VMware ESXi

It's well suited for most average workloads, but not ideal for workloads which require large amounts of resources, such as CPU cores and memory.

VMware ESXi works well in large environments where lots of computing and storage resources need to be shared and constantly reallocated for virtual machines. There are full-featured versions that come at a high cost, but there are also versions that lack some features that may not be needed at a lower cost, and even a free version for small lab environments. If you just need one virtual machine to run periodically, you can use one of the more consumer-grade hypervisors like Workstation, Fusion, or just Virtual Box for free.

VMware ESXi is well suited for pretty much any IT environment that plans on having multiple servers. I suppose if you are small, have zero IT people, and have zero desire to learn the product, it would be best to skip it.

If you have the proper hardware, and desire stability and support, then ESXi is about at the top of the list. It has a proven reputation, and you can't really be blamed for buying the best.

If your budget is low, and/or you might not have the latest hardware, some of the open source virtualization products might be a better fit.

vMotion is well suited for increased service availability to move the entire state of a running virtual machine between hosts over a dedicated vMotion network to run the VMs with minimal downtime. Other than vMotion, I would highlight a well suited scenario like Datastore usage on disk alarm which sends emails when certain thresholds are reached and describes how to respond to the alarm when it is triggered.

All in all, vSphere ESXi is almost always the best solution for virtualization. Hobbyists and homelabbers will appreciate the ability to learn core features at no cost. Small businesses will benefit from consolidating hardware into one server where their domain controller, SQL server, file server, etc. can all still run independently. Medium to large businesses will find a lot of security in scalability and clustering.

I think VMware ESXi would be well suited for any company that has more than a few servers. If you have two servers, you might as well virtualize them and make your hardware hosts in a VMware environment. It will keep your servers up and running if you have any hardware failures. If you backup your servers, you can quickly and easily restore them after any software crashes. You can test all updates and changes before actually deploying them. I have had to do major reconfiguration of servers, and was unsure of how the server software would respond. You can easily make a copy of a server, launch it and do all the testing you need. If something doesn't work, start over again until you find the solution. It does cost to have the licenses, but you can calculate the cost of downtime if you didn't have it to see if it is worth it for you. If you have a very small environment, it may not be cost-effective, but it will surely improve the time you spend in IT. It would be good to have an idea about how the environment works, but once you learn, support can help with any other issues you have.

It's suited to Data Centers that are short on space. You are able to consolidate systems anywhere from 5 to 100 to one host. It's also good for Data Centers purchasing new hardware that want to use the space most efficiently. The multi-core systems of today cannot be used effectively without a virtualization product, why waste your peoples time messing with a lower-tier "free" product that requires more management time and is harder on compatibility
It is less appropriate if a company has little money and wants to waste their employees' time -- you are trading VMware $$ to save employee time.

I think every organization that has the need for on-premise servers should consider investing in ESXi. The initial cost for getting a proper ESXi environment set up with the servers, storage, and networking can be steep, so organizations that are on shoestring budgets may want to skip virtualization until they're ready for the necessary investments.

VMware excels at virtualizing hardware and allowing you to run multiple applications and network services on minimal hardware platforms. We used it for running servers for just about any purpose, service or application. The only time where we don't is for explicit vendor requirements, proprietary systems and when there is a heavy reliance to consume large amounts of data.

VMware ESXi is an excellent product to get the most out of your bare metal hardware. Lots of server manufacturers provide pre-built install images that are optimized for their servers, so that one can take full advantage of the hardware features and interface with the built-in sensors. However, VMware ESXi is a costly product and for small organizations going the Microsoft Hyper-V route will be a big cost savings even tho it is not as robust and efficient.

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.

In any scenario, I've yet to find many reasons where ESXi is not best suited for what is being thrown at it. From small organizations with 2-5 virtual machines to the larger organizations of 1000+ virtual machines it scales extremely well and the features, options, etc. remain the same given correct licensing. The options for HA, again given proper licensing, work extremely well once implemented and have saved myself and others I work with many hours of additional work automatically migrating VMs once a host has failed.

Given the options with the licensing, there are times where something else may have to be reviewed to see if it makes more sense unfortunately to say. The licensing is the only place where ESXi does not scale very well

I believe VMware ESXi is an excellent solution for all medium to enterprise-level companies. VMware ESXi does provide options for small business, but depending on features needed, this can be costly. VMware ESXi is the industry standard for virtualized data centers and continues to improve and innovate in the virtualized server space.

ESXi is well suited for every business model out there, that requires flexible management options of multiple servers. It is reliable, saves resources, time and money by allowing you to have one powerful box wearing many hats, instead of multiple cheaper boxes wearing individual hats. This is perfect for allocating resources appropriately as business needs are constantly changing and scaling and usually unpredictable rates. Conversely, ESXi is not suitable for environments that need to maintain computers without a domain, or need for server infrastructure. This is almost non-existent in the current climate, however.

Well suited when you need to have high availability for a server and for quick deployment of a server. Scalability is more effortless with virtual servers as hardware can easily be changed on the fly. Servers that need dedicated resources or specific hardware requirements is a scenario where virtualization is less appropriate.

VMware ESXi has an offering for all levels of of the business starting eith their free license all the way through to Enterprise Plus for advanced datacenter, critical workloads.VMware ESXi makes sense for development and production workloads for both backups and testing scenarios where minor r major changes can be snapshotted for quick rollbacks or cloning for longer term changes. VMware ESXi comes with distributed switching for standardizing networking across hosts and baseline configuration checks for consistent host config and self-healing. A solution for every need it licensing and pricing should be discussed with a reseller.

VMware ESXi is well suited where you don't have the physical space needed for the number servers you require. If you have applications that require little to no downtime, VMware ESXi can help provide that when clustered with other hosts. VMware ESXi will allow you to snapshot servers prior to major upgrades and changes. This provides a relatively safe fallback option if the upgrade doesn't go well. You can also leverage this to quickly go back to a clean state when testing new software or code.

Vmware ESXi is useful when you have limited space in your server room but need multiple servers for different purposes. You can virtualize the various servers on one piece of server hardware and keep your hardware use low while getting the number of servers you need. It's also great when you want to keep your hardware costs low but requires multiple servers in your environment.

I believe that ESXi is well suited for any and all scenarios. Except those where cost is a major factor. ESXi is not cheap, and with most companies that have a Microsoft EA for Windows Server that also grants them Hyper-V, sometimes the cost isn't justifiable. With that said, ESXi has functions and features that most enterprises need to stay resilient and function at a high level. Where critical services are needed, ESXi is tried and true and can handle everything you throw at it. Even for smaller IT shops, ESXi will provide flexibility and performance that will allow the organization to focus on more important areas, like their customers.

ESXi is well suited for small shops requiring three or fewer hosts, that have a capable and knowledgeable IT department with tight budgets, and minimal technology requirements. It is also suited for very large enterprise entities with large budgets and capable IT staff. Medium-sized businesses that require more than an Essentials Plus license (supports up to three hosts) should consider other available options before deciding to go with ESXi as the licensing costs beyond Essentials Plus are quite extensive.

ESXi is the right host OS if you want all the features a host OS would normally need to provide AND if you ware willing to pay for the license. It's not cheap. You will also want to pay for VMWare support unless you have an on-staff VMWare admin who really knows their way around ESXi and vSphere / vCenter functions.

If you want a free hypervisor? Then you need to try Hyper-V first to see if it can do everything you think it should be able to do. Hyper-V comes with Windows (both the server and PC flavors) as a role. It can do some basic functions of a host. But it doesn't have all the full capabilities and management features that ESXi hosts do when managed with vSphere / vCenter.

It is well suited for an enterprise that needs to deploy a virtualized platform for more than 100 virtual machines. However, it needs an organization budget wherever a small business may not invest on IT Infrastructure that much.

Having used or worked with the major hypervisors, my preference is still VMware ESXi over the other products. One of the key features it has that make the management of virtual machine so easy is the ability to right-click on a system to perform numerous tasks on it. Also, the ability to structure the environment all in one view, not only simplifies moving around between environments, but providing role-based access control as needed is very beneficial from a security standpoint.

At our organization, ESXi has been the backbone of our on-site infrastructure since 2013. I have not had an instance where VMware ESXi (with the appropriate add-ons) was not able to fit or exceed what we needed the product to do. We utilize VMware ESXi (enterprise plus) with vCenter, NSX, VSAN, and other products now. Our original deployment was just VMware ESXi connected to fiber channel based storage. Looking back we have gained a lot of features and tools to fix other issues, but ESXi works just as great as it always has for a hypervisor product.