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VMware ESXi

VMware ESXi

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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Learn from top reviewers

VMware ESXi is a great hypervisor for those who can afford it

Rating: 9 out of 10
December 31, 2024
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We have dozens of virtual servers in the office and use VMware ESXi as a hypervisor to consolidate them in a few physical servers, getting performance and reliability while us...
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Carlos Coque
Analyst - Information Technology
System Administrator
IBEX Payroll Services
VMware ESXi9 years of experience

VMWare ESXi is not longer the king of the mountain due to poor service and support

Rating: 6 out of 10
August 10, 2023
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
VMware ESXi is used for all of our Production and Test/Development environments in our organization.
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David Riberdy
Supervisor - Information Technology
Enterprise Data Management Supervisor
Southern Farm Bureau Casualty Insurance Company
VMware ESXi20 years of experience

Simply the best in business IT asset virtualization.

Rating: 10 out of 10
June 17, 2023
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
ESXI allows us to run multiple and separate headless services on different platforms all on the same hardware, while also allowing for quick spin-up of user stations for tempo...
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Brendon Brown
Director - Information Technology
eComerce Director
Island City Media
VMware ESXi8 years of experience

VMware continues to work well

Rating: 10 out of 10
June 14, 2023
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use VMware ESXi to host all of our VMs. It houses 95% of our on-prem infrastructure. We have a cluster of hosts that do this work with a SAN on the backend.
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Chris Hein
Administrator - Information Technology
Systems Engineer
CIH
VMware ESXi8 years of experience

ESXi helped us out a bunch!

Rating: 9 out of 10
June 13, 2023
IncentivizedVetted ReviewVerified User
We use ESXi within all of our Production, Development, & Testing environments to manage and run critical workloads that the company leverages for revenue generating applic...
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Richard Potts
Administrator - Information Technology
Network & Systems Administrator
College Foundation, Inc.
VMware ESXi10 years of experience
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Pricing

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VMware ESXi

VMware ESXi

N/A
Unavailable

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.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

Would you like us to let the vendor know that you want pricing?

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Hyper-V

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Product Demos

VMware ESXi 5.1 Install & Configure In Oracle Virtual Box

YouTube
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Features

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to be run completely independently on a single server

8.3
Avg 8.2
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Product Details

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:

  • 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 TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

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 Management console highest, with a score of 8.8.

The most common users of VMware ESXi are from Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews From Top Reviewers

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(1-5 of 56)

ESXi in a Nutshell

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
May 13, 2016
Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Investment Management Company, 201-500 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
VMware ESXi
4 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
  • 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
Cons
  • 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
Likelihood to Recommend
ESXi is best suited for large corporate environments where there will be multiple ESXi servers managed via vCenter. This allows all the benefits of virtualization to shine. It is also effective for lab environments, where the free version can be utilized since high availability and performance are not as critical. It is not as suitable for a small deployment, such as a single server at a remote office, due to the single point of failure it would create.

VMware ESXi is the top virtualization solution available

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized
January 14, 2020
BM
Ben Moore
Lead Systems Engineer
Preferred Mutual (Insurance, 201-500 employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
VMware ESXi
10 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
ESXi is utilized to host our entire server infrastructure, as well as our virtual desktop environment. It allows us to perform hardware maintenance and upgrades with zero downtime. We are also able to replicate our infrastructure to our secondary DR location without the need to have identical hardware available and maintain a very low RTO.
Pros
  • Server availability.
  • Hardware support.
Cons
  • Phone/technical support.
  • Licensing cost.
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi is best suited for mid to large enterprises that require maximum uptime. The ability to migrate virtual workloads on-demand, and across different hardware types allows for this. With the high cost of entry, it wouldn't likely be a good fit for most small businesses or those that don't require a high level of uptime.

One of the best hypervisors available in market!!

Rating: 9 out of 10
Incentivized
March 24, 2022
AK
Arvind Kumar
Senior Consultant - VMware & Infrastructure
Versetal Information Systems (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees)
Vetted Review
Verified User
VMware ESXi
9 years of experience
View profile
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
VMware ESXi is being used as an important part of our virtual infrastructure. We are running VMware ESXi as our core hypervisor to host virtual machines and run the entire on-prem infrastructure on it. It provides us with a range of features that are more than enough for keeping the infra stable and available at most. I am a VMware Consultant in the organization and responsible for the implementation and management of VMware products.
Pros
  • Hardware Virtualization.
  • Supports multiple OEMs.
  • Can be aligned with other important infrastructure tools.
Cons
  • Single host management should be improved.
  • One-click SSL certificate renewal from custom location cannot be done.
  • Host isolation management can be improved.
Likelihood to Recommend
One of the best hypervisors available among other competitors. Compared to others, resource pools of VMware ESXi are much more stable. It is saving a lot of hardware costs as we don't have to use multiple server hardware for different applications. Sometimes less appropriate when we require auditing of logs and integration with AD audit tools.

Server virtualization done right

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
November 18, 2019
Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Gambling & Casinos Company, 1001-5000 employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
VMware ESXi
12 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
VMware ESXi is used to host our server farms, it provides us with high availability and optimizes the use of our hardware, allowing us to better use the available hardware. The high availability part comes into play when hardware failures occur or maintenance is required. Allowing the virtual servers to be moved easily to different hosts.
Pros
  • High Availability
  • Resource management
  • Hardware virtualization
Cons
  • The licenses policy are not very rigid and the best options are stuck behind the most expensive license.
  • Configuration management is limited versus some other products currently on the market.
  • Better/simpler automation would be great, for example automated ways of doing blue green would be very welcome.
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware has been the standard for years regarding server virtualization. They are still the best in this field, providing a very solid platform with well-tested features. If you are running your applications on classical servers and have not made the jump to the container space yet, ESXi is a great solution for your needs.

VMware Review

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized
August 09, 2018
Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 10,001+ employees
Vetted Review
Verified User
VMware ESXi
6 years of experience
Use Cases and Deployment Scope
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.
Pros
  • Allows system administrators to manage multiple hosts via one interface.
  • Perform multiple management tasks
  • Provides excellent memory management
Cons
  • Learning curve for support staff
  • live migration of hosts supporting realtime protocols
  • some maintenance requires downtime
Likelihood to Recommend
Supports a high amount of guest host
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