Designing ESXi

The VMware ESXi design comprises the fundamental OS and processes that run on top of ESXi, and it is called VMkernel. VMkernel runs all processes on ESXi, including ESXi agents, management software, as well as virtual machines. ESXi gains control over hardware devices on the physical servers and manages resources for the virtual machines. The main processes that route on top of the ESXi VMkernel are as follows:

• Direct Console User Interface (DCUI)

• Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM)

• Several agents used to enable high-level VMware infrastructure management from remote applications

• Common Information Model (CIM)

  

VMkernel is a POSIX-like OS developed by VMware and provides functionalities similar to other OS', such as control, process creation, process threads, signals, and filesystems. ESXi is designed precisely to support multiple VMs and provide core functionalities such as resource scheduling, I/O stacks, device drivers, and so on.

VMware ESXi was restructured to permit VMware consumers...