5 VMware Virtualization Tools and Platforms You Can’t Ignore in 2024

Written by Adele Noble » Updated on: October 25th, 2024

Virtualization has become a foundational element for modern IT infrastructure. It offers unmatched flexibility, efficiency, and cost-effective operation for businesses of all sizes.

VMware is a leader in virtualization solutions that continues to innovate indispensable virtualization tools in 2024.

VMware solutions have a 44.51% share in the virtualization market. These solutions optimize server utilization, improve cloud management, and streamline disaster recovery options.

Most importantly, VMware virtualization solutions empower your IT department to achieve efficiency with its advanced tools and features.

Let’s discuss five VMware tools you can’t ignore in 2024.

#1: VMware vSphere Hypervisor Platform

VMWare virtualization provides the vSphere hypervisor platform with a robust and expandable framework for virtualizing hardware resources. This platform establishes a foundation for modern data centers by enabling the generation and management of several virtual machines on physical servers.

This platform plays a crucial role in hiding, pooling, and automating your data center's hardware-based resources and allows multiple operating systems to run simultaneously on a single physical machine.

VMware vSphere Hypervisor, also known as ESXi, is a bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly on top of a physical server. ESXi does not require a host OS to manage virtual environments. It is a lightweight layer that abstracts hardware resources such as CPU, memory, storage, and networking to provide a virtualization environment where multiple VMs can operate.

Core Features of VMware ESXi:

Bare-Metal Architecture: ESXi runs directly on the hardware to ensure low latency and minimal overhead.

Resource Allocation: ESXi can allocate resources dynamically based on VM requirements to provide efficient resource management.

VM Management: Using vSphere's management interface, administrators can manage multiple VMs, allocate specific hardware resources, and control VM lifecycles.

Hardware Compatibility: ESXi supports a wide range of server hardware, which makes it highly versatile across different environments.

Small Footprint: ESXi has a tiny disk footprint, which helps reduce its resource consumption and installation time.

VMkernel

VMkernel is a crucial element of ESXi, which handles hardware resource management and scheduling between VMs. The VMkernel provides:

It ensures that virtual machines are allocated the correct amount of physical and virtual memory.
This method efficiently distributes physical CPU resources to VMs, allowing multiple operating systems to share hardware resources without interfering with each other.
It manages input/output operations from storage devices and network interfaces to ensure optimal performance.

#2: VMware NSX for Network Virtualization

VMware NSX is VMware’s flagship network virtualization and security platform. It is designed to transform basic networking operations in your data center. It enables a fully virtualized, software-defined approach. NSX abstracts physical networking hardware such as switches, routers, and firewalls into your software to provide business agility, security, and automation capabilities.

Integrating NSX within a VMware ecosystem provides your businesses with a scalable, flexible, and secure infrastructure to support a wide range of networking services. NSX is vital to VMware’s Software-Defined Data Center (SDDC) vision. It enables business enterprises to deploy, manage, and secure applications quickly and flexibly.

Key Features of VMware NSX-

It abstracts network services from the underlying hardware to allow for the creation of isolated virtual networks.
It provides granular security controls at the workload level to enforce security policies for individual VMs.
It automates network provisioning, management, and scaling to reduce the complexity and time required for deployment.
It integrates with security tools for dynamic threat protection, intrusion detection, and firewall management.

#3: VMware vSAN to Revolutionize Storage for Virtual Environments

The most important tool for better storage solutions is VMware’s vSAN solutions. These solutions have become a game changer for companies looking to modernize their storage infrastructure.

vSAN provides a software-defined approach to storage with its hyper-converged architecture and tight integration into the VMware ecosystem. It eliminates the need for traditional storage hardware. This advanced ability leads to enhanced performance, scalability, and flexibility, making it the best tool for enterprises moving toward fully virtualized environments.

Key Features of VMware vSAN-

Hyper-converged storage integrated with vSphere for simplified management.
Storage policy-based management (SPBM) to align storage resources with specific application needs.
Efficient use of SSD and HDDs to deliver high performance and scalability.
Native data protection and disaster recovery capabilities.
Support for hybrid and all-flash architectures for performance optimization.

#4: VMware Horizon: The Future of Desktop Virtualization

Another virtualization tool to future-proof your business's IT environment is VMware Horizon. This tool stands at the forefront of this transformation, offering a comprehensive solution for virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and application delivery. VMware Horizon streamlines IT management, enhances security, and improves user experiences by providing a unified platform for delivering virtual desktops and applications.

VMware Horizon is a desktop and application virtualization platform that enables organizations to deliver virtualized desktops and applications to end-users across various devices and locations.

Key Features of VMware Horizon:

It provides a single platform for delivering both virtual desktops and published applications.
Horizon can be deployed on-premises, in the cloud, or as a hybrid solution.
This tool is designed to handle large-scale deployments with high performance and low latency.
It includes robust security measures to protect sensitive data and user sessions.

#5: VMware vRealize Suite as a Complete Cloud Management Solution

VMware vRealize Suite is an integrated set of cloud management tools designed to provide comprehensive management for virtualized and cloud environments. The suite offers automation, monitoring, and management capabilities of IT resources, enabling organizations to efficiently manage their private, public, and hybrid clouds from a single platform.

Key Elements of VMware vRealize Suite:

It provides performance and capacity management for virtualized and cloud environments.
It delivers self-service provisioning, orchestration, and automation for IT services.
It offers log management and analysis to enhance visibility and troubleshooting.

Conclusion

VMware continues to lead the market in 2024 with its suite of advanced and powerful tools designed to meet the evolving needs of modern businesses. These tools include the robust hypervisor capabilities of vSphere 8, the advanced network virtualization of NSX, and many more capabilities mentioned in the blog. Although each of these tools has unique capabilities that address most of the challenges associated with virtualization, These five tools and solutions must be addressed to improve your business performance.

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