Glossary
AppDefense: AppDefense is a data center endpoint security product that protects applications running in vSphere.
Add-on: In vSphere Lifecycle Manager, A vendor add-on is a collection of components that you can use to customize an ESXi image with OEM content and drivers.
Base Image: The ESXI base image, which is the ESXi image that VMware provides with each release of ESXi, is a complete of components that can boot up a server.
Baseline: In vSphere Lifecyle Manager, a baseline is a set of bulletins.
Cluster: A cluster is a set of ESXi hosts that are intended to work together as a unit.
Content Library: A content library is a repository that can be used to share files such as virtual machine templates, vApps, and image files among a set of vCenter Servers.
CPU Ready Time: CPU Ready Time is a metric that indicates the amount of time a VCPU is ready to work (has a workload and is ready to be scheduled) but is waiting to be scheduled on hardware. High CPU Ready Time is a sign of CPU contention.
Certificate Manager: Certificate Manager is a command line utility that you can use to generate Certificate Signing Requests (CSRs) and replace certificates for machine and solution users.
CIM: Common Information Model (CIM) is an open standard that defines a framework for agent-less, standards-based monitoring of ESXi host hardware resources. The framework consists of a CIM broker and a set of CIM providers.
Content Library: A Content Library is a container objects for virtual machine templates, vApp templates, ISO images, and other files that you may want to share among multiple vCenter Servers in a vSphere environment.
DRS: Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) balances VM workload in a cluster based on compute usage. Includes live (vMotion) migrations of VMs when necessary.
Disk Group: A disk group is a group of local disks on an ESXi host contributing to the vSAN datastore.
Data Center: A data center is a container object in the vSphere inventory that is an aggregation of all the different types of objects used to work in virtual infrastructure.
Etherchannel: an Etherchannel is a logical channel formed by bundling together two or more links to aggregate bandwidth and provide redundancy. Another acceptable name for Etherchannel (an IOS term) is port channel (an NXOS term). Another acceptable name is Link Aggregation Group (LAG)
ESXTOP: ESXTOP is a utility that provides a real time, detailed look at resource usage from the ESXi Shell.
GPU: A Graphic Processing Unit (GPU) is a specialized processor developed for parallel processing, primarily for rendering graphical images.
Hybrid Clouds: Hybrid clouds are clouds that are a combination of private clouds, public clouds, and on-premises infrastructure
Host Profile: A Host Profile is a feature that enables you to encapsulate the configuration of one host and apply it to other hosts.
HPP: High-Performance Plug-in (HPP) is the default plug-in that claims NVMe-oF targets.
I/O Filter: I/O filters are software components that can be installed on ESXi hosts and can offer additional data services to virtual machines.
Image: In vSphere Lifecyle Manager, an image is a description of which software, drivers, and firmware to run on a host.
Micro-segmentation: Micro-segmentation is a type of network segmentation that decreases the level of risk and increases the security posture of the modern data center by providing granular control and distributed stateful firewalling. Effectively, it allows you to place a firewall on each VM network connection.
MOB: The managed object browser (MOB) is a web-based interface that provides you with a means to explore the VMkernel object model.
Network resource pool: A network resource pool is a mechanism that enables you to apply a part of the bandwidth that is reserved for virtual machine system traffic to a set of distributed port groups
NetFlow: Netflow is a switch feature that collects IP network traffic as it enters or exits an interface. Netflow data allows you to have an overview of traffic flows, based on the network source and destination.
NVMe devices: Non-volatile memory express (NVMe) devices are a high-performance alternative to SCSI storage.
OVF Template: An Open Virtual Format (OVF) template is a set of files with the OVF, VMDK, and MF file extensions
OVA Template: An Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) is essentially a single-file distribution of an OVF package
Proactive HA: Proactive HA minimizes VM downtime by proactively detecting hardware failures and placing the host Quarantined Mode or Maintenance Mode.
Private VLAN: Private VLANs (PVLANs) are an extension of the VLAN standard. They are not double encapsulation but do allow a VLAN to effectively be subdivided into other VLANs
Port Mirroring: Port mirroring allows administrators to duplicate everything that is happening on one distributed port to then be visible on another distributed port.
Predictive DRS: Predictive DRS is a feature that leverages the predictive analytics of vRealize Operations (vROps) Manager and vSphere DRS to provide workload balancing prior to the occurrence of resource utilization spikes and resource contention
Proactive HA: Proactive High Availability (Proactive HA) integrates with select hardware partners to detect degraded components and evacuate VMs from affected vSphere hosts before an incident causes a service interruption.
Performance Charts: The vSphere Client Performance Charts enable you to view performance metrics in different types of charts, depending on the selected object and metric type
PMem device: PMem devices are non-volatile dual in-line memory modules (NVDIMMs) on the ESXi host which reside in normal memory slots
PowerCLI: VMware PowerCLI is a command-line and scripting tool built on Windows PowerShell that provides cmdlets for managing and automating VMware products, including vSphere.
RDM: An RDM is a mapping file containing metadata that resides in a VMFS datastore and acts as a proxy for a physical storage device (LUN), allowing a virtual machine to access the storage device directly.
Resource Pool: Resource pools are container objects in the vSphere inventory that are used to compartmentalize the CPU and memory resources of a host or cluster.
Storage vMotion: Storage vMotion is the hot, cross datastpre migration of a virutal machine.
SR-IOV: Single Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) is a feature that allows a single Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) device to appear as multiple devices to the hypervisor (ESXi) or to a virtual machine’s guest operating system.
Skyline: VMware Skyline is a proactive support technology, developed by VMware Global Services, that is available to customers with an active Production Support or Premier Services agreement.
SRM: VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) is a business continuity solution that you can use to orchestrate planned migrations, test recoveries, and disaster recoveries.
SGX: Intel Software Guard Extension (SGX) is a processor-specific technology for application developers to protect code and data from disclosure or modification
Stateless caching: With stateless caching, Auto Deploy does not store ESXi configuration or state data within the host. Instead, during subsequent boots, the host must connect to the Auto Deploy server to retrieve its configuration.
SIOC: Storage I/O Control (SIOC) is a vSphere feature that allows you to prioritize storage access during periods of contention, ensuring the more critical virtual machines obtain more I/O than less critical VMs.
STS: vCenter Single Sign-On Security Token Service (STS) is a Web service that issues, validates, and renews security tokens.
Templates: Templates are objects in the vSphere inventory that effectively are non-executable virtual machines.
TPM: Trusted Platform Modules (TPM) chips are secure cryptoprocessors that enhance host security by providing a trust assurance rooted in hardware as opposed to software
UMDS: VMware vSphere Update Manager Download Service (UMDS) is an optional module of vSphere Lifecycle Manager, whose primary function is to download data when Lifecyle Manager does not have Internet connectivity.
vCenter Single Sign-on (SSO): vCenter Single Sign-On is an authentication broker and security token exchange infrastructure.
VMC: VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS is an integrated cloud offering jointly developed by AWS and VMware that provides a highly scalable, secure service that allows organizations to seamlessly migrate and extend their on-premises vSphere-based environments to the AWS Cloud
vCenter HA: vCenter HA is a native high availability solution for VCSA.
vSphere HA: vSphere HA provides automated failover protection for VMs against host, hardware, network, and guest OS issues. In case of host system failure, cold migrates and restarts failed VMs on surviving hosts.
vSAN File Service: The vSAN File service provides vSAN backed file shares that virtual machines can access as NFSv3 and NFSv4.1 file shares.
vVOLs: vVOLs is an integration and management framework that virtualizes SAN/NAS arrays, enabling a more efficient operational model,
Virtual Volume: Virtual volumes are encapsulations of virtual machine files, virtual disks, and their derivatives that are stored natively inside a storage system.
VLAN: A virtual LAN (VLAN) is a logical partition of a physical network at the data link layer (Layer 2).
vDS: A vSphere Distributed Switch (vDS) acts as a single virtual switch for all associated hosts in a data center. It provides centralized provisioning, monitoring, and management of virtual networks for associated hosts and virtual machines
VMware Service Lifecycle Manager: VMware Service Lifecycle Manager is a service running in vCenter server that monitors the health of services and takes preconfigured remediation action when it detects a failure.
vSphere FT: vSphere Fault Tolerance (FT) provides continuous availability for a virtual machine (the Primary VM) by ensuring that the state of a Secondary VM is identical at any point in the instruction execution of the virtual machine.
VCMP: Virtual Machine Component Protection (VMCP) is a vSphere HA feature that can detect datastore accessibility issues and provide remediation for impacted virtual machines.
vSphere Inventory: The vSphere inventory is a collection of managed virtual and physical objects.
vApp: A vApp is a container object in vSphere that provides a format for packaging and managing applications.
Virtual Machine Snapshot: Virtual Machine Snapshots capture the state of a virtual machine and the data in the virtual machine at a specific point in time.
VMware Tools: VMware Tools is a set of software modules and services, including services that can communicate with the VMkernel.
vMotion: vMotion is the hot, cross host migration of a virutal machine.
vCenter Converter: VMware vCenter Converter Standalone (Converter) is a free solution that automates the process of converting existing Windows and Linux machines into virtual machines running in vSphere environment.
vRLI: vRealize Log Insight (vRLI) is a software product that provides intelligent log management for infrastructure and applications for any environment
vRA: vRealize Automation (vRA) is an automation platform for private and multi-cloud environments.
VMware Horizon: VMware Horizon is a platform for securely delivering virtual desktops and applications in private and hybrid clouds.
vSphere Replication: VMware vSphere Replication is an extension to VMware vCenter Server that provides hypervisor-based virtual machine replication and recovery
vmdir: VMware Directory Service (vmdir) is an identity source that handles SAML certificate management for authentication with vCenter Single Sign-On.
VMCA: VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA) provisions each ESXi host, each machine in the environment, and each solution user with a certificate signed by VMCA
VECS: VMware Endpoint Certificate Store (VECS) is the local (client-side) repository for certificates, private keys, and other certificate information that can be stored in a keystore.
vTPM: Virtual Trusted Platform Module (vTPM) is a software-based representation of a physical Trusted Platform Module (TPM) 2.0 chip
VMware Lifecyle Manager: VMware Lifecycle Manger Manager replaces VMware Update Manager from prior versions. Lifecycle Manager adds onto the functionality of Update Manger to include features and capabilities for ESXi lifecycle management at the cluster level.
vSphere Client: vSphere Client is the HTML5 based GUI used for vSphere administration.
VMware Enhanced Authentication Plug-in: VMware Enhanced Authentication Plug-in provides Integrated Windows Authentication and Windows-based smart card functionality. In the vSphere 6.5 release, the VMware Enhanced Authentication Plug-in replaced the Client Integration Plug-in.
VMware Certificate Authority (VMCA): The VMCA is responsible for issuing certificates for VMware solution users, certificates for machines running required services, and certificates for ESXi hosts.
VECS: The VMware End Point Certificate Service (VECS) is a local repository for certificates and private keys. VECS is a mandatory component that will be used when VMCA is not signing certificates.
VIMTOP: VIMTOP is a tool you can run in the vCenter Server appliance to see resource usage for services running in the appliance.
vPMemDisk: A virtual PMem disk (vPMemDisk) is a regular virtual disk that is assigned a PMem Storage Policy forcing it to be placed on a host-local PMem datastore.
vSAN Fault Domain: A vSAN Fault Domain is a set of at least one hosts that are members of a vSAN cluster. Fault domains provide additional protection against outage in the event of a rack or blade chassis failing.
vSAN File Service: The vSAN File Service is file service on a vSAN cluster, which enables you to create file shares
VIB: vSphere Installation Bundles (VIBs) are ESXi software packages, created and signed by VMware and its partners, that contains solutions, drivers, CIM providers, and applications.
VMware vSphere Life Cycle Manager: VMware vSphere Life Cycle Manager is a service, which runs in vCenter Server, that provides simple, centralized lifecycle management for ESXi hosts and clusters using of images and baselines.
VBS: Microsoft virtualization-based security (VBS) is a Microsoft feature for Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 operating systems that uses hardware and software virtualization to enhance system security by creating an isolated, hypervisor-restricted, specialized subsystem.
Witness Host: A witness host is a stretched vSAN component that consists only of metadata and serves as a tiebreaker.