7.2 vCenter Server
vCenter Server and its supporting services are at the heart of the vSphere infrastructure. vCenter Server instances are used to provide a whole range of functionality including:
• Cloning of virtual machines
• Creating templates
• vSphere vMotion and VMware vSphere Storage vMotion
• Initial configuration of DRS and vSphere high availability clusters
vCenter Server also provides monitoring and alerting capabilities for hosts and virtual machines. System administrators can create and apply alarms to all managed objects in vCenter Server. These alarms include:
• Data center, cluster and host health, inventory, and performance
• Datastore health and capacity
• Virtual machine usage, performance, and health
• Virtual network usage and health
These events, tasks, alerts and alarms are collected in vRealize Log Insight as structured data with specific meaning attached to entries in individual fields of the data. In addition, vRealize Log Insight ingests vCenter Server logs that contain unstructured data which can be queried, aggregated, correlated, and retained for auditing purposes as necessary.