ESXi has the same feature set when licensed with VC as a full ESX box.
VMware had some interesting 'entry level' product lines not too long ago that included I think VCB, VC and 3 esxi licenses (for vc) for just a few thousand. ESXi lacks a console (uses busybox)for the most part that provides some underlying features that you can do directly on the box. However, RCLI is a perl based application toolset that provides about 90% of the functions of ESX by calling the vmware api remotely. The RCLI is also compatible with ESX and is recommended to use for security so this is probably the way ESX is headed. All the players like trilead, veeam are planning to fully support esxi by using the api engine and not the console calls (via ssh). Veeam Monitor 3.0 supports ESXi, is free and includes email alerts when anything goes out of whack, this tool paired with ESXi is a great resource. From: Sam Cayze [mailto:sam.ca...@rollouts.com] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 20:32 To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: VMWare Product Confusion "ESXi does not allow Vmotion, Centralized Mgmt of multiple servr..." Oh it sure does! _____ From: gswe...@actsconsulting.net [mailto:gswe...@actsconsulting.net] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 5:17 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: VMWare Product Confusion ESXi does not allow Vmotion, Centralized Mgmt of multiple servers, etc. basically it's the essentials of ESX..Just virtualization and nothing of the advanced feature sets that the full (Paid) versions of ESX allow. From: Roger Wright [mailto:rwri...@evatone.com] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 6:04 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: VMWare Product Confusion Simple and concise! Thanks. Roger Wright Network Administrator Evatone, Inc. 727.572.7076 x388 _____ From: Klint Price - ArizonaITPro [mailto:kpr...@arizonaitpro.com] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 5:39 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Re: VMWare Product Confusion 1.x and 2.x run on top of Windows while ESXi has it's own OS, and runs independent of Windows. ESXi is a stripped down version of ESX. You will see huge increases in VM performance under ESXi. Klint Roger Wright wrote: So what are the primary differences between v1.x , and v2.0 and ESXi? Roger Wright Network Administrator Evatone, Inc. 727.572.7076 x388 _____ From: gswe...@actsconsulting.net [mailto:gswe...@actsconsulting.net] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 5:05 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: VMWare Product Confusion We have moved all of our clients to ESXi that were using Server 1.x or 2.0 unless there was some specific reason the Host OS had to stay online. Not many cases of those though. The only main issue was some NIC driver issues on some whitebox machines we have been begging to get rid of. From: Joseph L. Casale [mailto:jcas...@activenetwerx.com] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 5:00 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: RE: VMWare Product Confusion No, ESXi is free now, and I would use it in a heartbeat over server. jlc From: Roger Wright [mailto:rwri...@evatone.com] Sent: Monday, January 05, 2009 2:55 PM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: VMWare Product Confusion I'm running with several VMs under VMware Server 1.0.8, primarily because it was free and gave us an opportunity to move into the virtual arena. Is VMware Server 2.0 also free to use? If so, any reason not to move to 2.0? Is this the highest level VMWare product which is available at no cost? Roger Wright Network Administrator Evatone, Inc. 727.572.7076 x388 _____ ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
