Interface
iSCSI: Ethernet-based shared storage protocol.
SAS: Drive type for local disks (also SATA).
FCoE: Fibre Channel over Ethernet, a networking and storage technology.
HBA: Host Bus Adapter for Fibre Channel storage networks.
LUN: Logical unit number, identifies shared storage (Fibre Channel/iSCSI).
IOPs: Input/Outputs per second, detailed measurement of a drive’s performance.
pRDM: Physical mode raw device mapping, presents a LUN directly to a VM.
vRDM: Virtual mode raw device mapping, encapsulates a path to a LUN specifically for one VM in a VMDK.
SAN: Storage area network, a shared storage technique for block protocols (Fibre Channel/iSCSI).
NAS: Network attached storage, a shared storage technique for file protocols (NFS).
NFS: Network file system, a file-based storage protocol.
DAS: Direct attached storage, disk devices in a host directly.
VAAI: vStorage APIs for Array Integration, the ability to offload I/O commands to the disk array.
SSD: Solid state disk, a non-rotational drive that is faster than rotating drives.
VM Snapshot: A point-in-time representation of a VM.
ALUA: Asymmetrical logical unit access, a storage array feature. Duncan Epping explains it well.
VMX: VM configuration file.
VMEM: The page file of the guest VM.
NVRAM: A VM file storing the state of the VM BIOS.
VMDK: The virtual machine disk format, containing the operating system of the VM. VMware’s virtual disk format.
VMSN: Snapshot state file of the running VM.
VMSD: VM file for storing information and metadata about snapshots.
VMSS: VM file for storing suspended state.
VMTM: VM file containing team data.
VMXF: Supplemental configuration file for when VMs are used in a team.
Quiesce: The act of quieting (pausing running processes) a VM, usually through VMware Tools.
NUMA: Non-uniform memory access, when multiple processors are involved their memory access is relative to their location.
Virtual NUMA: Virtualizes NUMA with VMware hardware version 8 VMs.
VSAN: Virtual SAN, a new VMware announcement for making DAS deliver SAN features in a virtualized manner.
vSwitch: A virtual switch, places VMs on a physical network.
vDS: vNetwork Distributed Switch, an enhanced version of the virtual switch.
ISO: Image file, taken from ISO 9660file system for optical drives.
vSphere Client: Administrative interface of vCenter Server.
vSphere Web Client: Web-based administrative interface of vCenter Server.
Host Profiles: Feature to deploy a pre-determined configuration to an ESXi host.
Auto Deploy: Technique to automatically install ESXi to a host.
VUM: vSphere Update Manager, a way to update hosts and VMs with latest patches, VMware Tools and product updates.
vCLI: vSphere Command Line Interface, allows tasks to be run against hosts and vCenter Server.
vSphere HA: High Availability, will restart a VM on another host if it fails.
vCenter Server Heartbeat: Will keep the vCenter Server available in the event a host fails which is running vCenter.
Virtual Appliance: A pre-packed VM with an application on it.
vCenter Server: Server application that runs vSphere.
vCSA: Virtual appliance edition of vCenter Server.
vCloud Director: Application to pool vCenter environments and enable self-deployment of VMs.
vCloud Automation Center: IT service delivery through policy and portals, get familiar with vCAC.
VADP: vSphere APIs for Data Protection, a way to leverage the infrastructure for backups.
MOB: Managed Object Reference, a technique vCenter uses to classify every item.
DNS: Domain Name Service, a name resolution protocol. Not related to VMware, but it is imperative you set DNS up correctly to virtualize with vSphere.
vSphere: Collection of VMs, ESXi hosts, and vCenter Server.
vCenter Linked Mode: A way of pooling vCenter Servers, typically across geographies.
vMotion: A VM migration technique.
Storage vMotion: A VM storage migration technique from one datastore to another.
vSphere DRS: Distributed Resource Scheduler, service that manages performance of VMs.
vSphere SDRS: Storage DRS, manages free space and datastore latency for VMs in pools.
Storage DRS Cluster: A collection SDRS objects (volumes, VMs, configuration).
Shares: Numerical value representing the relative priority of a VM.
Datastore: A disk resource where VMs can run.
vSphere Fault Tolerance: An availability technique to run the networking, memory and CPU of a VM on two hosts to accommodate one host failure.
DPM: Distributed Power Management, a way to shut down ESXi hosts when they are not being used and turn them back on when needed.
vShield Zones: A firewall for vSphere VMs.
vCenter Orchestrator: An automation technique for vCloud environments.
OVF: Standards based format for delivering virtual appliances.
OVA: Packaging of OVF, usually as a URL to download the actual OVF from a source Internet site. Read more here.
VMware Tools: A set of drivers for VMs to work correctly on synthetic hardware devices. Read more on VMware Tools.
vSphere Licensing: Different features are available as the licensing level increases, from free ESXi to Enterprise Plus.
vCloud Suite: The collection of technologies to deliver the VMware Software Defined Data Center.
VMware Compatibility Matrix: List of supported storage, servers, and more for VMware technologies. Bookmark this page!
vSphere role: A permissions construct assigned to users or groups.
Configuration Maximums: Guidelines of how big a VM can be; see the newest for vSphere 5.5.
Transparent page sharing: A memory management technique; eliminates duplicate blocks in host memory.
Memory compression: A memory management technique; applies a compressor to active memory blocks on the host.
Balloon driver: A memory management technique; reclaims guest VM memory via VMware Tools.
Hypervisor swap: A memory management technique; puts guest VM memory to disk on the host.
Hot-add: A feature to add a device to a VM while it is running, such as a VMDK.
Dynamic grow: A feature to increase the size of VMDK while the VM is running.
CPU Ready: The percentage of time that the VM is ready to get a CPU cycle (higher number is bad).
Nested hypervisor: The ability to run ESXi as a VM either on ESXi, VMware Workstation, or VMware Fusion.
Virtual hardware version: A revision of a VM that aligns to its compatibility. vSphere 5.5 is hardware version 10, for example.
Maintenance mode: An administration technique where a host evacuates it’s running and powered off VMs safely before changes are made.
vApp: An organizational construct combining one or more VMs.
Cluster: A collection of hosts in a vSphere data center.
Resource pool: A performance management technique, has DRS rules applied to it and contains one or more VMs, vApps, etc.
vSphere folder: An organizational construct, a great way to administer permissions and roles on VMs.
Datacenter: Parent object of the vSphere Cluster.
vCloud Networking and Security: Part of the vCloud Suite; provides basic networking and security functionality.
vCenter Site Recovery Manager: An automated solution to prepare for a site failover event for the entire vSphere environment.
NSX: New technology virtualizing the network layer for VMware environments. Read more here.
VDI: Virtual desktop infrastructure, also called DaaS (Desktop as a Service) from Horizon View; run as ESXi VMs and with vSphere.
VXLAN: VMs with a logical network across different networks.
vCenter Configuration Manager: Part of vCloud Suite that automates configuration and compliance for multiple platforms.
vCenter Single Sign on: Authentication construct between components of the vCloud Suite.
VM-VM affinity: Sets rules so two VMs should run on the same ESXi host or stay separated.
Storage I/O Control: I/O prioritization for VMs.
NIOC: vSphere Network I/O Control – Enabled by default network I/O control is enabled, distributed switch traffic is divided into the following predefined network resource pools: Fault Tolerance traffic, iSCSI traffic, vMotion traffic, management traffic, vSphere Replication (VR) traffic, NFS traffic, and virtual machine traffic.