vSphere Remote Branch Office

vSphere ROBO makes it easier to perform maintenance on remote hosts with Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) in Maintenance Mode. It automatically moves VMs out of a server when server goes offline for maintenance and brings the VMs back to server after maintenance. The maintenance can be done remotely from a central IT location.

vSphere vMotion allows you to move an entire running virtual machine from one physical server to another, without downtime. The virtual machine retains its network identity and connections, ensuring a seamless migration process. Transfer the virtual machine's active memory and precise execution state over a high-speed network, allowing the virtual machine to switch from running on the source vSphere host to the destination vSphere host. This entire process takes less than two seconds on a gigabit Ethernet network. This capability is possible over virtual Switches, vCenter Servers, and even long distances.

vSphere Data Protection provides agent-less, image-level virtual machine backups to disk. It also provides application-aware protection for business-critical Microsoft applications (Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint) along with WAN-efficient, encrypted backup data replication. Features include variable-length deduplication, application-aware backups, single step recovery and direct-to-host emergency restores.

Minimize downtime with uniform, cost-effective failover protection against hardware and operating system outages within your virtualized environment with vSphere High Availability (HA). Monitor hosts and virtual machines and automatically restart virtual machines on other hosts in the cluster when an outage is detected. HA provides uniform, automated protection for all applications without modifications to the application or guest operating system.

vSphere Content Library enables administrators to manage VM templates, vApps, ISO images and scripts from a central location. Organize the content into libraries, which can be individually configured and managed. Once libraries are created, share content across the boundaries of vCenter Servers and ensure consistency across your data center. Deploy VM templates directly onto a host or cluster for a consistent provisioning experience.

Host profiles, which store configuration settings shared by vSphere hosts, can be attached to one or more vSphere hosts or clusters. The host configuration is compared to the host profile and any deviations are reported so configuration drift can be corrected automatically. Administrators can create a profile once and then use it in conjunction with Auto Deploy to rapidly deploy and provision multiple vSphere hosts, eliminating the need for specialized scripts or manual configuration.