Virtual appliance

A virtual appliance (VA) is a virtual machine (VM) image file consisting of a pre-configured
operating system (OS) environment and a single application.

The purpose of a virtual appliance is to simplify delivery and operation of an application. To this
end, only necessary operating system components are included.

A virtual appliance can be deployed as a VM or a subset of a virtual machine running

on virtualization technology, such as VMware Workstation.

Benefit of Virtual Appliance:

->Deploying an application as a virtual appliance can eliminate problems with installation and
configuration, such as software or driver compatibility issues.

->Users can simply download a single file and run the application.

->Resources required for maintenance are also reduced.

->Virtual appliances have proven useful in deploying network applications.

->They are also helpful in grid computing, where they can solve problems introduced by
heterogeneous hardware and operating systems, and in the Software as a Service (SaaS) delivery
model, where the simplicity of the virtual appliance can help improve economies of scale.

Types of Virtual Appliance:

There are two types of virtual appliances,

->closed and
->open.

A closed VA is always packaged, distributed, maintained, updated and managed as a unit.

An open VA is accessible to customers for modifications. Developers can include a Web

interface for custom configurations or delivering patches and updates.

Virtual appliances are a subset of the broader class of software appliances.

 What is a "Virtual Appliance"?
In the Virtual Appliance Marketplace, VMWare states that:

A virtual appliance is a pre-built, pre-configured and ready-to-run software application packaged

with the operating system inside a virtual machine.
In non-technical terms, VMWare allows a company or programmer to configure a software
program and an operating system for use and "wrap" them together as a "virtual appliance" so
that no installation, setup, or configuration is required for the end user (beyond the installation
and configuration of VMWare).
Virtual appliances can be particularly useful for legacy applications that may have been
designed for an operating system no longer in widespread use or one that is not compatible
with the underlying hardware.

A virtual appliance is a pre-configured virtual machine image, ready to run on a hypervisor;

virtual appliances are a subset of the broader class of software appliances. Installation of a
software appliance on a virtual machine and packaging that into an image creates a virtual
appliance. Like software appliances, virtual appliances are intended to eliminate the installation,
configuration and maintenance costs associated with running complex stacks of software.
A virtual appliance is not a complete virtual machine platform, but rather a software
image containing a software stack designed to run on a virtual machine platform which may be a
Type 1 or Type 2 hypervisor. Like a physical computer, a hypervisor is merely a platform for
running an operating system environment and does not provide application software itself.
Many virtual appliances provide a Web page user interface to permit their configuration. A
virtual appliance is usually built to host a single application; it therefore represents a new way
to deploy applications on a network.
 vRealize Automation Agents
vRealize Automation uses agents to integrate with external systems. Agents are used for
Managing and executing workflows on external systems like VMware vSphere, Citrix, Xen
Server, Hyper-V, External Provisioning Infrastructure, Virtual Desktop Infrastructure and WMI
which helps us to enable data collection from windows machine managed by vRealize
Automation.

A system administrator can select agents to install to communicate with other virtualization
platforms.

vRealize Automation uses the following types of agents to manage external systems:

 Hypervisor proxy agents (vSphere, Citrix Xen Servers and Microsoft Hyper-V servers)
 External provisioning infrastructure (EPI) integration agents
 Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) agents
 Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) agents

For high-availability, you can install multiple agents for a single endpoint. Install each redundant
agent on a separate server, but name and configure them identically. Redundant agents provide
some fault tolerance, but do not provide failover. For example, if you install two vSphere agents,
one on server A and one on server B, and server A becomes unavailable, the agent installed on
server B continues to process work items. However, the server B agent cannot finish processing
a work item that the server A agent had already started.

You have the option to install a vSphere agent as part of your minimal installation, but after the
installation you can also add other agents, including an additional vSphere agent. In a distributed
deployment, you install all your agents after you complete the base distributed installation. The
agents you install depend on the resources in your infrastructure.

https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-
Automation/7.1/com.vmware.vrealize.automation.doc/GUID-C837C488-DED4-427D-859A-
3C6495D526F9.html

 Virtualization proxy agents are used to interact with hypervisors. They are responsible for the provisioning of a
machine or for synchronizing hypervisor data with the vRealize database (e.g. importing virtual machine data
from the hypervisor). Agents are installed as Windows services and must be installed and configured for every
single virtualization environment. This means, if you want to address three different vCenter Servers, you must
install three different agents. There are virtualization agents for vSphere, Hyper-V and XenServer.
 Virtual Desktop Integration (VDI) agents help with registering of virtual machines in external desktop
management systems. One of the most popular VDI systems is Citrix XenDesktop. After provisioning and
registering, vRealize Automation provides the owners of registered machines with a direct connection to the
 XenDesktop Web interface. A single installed agent can communicate with a single Desktop Delivery
Controller (DDC) or with multiple DDCs.
 External Provisioning Integration (EPI) PowerShell agents help with the on-demand streaming of Citrix disk
images, from which the machines boot and run. An EPI Agent for Visual Basic helps to run visual basic scripts
as an additional step in the provisioning process (the script can be invoked before or after provisioning a
machine or when deposing).
 Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) agents allow the collection of information for machines under
vRealize Automation control. This is required if you want to provision machines via Windows Image File
(WMI).

vRealize Manager Service:

The vCloud Automation Center service (commonly called the Manager Service) is a Windows
.NET service that coordinates communication between DEMs, agents including guest agents
(over SOAP), the IaaS database, AD (or LDAP), and SMTP.

The Manager Service communicates with the repository to queue external workflows in the
SQL database that will be later picked up by either a DEM worker or a proxy agent or a guest
agent.

Some of the key functionalities of Manager Services are listed here:

 Triggers inventory/state/performance data collection for the managed compute resource.

 Processes data collection response ONLY for proxy agent-based hypervisor.

 The master workflows (machine transition states from requested to destroy) are handled by

Manager Service.
VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere -- formerly known as VMware Infrastructure -- is the brand name

for VMware's suite of server virtualization products that includes its ESXi hypervisor
and vCenter management software. VSphere undergoes periodic revisions and updates
to add features, modifications to the application program interface (API) and changes
to the ESXi Shell.

https://searchvmware.techtarget.com/definition/VMware-vSphere

vSphere is a software suite that comes under data center product. vSphere is like Microsoft
Office suite which has many softwares like MS Office, MS Excel, MS Access and so on. Like
Microsoft Office, vSphere is also a software suite that has many software components like
vCenter, ESXi, vSphere client and so on. So, the combination of all these software components
is vSphere. vSphere is not a particular software that you can install and use, “it is just a package
name which has other sub components”.

What is VMware vSphere ?

VMware vSphere is not a specific product or software. VMware vSphere is the commercial
name for entire VMware suite. The VMware vSphere stack comprises virtualization,
management, and interface layers. The two core components of VMware vSphere are ESXi
server and vCenter Server.

ESXi is the hypervsior, where you create and run virtual machines and virtual appliances.

vCenter Server is the service through which you manage multiple ESXi hosts connected in a
network and pool host resources.
I hope this simple information clears your mind from the question “What is VMware
vSphere”. VMware vSphere is being the master in virtualization industry as compared to
other hypervisors such as Microsoft Hyper-v and Citrix Xen Server. Take a look at my article
comparison deep dive VMware vs Hyper-v