Docker Enterprise was sold to Mirantis in 2019; that product is now sold as Mirantis Kubernetes Engine. But Docker now offers a 2-product suite that includes Docker Desktop, which they present as a fast way to containerize applications on a desktop; and, Docker Hub, a service for finding and sharing container images with a team and the Docker community, a repository of container images with an array of…
$5
per month
VMware ESXi
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
A bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.
Docker and VMware Exsi are both virtualization tools that take different approaches to virtualization. Docker is a container management software that helps businesses isolate processes at the operating system level. In contrast, VMware Exsi is a virtualization software creates virtualized systems using a hypervisor. Notably, many businesses use both containerization and virtual machinetools, as they specialize in different areas.
Features
Docker and VMware Exsi can both be used for virtualization, but they have slightly different ideal use cases as well as some standout features that set them apart from each other.
Docker is a containerization tool, meaning it emulates operating systems, all of which run from a single kernel. One of the biggest advantages of Docker is that containers are lightweight, with minimal hardware demands. Docker is designed to make software development as easy as possible, so it makes it easy for developers to create containers with all the necessary dependencies for both development and application use. These features make Docker an ideal tool for devops.
VMware Exsi provides a hypervisor that can be used to virtualize multiple operating systems on a single host. Virtual machines created with VMware Exsi can account for all system requirements, and hardware resources can be allocated to them as needed. Since VMware Exsi allows businesses to create multiple guest operating systems on a single machine, it is possible to virtualize an entire infrastructure using virtual machines.
Limitations
Docker and VMware Exsi allow for containerization and virtual machine creation respectively, but they also have a few limitations that are important to consider.
Docker provides lightweight containers that can provide many dependencies, but since they are all based on one kernel, they can’t create an infrastructure consisting of multiple guest operating systems. Additionally, it is more difficult to allocate system resources by container compared to VMware Exsi’s virtual machines. These limitations make Docker a poor choice for businesses looking to create a virtual infrastructure, except as a complementary technology.
VMware Exsi allows for the creation of virtual machines with multiple guest operating systems on a single piece of hardware, but each machine is more demanding than a Docker container. Businesses looking to create self sufficient packages that contain an application and all of its dependencies may prefer a containerization tool like Docker. Additionally, VMware Exsi has limited features to support devops compared to Docker. For businesses looking to support application development, a containerization solution may be needed.
Pricing
Docker provides a free price point for individual developers, and starts at $7.00 per user per month for businesses.
VMware Exsi offers a free version and is also included in vSphere packages. These packages start at $273.00 per year with support. Businesses can also purchase a perpetual license, starting at $995.00, though these licenses do not include support.
Features
Docker
VMware ESXi
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
You are going to be able to find the most resources and examples using Docker whenever you are working with a container orchestration software like Kubernetes. There will always some entropy when you run in a container, a containerized application will never be as purely performant as an app running directly on the OS. However, in most scenarios this loss will be negligible to the time saved in deployment, monitoring, etc.
If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
The reason why we are still using Docker right now is due to that is the best among its peers and suits our needs the best. However, the trend we foresee for the future might indicate Amazon lambda could potentially fit our needs to code enviornmentless in the near future.
As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
It is the only tool in our toolset that has not [had] any issues so far. That is really a mark of reliability, and it's a testimony to how well the product is made, and a tool that does its job well is a tool well worth having. It is the base tool that I would say any organisation must have if they do scalable deployment.
We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
