Skip to main content
TrustRadius
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.

Read more
Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Powerful Tool for Managing VMs: Users consistently praise VMware ESXi as a powerful tool for managing a large number of virtual machines, …
Continue reading
TrustRadius Insights
TrustRadius Insights

VMware ESXI

8 out of 10
April 07, 2022
VMware Esxi is very good product. Which helps people to virtualize the environment or data center. I am using Exsi for last 5 years. …
Continue reading

A class above the rest

10 out of 10
April 04, 2022
Incentivized
We use ESXi in our organization for our virtualized workloads. ESXi provides a solution for growing organizations that have way too much …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 5 features
  • Live virtual machine migration (115)
    9.3
    93%
  • Management console (127)
    8.8
    88%
  • Virtual machine automated provisioning (115)
    8.5
    85%
  • Hypervisor-level security (116)
    8.3
    83%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing
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?

269 people also want pricing

Alternatives Pricing

VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere

$995
per year
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.

Hyper-V

Hyper-V

$24.95
per month

Sorry, this product's description is unavailable

Return to navigation

Product Demos

VMware ESXi 5.1 Install & Configure In Oracle Virtual Box

YouTube
Return to navigation

Features

Server Virtualization

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

8.7
Avg 8.3
Return to navigation

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 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).
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(805)

Community Insights

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!

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.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(26-50 of 127)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
March 24, 2022

Ease with Esxi..!!

Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology
Oil & Energy Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware makes hosts management very easy to configure and minimal steps are required. Accessing via center makes it easy to manage about 50+ hosts, otherwise, it would not be an easy task to view and manage the hosts in a single interface.VMware can be recommended to use if people are looking for applications to manage the hosts at low costs if not much third-party integration is not involved.
March 24, 2022

VMware ESXi - The Gold Standard in Hypervisors

M. Randy Harris, Jr. | TrustRadius Reviewer
M. Randy Harris, Jr.
Virtualization Engineer
Collin College (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi is well suited for environments that need a variety of computer configurations that can be made available onsite and remotely. It is also an excellent choice where security and isolation is needed among computing devices.
March 24, 2022

Best virtualization solution

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Airlines/Aviation Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi is wide-used for all kinds of infrastructure, providing the best virtualization platform around there. It also support a lot of ovas from different vendor, allowing to scalate much quickly. If you are going to deploy too much servers, you need to consider the cost (it's a bit expensive compared other solutions).
March 24, 2022

One of the best hypervisors available in market!!

Arvind Kumar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Arvind Kumar
Senior Consultant - VMware & Infrastructure
Versetal Information Systems (Information Technology & Services, 10,001+ employees)
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
March 24, 2022

The best hypervisor for private clouds.

Verified User
Team Lead in Information Technology
Financial Services Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
ESXi is versatile and can support all business needs. It can support standalone installations on small or isolated sites to high-availability multi-site distributed data centers, with local storage or central storage (SAN, NAS). Supported OS list is very important so all use cases are covered without issues as it does not need any OS side modification like the kernel.
March 23, 2022

VMWare ESXi Is Great For All Business Sizes!

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 201-500 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I believe VMWare ESXi is great in that it is suitable for all sized businesses. You can run the free version in small deployments - and can upgrade (or use initially) the paid version if you wish to unlock all features that VMWare ESXi is capable of. It can be installed on SDCard - RAID deployments, or on HDDs/SSDs - it's incredibly flexible software. It allows for automatic processes to take place (such as turning VMs back on after a power outage - and in what order if multiple are on a single host). This software allows you to squeeze every inch out of the hardware that you purchase - which is crucial in the educational world.
March 23, 2022

ESXi has been a staple in our data center for a long time.

KP
Kurt Pritchett
Senior System Administrator
CLAYTON COUNTY PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Education Management, 5001-10,000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
ESXi is very well suited for companies that don't have the money or can't afford to run a big data center. We were able to reduce our server hardware footprint from 15 to 1. All of our data center ESXi hosts will now fit into one rack, reducing the number of physical servers also reduced our power consumption.
If you only need to run one OS for all applications, ESXi may not be for you.
March 22, 2022

VMware ESXi to the rescue!

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Telecommunications Company, 5001-10,000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Using vCenter, the management of multiple hosts is very straightforward. We have an environment with about 30 ESXi hosts so management of these without vCenter would be extremely difficult. However, due to having a web interface for all hosts and vCenter etc, securing everything with web certificates can be frustrating. Using plugins in vCenter, management of third party equipment such as SAN arrays does make life a lot easier being able to manage everything from the one place - single pane of glass etc.
Backups are also made easy and straightforward using systems such as Veeam which plugs in directly to vCenter.
February 04, 2022

VMware ESXi (Elastic Sky X Integrated)!

Verified User
Executive in Information Technology
Information Technology & Services Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi can be the best option mostly for medium and small-sized businesses. It can prove to be really cost-effective as it eliminates the need for purchasing additional hardware every time we want a new machine. Vmware EXSi can be an ideal solution for a large-scale virtual desktop infrastructure as well.
September 28, 2021

Highly recommended, you know what you're getting with VMware

Verified User
Professional in Information Technology
Education Management Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi are the market leader and make management / administration simple and intuitive. If you've got the budget to get vCenter and particularly the essentials package that supports vMotion, then moving machines for maintenance is hassle free. Integration with the likes of Veeam make backup and recovery very simple. The templates to copy a machine or to quickly deploy several VMs has saved us a lot of time.
June 28, 2021

VMware ESXi for the win, again and again

Michael Haberkern | TrustRadius Reviewer
Michael Haberkern
Network Engineer Supervisor
City of Santa Maria (Government Administration, 501-1000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi is well suited for those that have the pocket and want the real deal--and it will always work. Finding a system engineer that has VMware ESXi experience is easy. Finding someone with Nutanix or Hyper-V will prove more tasking. You pay for what you get.
May 14, 2021

Simple to use virtulization

AA
Adrian Alessi
General Manager
Pinn Deavin & Co (Financial Services, 11-50 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Great option for small businesses that need to virtualise a few servers on limited hardware. A lot more cost effective that hosted servers. Great in small businesses where you need to move servers from hardware to hardware when upgrading and allows for minimal impact when migrating. Also great for disaster recovery
May 13, 2021

Great Product!

Verified User
Technician in Information Technology
Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
At the moment I don't know of a better baseline product to provide the virtual machine flexibility that VMWare has. With the power of ESXi and the ability to leverage other VMWare software products with it, you are able to use it to cover just about any VDI, Local Cloud, or simple server needs.
May 13, 2021

VMware ESXi to the rescue!

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Higher Education Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I would recommend using it to a colleague. It does exactly what it should do and does it well. If you have a deployment that involves a lot of Virtual Machines, you should look at VMWare ESXi. It gives you all the functionality needed.
May 13, 2021

Server Virtualization Swiss Army Knife

Verified User
Administrator in Information Technology
Entertainment Company, 201-500 employees
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Like said before, VMware ESXI is clearly only usable for hosting large environments but can for sure also handle small environments and as it is easy to install and easy to manage. It [is tough] to say where it should be less appropriate. It is OS open, you can use it for Windows, Linux but for sure also for other operation systems. For me it's the host virtualization Swiss Army knife
May 03, 2021

VMware ESxi for the small business

Tom Blazek | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tom Blazek
IT Manager
Rancilio Group North America (Wholesale, 11-50 employees)
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I do like [VMware] ESXi, but the pricing is hard to swallow for a smaller company. I love the ability to have many options for backup solutions, like Veeam, but the functionality you get for the pricing can be hard to justify. That being said, if you are not virtualized, I definitely recommend something like VMware to get virtual[.]
May 03, 2021

VMware delivers critical business features

Verified User
Engineer in Engineering
Computer Networking Company, 10,001+ employees
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
[VMware ESXi is] well suited to host business critical applications that require 5 9’s uptime. Not so well suited for a business that does not have a large buying power as it’s expensive. Lots of documentation and scripts widely available on the internet. Powershell and python native tools available make this a developers dream.
February 18, 2021

ESXi Industry Standard

Verified User
Contributor in Information Technology
Information Technology and Services Company, 51-200 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
Shared hardware resources. VM Pools. Well suited within organizations with remote workers [as] it can eliminate needs for Advanced firewalls, keep security intact within organization applications.
January 12, 2021

VMware ESXi--the best option for small and mid-size data centers

Verified User
Manager in Information Technology
Construction Company, 1001-5000 employees
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi is well suited for any on-premises virtualization environment. It's particularly useful for small sites that can utilize the essentials package. The price goes up substantially per host when you go over three machines. Even with the difference in cost, it's still the best platform for virtualization at this size.
March 20, 2020

VMWare ESXi is still the king of Hypervisors

Tim Enders | TrustRadius Reviewer
Tim Enders
Senior Systems Engineer
Loyola University Maryland (Higher Education, 1001-5000 employees)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
VMware ESXi is one of the two or three best products I've used in my career. It revolutionized IT infrastructure when it was released, and it continues to be an essential underpinning to our entire environment now. It is the segment leader for on-premises server virtualization. It does carry some significant licensing costs, but we have found that those easily pay for themselves over time for an institution of our size.
February 21, 2020

Behold The Power Of VMware ESXi

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Hospital & Health Care Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
In my opinion, VMware ESXi is the best software for running virtual machines out of other hypervisors that I have tried. It works great for a good amount of servers. If you're hosting only a handful of servers, you may be pressed to find a free or low budget solution. If you're running a medium-sized business, up through a large enterprise, this is the technology you want.
February 20, 2020

De facto Virtualization Standard

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Gambling & Casinos Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
ESXi excels at providing stable, highly-available resources for most applications. The vast majority of workloads can be virtualized without a penalty. Hardware accelerated assistance is exposed and effective, and the options are plentiful. Adding memory or compute resources is dead simple. Pooling of resources and defining resource priority is top notch. A key to succeeding with ESXi is to give it more than it needs - more memory, more CPU, more network bandwidth. ESXi will manage those resources effectively so long as you give it room to work.

However, with high-transaction databases and some latency-sensitive applications, ESXi may not be the best solution. I've encountered long snapshot times that have disrupted SQL operations when I/O is frozen to create the snapshot. VMware has documented this and actually recommends avoiding snapshot technology in these situations. While not a common scenario this can result in unexpected production issues without thorough, careful planning. ESXi is also not suitable for devices or environments where outboard hardware (USB and other devices) are required. Lastly, the floppy drive has been dead for years. Why is it still present in the default hardware for a virtual machine in the year 2020? Does anyone actually have a need for floppy emulation?
January 23, 2020

Highly recommended

Verified User
Engineer in Information Technology
Aviation & Aerospace Company, 501-1000 employees
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Likelihood to Recommend
I would say VMware ESXi suited to most environments, really, depending on the available budget. It has proven very reliable in my experience, which is very valuable to us, as we are a 24/7 company.
Return to navigation