VMware ESXi vs. Windows Server

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!

Incentivized

Anytime I need a server for something, whether to test a new platform or app, devote a server to hosting something, etc., Windows Server is my go-to choice. Recently I needed a new server to host a web server and web application, so I spun up a Windows Server 2025 VM and was up and running in no time at all.

Incentivized

• Incredibly quick to deploy. Total installation time of less than five minutes
• Able to easily mount ISCSI storage devices to VMWare ESXi hosts within the GUI
• Allows you to run the product for free - if you stay under the physical core count (and with some reduced features)
• Incredibly stable software - we have not run into any issues that were a direct result of VMWare ESXi being at fault
• Very low hardware resources utilized to run this product

Incentivized

• Backup of workstations & itself - reliably, consistently, with Bare-Metal Restore and deduplication
• File management and Security on a per file/folder/user basis is simple and fully done through an easy GUI
• DNS, DHCP server functions are easy to configure using the built-in GUI

Incentivized

• There are some odd issues with VMware's virtualized network drive (VMXNET3). On occasion, after a reboot of a Windows-based VM the NIC will fail to bind properly and network access is unavailable until an admin intervenes by disabling/re-enabling the adapter. While it's possible that our environment is a contributing factor, this never happens on VMs using Intel E1000 emulation, only the paravirtual NICs.
• Logging is extensive but difficult to work with. VMware's solution is a product called Log Insight, which comes at additional cost. Fortunately this is somewhat mitigated by the extensive support documentation and robust user community, but in the heat of the moment obtaining the required detail can be a trying experience.

Incentivized

• Microsoft needs to minimize the update frequency by making the product more secure. It can become very exhausting trying to keep updated if you don't have a dedicated support team. It can become challenging where the business is unable to allow downtime for reboots as part of the update process.
• Prone to security and audit vulnerabilities.
• The operating system needs more CPU and memory resources compared to other options such as Linux.
• Understanding the licensing model can be abit confusing.
• Comes with a standard firewall, but not the most secured one available. Would suggest using a more secured firewall as part of your antivirus software.
• Due to the number of vulnerabilities and the operating system being a target for hackers, anti-virus software is a must.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

I've carefully reviewed the servers and services currently running on Windows Server 2012, and given the opportunity would renew them as is going forward. There are two systems I currently have in place, one is a very large Linux implementation for a large ecommerce site, and one is a very large backup solution front ended by FTP servers running Linux. Neither are well suited for Windows, but the overall network infrastructure is and will be Windows Server for the foreseeable future.

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.

Incentivized

There are simply too many different parts of Windows Server to make it a cohesive piece of software. While some of the newer features found in Windows Server 2012 and 2016 have nice UIs that are logically laid out, there are enough parts of the system that is still based on old code with clunky UIs and confusing options to make Windows Server a particularly user-friendly experience.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

some times server hungs and user sessions were busy to connect

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.

Incentivized

need to improve the performance more

I rarely ever need support for anything VMWare makes, but when I do, the documentation available just in the free community is generally enough. It's extensive and the community is truly robust and active. And if you have a myvmware account, you can get support for your owned products from VMWare support by the conventional case/ticket method

Incentivized

Microsoft's support is hugely wide-ranging from articles online to having to contact them directly for the more serious issues. In recent years when I have contacted them directly, I have found the support o be excellent as I have found myself connected to very knowledgeable people in the field in which I needed the support. The online support available is vast and I tend to find most of the time that there is always someone out there who has had the same issue as me in the past and knows something about how to resolve it! This is the advantage of using industry standard and long-established systems such as Windows Server.

Incentivized

it was my senior who trained Windows Server features and i was satisfied

it was recorded session and useful

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.

Incentivized

Make sure that you have detailed processes in place for every server instance you plan to install/upgrade, if possible get the base OS loaded and Windows Updates applied ahead of time, and if using a VM take a snapshot prior to installing each role, as well as along the way.

Incentivized

While Hyper-V also can work very well and can have licensing benefits, it does rely on Windows in order to run. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can add another layer of potential failure and might not be running on as low of a level as ESXi does. The footprint for Hyper-V can be smaller if the Desktop Experience isn't used for the hosts, but this is the default fashion that ESXi has been running for many years. VMware's support has always been stellar, and its documentation is phenomenal. Hyper-V can work as a virtual environment option, but ESXi has never let me down in any environment I have managed. I will continue standing by this product and prefer it over other options. It has proven itself time and time again over time as the defacto virtual environment hosting platform.

Incentivized

I find Microsoft Windows Server is a much easier OS to deploy and administer. It does require more resources to run, requires more security updates and overall has a larger footprint. Rebooting the Windows Server takes a much longer time than RHEL for example. An administration task such as expanding a drive in Windows can be very simple, however in RHEL it is not.

Incentivized

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

Incentivized

yes i completely agree multi deployment

• Positively, it has saved us time in spinning up new servers for the different departments in our company. It is easy for us to spin up virtual machines with VMware ESXi and deploy applications at the drop of a hat.
• Positively we are able to save space in our data closets as we no longer need to keep room for physical servers and workstations, allowing us to expand in other areas like networking equipment and physical backup solutions.
• It has moved our business forward as we are able to migrate old servers and static workstations in the virtual environment allowing us to easily keep an eye on older applications and update/backup easily through VMware ESXi management console.

Incentivized

• Support for a wide range of applications (compatibility) This is especially valuable.
• The cost of licensing is significantly higher than that of many competing solutions, which means the justification has to be more complete.
• The initial environment setup with full organization management provides a complete solution set to get started.
• Patching/Frequent updates disruptive nature must be accepted.

Incentivized