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Powerful Tool for Managing VMs: Users consistently praise VMware ESXi as a powerful tool for managing a large number of virtual machines, …
Overview
What is VMware ESXi?
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.
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Popular Features
- Live virtual machine migration (115)9.393%
- Management console (127)8.888%
- Virtual machine automated provisioning (115)8.585%
- Hypervisor-level security (116)8.383%
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Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company (Insurance, 1001-5000 employees)
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What is VMware ESXi?
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.
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What is VMware vSphere?
An enterprise workload platform, vSphere is used to improve the performance for a data center. It is used to boost operational efficiency, supercharge workload performance, and accelerate innovation.
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VMware ESXi 5.1 Install & Configure In Oracle Virtual Box
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What is VMware ESXi?
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.
ESXi is used to:
ESXi is used to:
- Consolidate hardware for higher capacity utilization.
- Increase performance for a competitive edge.
- Streamline IT administration through centralized management.
- Reduce CapEx and OpEx.
- Minimize hardware resources needed to run the hypervisor, boosting efficiency.
VMware ESXi Integrations
VMware ESXi Technical Details
| Deployment Types | Software as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based |
|---|---|
| Operating Systems | Unspecified |
| Mobile Application | No |
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
Reviewers rate Live virtual machine migration highest, with a score of 9.3.
The most common users of VMware ESXi are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!
- Pros
- Cons
Powerful Tool for Managing VMs: Users consistently praise VMware ESXi as a powerful tool for managing a large number of virtual machines, with easy management of individual VM settings and configurations. Several reviewers have highlighted this aspect, emphasizing how it simplifies their virtualization workflows and enhances overall efficiency.
Cost Reduction Benefits: Many users appreciate the cost reduction benefits offered by VMware ESXi. It minimizes the need for physical servers and reduces storage footprint, resulting in electricity savings. This advantage has been mentioned by a significant number of reviewers, highlighting the financial value that VMware ESXi brings to their organizations.
Support for Various Operating Systems: The support for various operating systems, including Windows and Unix, is considered a significant advantage by users. This feature enables them to host a wide range of applications on VMware ESXi. Multiple reviewers have specifically mentioned this pro, appreciating the flexibility it provides in terms of application deployment and compatibility.
Confusing User Interface: Many users have expressed frustration with the confusing and non-intuitive user interface of VMware ESXi. This has made it challenging for them to perform tasks efficiently, causing unnecessary delays and difficulties in managing their virtual environments.
Stability Issues: Several users have encountered stability issues with VMware ESXi's hypervisor. These issues have resulted in instances of corruption, leading to the need for reinstallations. The instability not only disrupts operations but also poses potential risks to data integrity and system reliability.
High Pricing and Complexity: The pricing of VMware products is often considered a barrier, particularly for smaller businesses. Many users find the deployment process complex and excessive for their needs, requiring significant time and resources to set up properly. This can be overwhelming, especially for organizations with limited IT expertise or budget constraints.
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Reviews
(101-125 of 127)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
April 23, 2019
Basic VMware ESXi Review
We use VMware ESXi across our entire network. It simplifies the backup process and management of our server environment. The cost savings in hardware (space and number of servers) and power consumption is worth the upfront cost.
- You can manage all of your servers through one pane of glass.
- High availability if you are using clusters.
- Using templates to turn up servers takes about 5 minutes.
- I would like it if the old client was still used. The web interface is nice, but the client worked better.
August 09, 2018
VMware Review
It's used to manage guest OS/virtual machines within our organizations Unified Communications infrastructure. ESXi is being used by multiple groups within our organization. ESXi helps reduce our hardware footprint while improving availability of services.
- Allows system administrators to manage multiple hosts via one interface.
- Perform multiple management tasks
- Provides excellent memory management
- Learning curve for support staff
- live migration of hosts supporting realtime protocols
- some maintenance requires downtime
March 07, 2018
Free VM's for Everyone!
We use VMware ESXi as the platform for virtualization for a marketing agency. In this case, it is used to run multiple, critical servers including a pbx phone system, a high capacity and volume file server with lots of video and image files, a development IIS server, and multiple other virtual machines to test and do other work on. We have found this technology especially useful for this environment, as we operate on mostly a Mac environment for creatives. This allows them to have virtual machines they can access when they need to use software only available on a Windows environment.
- VMware ESXi does a great job of getting multiple VMs setup quickly. The interface is intuitive and simple to use.
- ESXi is a stable platform where mission critical VMs can run without concern.
- ESXi is free. Really, it's free.
- The management software is PC only, and does not seem to work with Wine for Linux or MacOS.
- No on server interface to start/monitor/or reset machines.
- Free license limits it to physical 2 CPU's.
January 12, 2018
ESXi virtualizes ahead of the pack
It is used across the entire organization and solves providing temporary servers, right-sizing the servers (physical servers are more limited in their RAM and CPU configurations. A single physical server can host dozens of virtual server VMs, all with different operating systems installed. It also abstracts the [hardware] from the server which enables a VM to be exported to a different building or location or even a different company. Virtualizing large servers can reduce cooling, power, ups, cables, physical space and racks, noise, support. Many processes like antivirus, backups, boot ups, upgrades can be more centralized.
- Support of so many operating systems including various Windows and Unix, including many variations.
- API PowerCLI scripting can help automated enterprise tasks to scale
- Virtualizing physical servers provides much higher ROI compared to non-virtualized servers running a single OS
- ESXi loads in ram on the server & it's small so the hypervisor uses very little of the hosts resources
- The client has been the most common complaint about ESXi. It took 4 years to complete the web client and as soon as it was finished, they announced it would be replaced by the HTML client. frustratingly, the html client is incomplete which puts users in the same predicament as the previous 4 years.
- Converter could be better integrated into ESXi (client) which would make creating VMs (p2v) much easier and would also prompt VMware to continue to update and improve converter (which has not had many improvements or updates since being released.
- Maintenance mode should be much quicker when ESXi is used with vSAN.
August 17, 2017
VMs and ESXI info from a good user
I started to use ESXi as a way to build, control, configure, and push-out virtual machines (servers) throughout my company. I am now able to set out a selection of systems to individuals to use and once done and I have the data and work completed from an employee I can easily keep data and delete that used VM which I can relaunch at anytime from anywhere. I use these VMs so that I don't have to worry about any viruses and malware getting back into my main server. ESXi also works great with VCenter and setting up virtual networks.
- IT admin has complete control over these VMs through ESXi as well as being able to release a new VM if the prior VM system has any issue, this saves hundreds of hours for our admins.
- Using ESXi together with VCenter is a great platform for maintaining the VMs, virtual networks, building datacenters, and tracking what is going on with our VMs.
- ESXi that I had set up as a lab to learn from and to teach others off of saved our entire network from a serious hack out of China. When I set up this ESXi as a learning platform I set it in a way that it was the main point of our network (by accident) this accident stopped a brute force attack that was done through a 3 day weekend with over thousands of attempts to hack into. They only got into a BS VM that was set for learning. This saved us a lot of money and embarrassment.
- Better way of teaching, make ESXI easier to learn to use
- Configuration need to be a bit easier to understand
- VMware needs to do something about the learning costs
vCenter Server in the classroom environment allows students to be more productive in an ESXi host environment. There are currently over one thousand VMs running on ESXi from Windows Desktops 7,8, 10, Windows Server 2008, Server 2012, and a plethora of Linux distributions. Students have the ability to access the vCenter from a web browser or using the VSphere Client software. This has been a huge time safer for students as in the past each student used an external hard drive to host their virtual machines. When multiple machines were turned on it would take a great deal of processing power of the desktop to run the VM's, with ESXi students are capable of keeping the machines up at all times. This also eliminates the problem of corrupting VMs on external hard drives by not having to shut down VM's which would require students to stay after class. Using Nimble technology in the ESXi the school can now have an entire infrastructure built and functioning for each student.
- Keeps students' work segmented by using administration and VLANs.
- An entire infrastructure can be built per the students' needs.
- Multiple VMs can be used at the same time eliminating the downfalls of VMware Workstation.
- There is a converter tool to switch from VM workstation to Virtual Center Stack. VMs can be transposed across the system.
- When the Virtual Center Stack goes down then all students are affected by zero production.
- When a lot of VMs are spun up at the same time it slows down operations.
- ESXi attempts to provision VMs by moving them, but other tools like Turbonomic don't show the action taking place.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We have been using VMware ESX/ESXi for about 9 years now and have been fully all virtual servers the last 4-5 years and it has worked great from day one. We were using VMware long before many other local businesses and long before other organizations in the Mid-Atlantic region. VMware has simplified backup, recovery and disaster recovery. Long gone are the days of restoring physical servers and bare metal restores. It just works.
- Virtual Hardware & Drivers for a very stable environment, low overhead, fast.
- Peace of mind backups and recovery.
- Maximize host resource usage, reduce physical footprint.
- If you don't monitor VM host hardware usage, too many virtual guests can overload your hosts and slow down all virtual guests running on that server.
- A little costly to start up, recommended multiple hosts, shared storage for recovery in case of server failure/maintenance.
- You won't want to go back to physical.
February 23, 2017
My experience using VMware ESXi
I currently support and manage multiple VMware ESXi environments for my organization. We have environments for production, QA/Dev, VDI, etc. Using ESXi allows us to provide fault tolerance to our virtual machines, reduce our hardware footprint and in doing so reduce the amount of power and HVAC needs in our data center.
- VMware ESXi is number one in server virtualization for a reason. They have been doing it for a very long time and do it well!
- The ability to migrate workloads between hosts or even across different vCenters with no downtime is amazing.
- Being able to virtualize the storage with vSAN and networking with VDS switches or NSX is amazing!
- As vSphere has been my primary area of focus for the last 6 of the 10 years I've been using it, I really don't see problem areas anymore. The product has grown and continues to grow!
- Learning the entire VMware product family is not an easy thing to do without training. I recommend setting up a lab at home to learn. Look into the VMware User Group's VMUG Advantage program for licenses for a home lab.
October 17, 2016
VMware ESXI beneficial for server environments
VMware ESXi is being used throughout our whole organization, across our entire server environment. When we initially moved to VMware, it addressed the issue of having old, outdated hardware and allowed us to move to a new virtual platform. We were able to consolidate our infrastructure from 20 physical servers to 3 servers through the use of VMware.
- VMware allows us to save time by installing servers much quicker than before, through the use of templates.
- VMware vCenter controls all aspects of our server environment through one console and provides detailed hardware information.
- The ability to move virtual servers from one host to another in a matter of minutes, which allows us to install server upgrades with no downtime.
- Licensing costs are high, and are done by CPU, rather than per server host. As a result, this can add up pretty quickly with a large server environment.
- Learning curve may be higher for those people that have not used a virtual platform.
- Some applications have reduced performance in a virtual environment, and run better on physical hardware.
September 07, 2016
Server Virtulization: Less is More
VMware ESXi is used for server virtualization across our whole organization. We are approximately 85 percent virtualized. It allows us to utilize less server space, power, and cooling while allowing us to quickly spin up more servers. We have also included some desktop virtualization in our organization. It allows for much more efficient management of our servers.
- Allows our organization to spin up needed servers in a short time based upon pre-staged templates.
- Make for simplified updates on hosts with migration features.
- Space, Power, and cooling requirements have been dramatically reduced because we have been able to remove older servers and replaced with fewer more efficient server hosts.
- Would like all the functions including updating be all in one client instead requiring the fat client for Update Manger.
- Web client is still a little slow.
We use VMware ESXi as our primary hypervisor to host our web architecture. Before we implemented VMware, we had previously provisioned machines by installing Linux on bare metal. This task used to to take days and limited the amount of machines we could create due to the size of the physical hardware. Before VMware ESXi we our machines contained multiple tasks which from an administration perspective was a nightmare. It wasn't clear how systems where configured or what their tasks where. In order to become more agile as a company, we adopted VMware to virtualize our infrastructure.
- Virtualization allows us to create machines that handle specific tasks rather than a bare metal OS that uses the entire hardware; on bare metal, an admin has to use the machine to handle multiple tasks which is confusing to administrate.
- VMware is fantastic at migrating systems between hosts. This is important to distribute load and for consideration in case of hardware failure.
- VMware makes automation a snap, we currently use puppet & kickstart for our automation software. Virtualization allows us to be agile in creating systems and destroying them. Before VMware we had to provision machines by hand which is costly in labor costs.
- VMware has some exciting verticals that integrate well with its hypervisor, VSan comes to mind which helped us address our need for resiliency in case of a hardware fault.
- VMWare ESXi 5.0 introduced a Adobe Flash based web interface as it's primary way of interfacing with the hypervisor and it was near unusable when it first launched; sluggish and buggy. VMWare ESXi 6 is a vast improvement over 5.0, however it is still very sluggish and buggy(especially when logging in to the interface). Another thing that concerns me as a Linux DevOps engineer, since it is using Flash, the version of Flash it requires is not even supported on Linux Chrome anymore with no future upgrade path!
- VMware really needs to scrap the entire code base for the web interface, its an abomination and rebuild it in HTML5. This is the primary reason why I give VMWare ESXi a 7.
- VMWare ESXi's verticals are also one of its faults. Since their products are completely interoperable with each other, it makes it difficult to switch to another platform in the future. Furthermore, some of the other compelling open source solutions such as Ceph(as opposed to VSan) are unsupported as a back end for VMWare.
- We have servers between Intel and AMD, there is an artificial limitation VMWare has imposed that prohibits live migration between VMWare hosts between different CPU types.
- VMWare ESXi us unable to add additional CPU or memory to live systems while other competing hypervisors are able to.
May 27, 2016
VMware ESXi rocks
We use ESXi 5.5 primarily for server virtualization. We also host a XenApp 7.8 farm in our production cluster. We have a production datacenter cluster, a cluster for our Dev/DR site and a single host site at a remote facility used to host a domain controller, ras server and print server. It addresses th problem of server sprawl and consolidates about 120 virtual machines (at our production datacenter) into a single Lenovo Flex chassis, saving at least 3 42U racks of floorspace and the power and environmentals to support them.
- It efficiently manages cpu and memory resources on a host among dozens of virtual machines. It also provide very efficient and reliable disk I/O
- It automates the build out of servers, saving hours over racking and building a physical server, and enabling consistent images on every server..
- It facilitates quick and easy snapshots of servers runtime state in order to test patches or application updates and quickly roll back in the event of failures.
- vCenter Virtual appliance is klunky and doesn't respond quickly.
- It's database can fill up its partition and crash the server unexpectedly, resulting in an unstable and unmanageable ESXi environment
- The vCenter web interface is not very useful and is missing several critical features, making the vim client essential for day to day use.
May 24, 2016
VMware ESXi is top notch as a solution.
Our organization uses VMware ESXi to host all of our virtual guests. We selected the essentials package and it works very nicely for our requirements. When we switched to it, we became 100% virtualized in our environment. Moving completely to ESXi has allowed us to save on energy, and improve our monitoring overall of utilization. We can also handle backups and data protection much easier.
- Stable Platform
- Simple to Operate
- Advanced Capabilities (Backup, Redundancy, Etc.)
- Licensing could always be less expensive.
- More capabilities within GUI management. Much requires CLI to perform.
- Notification of security updates. You don't always know you need them.
May 13, 2016
ESXi in a Nutshell
ESXi is our hypervisor platform of choice. We use it to maximize hardware utilization, add high availability to our systems, and make management and deployment of systems faster and easier. Through the use of vCenter, we manage many ESXi hosts, which each run many systems. This has allowed us to consolidate our hardware footprint while maintaining a high number of systems.
- Live migrations of running VMs between hosts to limit downtime
- Low performance impact from virtualization layer on running VMs
- Management tools/vCenter make managing multiple VMs easy
- Guest OS support
- Cost to get all the features you want, e.g. Live Migration
- Fat client required to manage individual hosts (getting better with some web consoles currently in development by VMware Labs)
- Not as robust without a vCenter implementation
Currently we use VMware ESXi on all of our physical servers to reduce operating costs of having to run a physical server for each need. We have 17 physical servers hosting everything from websites and databases to fully running virtual servers for our clients. So far this has been the best investment to our server infrastructure with little to no cons. Our clients love the fact that they know their servers are virtual and constantly being backed up and more.
- Very easy server creation and administration
- Ability to fine tune the virtual machines and virtual hardware
- Central managed with VCenter license
- Installs on most server hardware including those 15 years old
- Some of the licensing is very expensive and support costs are too much for smaller businesses
- It would be nice to have some features licensed independently such as a web based vsphere without having to buy all of VCenter
April 13, 2016
VMware, it just works
We virtualized 95% of our servers on VMware ESXi and were also using it to offer virtual desktops to nearly everyone in the company.
- It did a good job hosting our SQL Servers and we didn't see any real difference between servers directly on the hardware and virtualized.
- It made it very easy to move servers between farms and/or servers for load balancing.
- Early versions demonstrated multiple problems which precluded using it due to performance issues but they've all been overcome so be sure you're on the lastest VMware offerings.
April 05, 2016
VMware rocks! Cliche??
VMware is used by the entire organization. We have two businesses and each uses VMware for a different need. The other company uses VMware for its VDI functionality for an offshore desktop deployment. I use VMware to support our server infrastructure. Our environment is 96% virtualized across the board. We use it for ease of management, consolidation of resources and for its ease of recovery from hardware failure. It allows us to maintain optimal uptime while also allowing the flexibility of management.
- The ability to set DRS rules to isolate workloads. We run a clustered SQL environment. vMotion allows VMs to migrate across the servers seamlessly to load balancing across hypervisors. The rules we are able to put in place ensures that at no point with both nodes of the cluster reside on the same host in case of hardware failure.
- The ability to increase memory on the fly should a VM need it. You don't always have the luxury of taking a production system offline to increase its resources.
- Product Portfolio... From ESXi to VDI to SRM, there are a number of productions that can help you achieve your technology goals with regards to virtualization.
- Sometimes error messages can be vague.
- I'm versed up to ESXi 5.5 so some of my gripes may be resolved with 6.0.
- I really enjoyed the client and I'm not a fan of the web client. Thats more so a preference than an issue.
March 07, 2016
The standard when it comes to virtualizing servers
We utilize VMware across our entire organization including our production data center locations as well as our corporate office locations. VMware ESXi has changed our business practices positively in every way. It has allowed us to break the strings attached between the hardware layer and OSE layer and has allowed us significant flexibility in regards to update time of our products and services.
- Better uptime
- Easier scheduled maintenance windows when an outage is needed
- Consolidation of server hardware
- Flexibility
- License Costs
- Better email notification support of host hardware usage or failure
- Better email notification support of guest OSE disk usage / system resources / thresholds
March 04, 2016
VMware my favorite Hypervisor
I do IT support for around 40 companies. We exclusively use VMWare as the OS on all new servers. We not longer implement any non-virtualized servers. We currently run a mix of ESXi 4.1, 5.0, 5.1, and 5.5 and will soon start deploying version 6.0. VMWare allows us to better utilize hardware assets while keeping costs to a minimum.
- Easy management of servers. You have full access to all server features from the web console or GUI.
- With proper licensing, it is a great tool for high availability computing. It allows you to move servers across multiple pieces of hardware with little to no downtime.
- Easy setup. The installation is very straight forward and small. You can even run it off an SD card in the server leaving more disk space for your data stores.
- Licensing can be expensive, but they do offer cheaper versions.
- I do not like that they are pushing the management features to the Web based console. I have been using the GUI for so long that it is a hard transition for me.
- I have had multiple VCenter updates fail. At this point it is easy to deploy a new VCenter appliance than to upgrade an existing one.
February 24, 2016
VMware is the ONLY solution within medium and large environments.
VMWare ESXi is the backbone for my entire company's North/Latin American environment. It addresses central administration issues as well as an overall ease of implementation as well as shared resources. Also, it helps supplement huge costs for physical hardware that would be required for the 4000 + servers we use to perform the company's daily functions.
- Provides central administration and has amazing stability. You can manage entire data centers from one VCenter interface rather than physically having to manage hardware.
- Allows for shared resources and shared management throughout. Several beefy hardware servers can act as hosts where many smaller servers (vm's) can share its resources.
- Cuts down costs associated with physical hardware needs.
- The VSphere Web Client. Due to it being a web based client, there are still bugs with browsers as well as issues with response times and slowness when manipulating and completing tasks.
- vCenter HA. This is supposed to be an added feature for the next release of ESXi. However, up to this point, it has not been a plausible option and could really be used in large environments with multiple vCenter environments.
- Support. There have been multiple cases where there were bugs that VMware support did not have fixes.
February 23, 2016
No Money? Managing less than 5 physical nodes? Use Vmware ESXi!
We used it in conjunction with vcenter to manage our virtual machines. It is partially used by our department. The business problem it addresses is to allow us to create a test environment and maximize hardware infrastructure.
- GUI is very easy to use. Learning curve is low.
- This software can be deployed for many nodes through puppet.
- The ability to do snapshot restores quickly is great compared with ovirt.
- To utilize vmware esxi fully, you need to couple it with paid software (vcenter).
- Not easy to automate the deployment this software on many nodes unless you purchase vcenter or puppet.
- No ability for DRS unless you buy vcenter.
January 13, 2016
VMware Rocks!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
90% of our workloads run on top of a VMware Hypervisor. We currently have over 450 host and 4500 VM's.
- Cost effective utilization of compute.
- Ability to move workloads around easily.
- Automated and scripted deployments of VMs.
- Some of the reporting tools are difficult to use and [I] would love to see more pre-canned options in the VRealize suite.
- Would love to see the ability to have redundant Vcenters.
- Would like to see them move a little quicker with the private cloud options.
December 02, 2015
Solid reliable product.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are running 98% of of infrastructure on VMware EsXi .
- Reliable
- Easy to maintain
- Easy to configure
- Easier to follow logs
October 16, 2015
ESXi review
We use ESXi across the whole organization; 100% of our servers are virtualized on it.
- It does virtualization well. Management is easy and simple.
- HA/Failover is simple
- I don't have any significant ideas for improvement suggestions.
October 14, 2015
VMware ROCKS
Our test/lab environment currently runs on a VMware backend to maximize physical hardware. We currently have 8 VMs running on a ESXi system.
- Hardware utilization for virtual machines
- Low hypervisor requirements
- Free product (ESXI)
- Easy to administer
- Move back away from web administration
- Make ESXi easier to patch without the patch management add in in vCenter.
- Implement a mid point between ESXi (free) and ESXi with vCenter server.