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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%
Reviewer Pros & Cons
Enterprise Data Management Supervisor
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.
Entry-level set up fee?
- No setup fee
Offerings
- Free Trial
- Free/Freemium Version
- Premium Consulting/Integration Services
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Alternatives Pricing
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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Product Details
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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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(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!
- 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.
Attribute Ratings
Reviews
(1-5 of 5)Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
April 26, 2022
VMware ESXi still the best
We virtualized all servers except for our DB servers. Virtualizing 25 servers saves us on hardware, heating, cooling costs. And allows us to have them be redundant without the extra expense of doubling the hardware and the complexity with that. Virtualizing allows us to add more capacity quickly without increasing our footprint.
- Consolidation
- Redundancy
- Stability
- Improve simplicity.
- Improve documentation.
- Improve updates.
78%
7.8
- Fast ROI.
- Manageability
- Speed
VMware ESXi stacks up nicely against Hyper-V. VMware ESXi is a smaller footprint, the one thing Hyper-V has is cost it is free with the purchase of a windows license that allows you to run at least two windows VM's within the Hyper-V server. But VMware ESXi is still the leader and uses fewer resources than what I tested.
2
They represent the critical core functions of the companies product offering. We run everything in VM's and that has allowed us to run 20+ servers on 2 physical servers. This is not only large cost savings in hardware but also in power and cooling. We are very impressed with how efficient the servers run and how little overhead the host servers use allowing for more resources for the guest machines.
2
You have to understand networking to begin with, as for the setup if you are doing a basic setup there are lots of information and videos on the web to help you. If you are doing complex then I suggest training. You will also need a good understanding of the OS your guests are going ot be running. But most importantly is the understanding of networking, once you know that it is way easier to setup and manage.
- Web Server
- Email Server
- High Availability
- cost reduction
- reduce physical footprint
- improve availability
- reduce environmental impact
- on premise to cloud
- virtual the Database Server
No
- Price
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
- Prior Experience with the Product
I have used this product in other companies and it just works. It has a very light footprint for install and usage. The costs are reasonable and VMware is the standard for virtualization. MS Hyper-V is a good product but requires Windows to run onb the hosts for Hyper-V to work and so it has a bigger footprint which is not necessarily a bad thing, however you need to patch it monthly.
I would not change the selection as of right now. the evaluation I may be open to look at open source solutions, but it would be hard for us to remove VMware, from our solution.
- Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
The biggest lessons learned is you need to use the product and let business get some confidence in its capabilities. Once peopel realize they do not need a physical server for their solution and the benefits of going virtual, people are more likely to embrace the solution.
- Setting up the iscsi
- just learning the new interface in Vcenter Server
- no training
Yes for basic solutions it is very simple to setup, and there are a lot of resources on the web to help. With largew complex solutions, then perhaps training would help, but only to reduce time as you can pretty well figure anything out.
Follow what your server manufacture, sotrage provider, network provider and vmware on best practices. We use Dell and they have great documentation on best practices for their solutions using VMware.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
We folllowed what was required for the switches and storage, along with using the custom imiages for ESXi for our Dell servers. However most Server Manufactures have custom images for their offering.
No we did not, as we are a small company and felt we did not need anything above the normal support.
No
Just recently they supported me with an issue, where the ticket was given to one person who spent quite sometime to resolve and then brought in another person who took over and I did not have to repeat the handoff was quick and seamless.
- install
- basic setup
- vcentre setup
- DRS
- VSAN
- Dell Compellent Storage
It was fairly straightforward to integrate, was it necessary for simple environments no it is not, for large, complex environments it would make certain operations like growing the datastore much easier and quicker.
- none
As with anything, ensure you understand why you are doing the integration and weigh the benefits of doing so. I am of the mindset simpler is better so integrations can make solutions complex with little benefit.
We used the standard terms they offered.
Just be upfront with what you need and understand the different levels, we do not have the solution that allows movement of storage while the guest is on, but we have not really had a need for that.
Yes
It was pretty straightforward and is easy to do. Downtime for the one ESXi server was minimal, but transparent to the users as we moved the guest systems over to the other host.
- security fixes
- bug fixes
- staying current with technology
- fixes
- performance improvements
No
No
March 24, 2022
VMware ESXi - The Gold Standard in Hypervisors
VMware ESXi was used to provide virtual machines to support work-from-home for faculty, staff, and students. Virtual machines provided remote access to internal systems which would otherwise require the user to be onsite. Virtual machines were also provided to students and instructors to provide computer configurations that would otherwise not be available.
- An extremely reliable platform with greater than 99% of uptime.
- Very secure platform.
- Number of tools that enable management of the platform.
- Very stable VMware product.
- The upgrade/patch process is in need of a complete overhaul.
100%
10.0
- VMware ESXi platform was the technology that allowed our organization to pivot from onsite to work-from-home in a matter of days during the pandemic. The college was physically closed with short notice, but operations and classes continued due to the VMware ESXi infrastructure and configuration already in place.
1
Virtualization Engineer
1
Virtualization Engineer
- Remote access to internal systems.
- Ability to offer any computer configuration for any class without having to purchase new hardware.
No
- Product Features
- Product Usability
- Product Reputation
The products reliability/stability was the defining factor.
No. It was not budgeted for my group.
No
- Spinning up new VMs.
- Backing up VMs.
- Shutting down/Restarting VMs.
- Moving VMs between host.
- Upgrades/Patching
Yes, but I don't use it
We use VMware ESXi to host all of our virtual servers around the district and also in our data center. It's also being used by other departments to access virtual servers in our environment. Each location has 1 ESXi host that runs multiple virtual servers. Those virtual servers are used for caching images and updates for workstations at each location.
- ESXi is able to minimize the physical server footprint.
- ESXi is also very easy to get up and running.
- I would like to see better performance analytics built in to ESXi.
- ESXi could find a way to boot faster.
100%
10.0
- One positive impact is the amount of power we have saved.
- We get better utilization out of our physical servers.
Azure workstations are made to run windows. Running Linux on top of a windows server just doesn't seem like the right thing to do. The Azure platform is also very hard to learn and become familiar with. A Microsoft licensing platform is much harder to understand as compared to VMWare's licensing platform.
2
We have only a couple of engineers that use ESXi. There are only a couple of people qualified to manage our ESXi host servers. Those two engineers mainly use ESXi to install new or manage virtual servers for our district.
1
We only have one engineer that's responsible for managing and troubleshooting ESXi.
- We use ESXi to host virtual servers
- It allows us to consolidate servers onto one platform
- ESXi makes it easy to manage server infrastructure
- Can really think of anything at this time.
- Moving on-premise infrastucture to the cloud
No
- Prior Experience with the Product
We have been using VMware ESXi since 2003. VMWare ESXi has always had great support. It's always been reliable and stable.
A lot of the other virtualization software that's out now was not around when we first started using ESXi. I would not change anything with my selection process.
- Implemented in-house
No
Change management was a small part of the implementation and was well-handled
Make sure that all end-users of virtual servers have multiple ways to access the GUI.
- Configuring the switch port access.
- Setting up trunking on the switch ports
We purchased 7/24 support. In our environment, we need to have all systems up and running at all times. Having professional support available at all times is a must for us. We have taken advantage of this support multiple times in the past when we have had problems.
No
We have always had great experiences with VMWare support.
- Creating a virtual server is very easy and intuitive
- Updating the host is very easy.
- Granting access is a very easy process
- Adding some types of shared storage can be challenging
February 20, 2020
De facto Virtualization Standard
At ~98% virtualization, VMware ESXi forms the core of our server infrastructure. It's an exceptionally mature product that grows with organizational needs. In our organization it is used in two separate AD domains, each instance managed separately. One of the key features of ESXi is high availability; virtualization prevents a single hardware failure from resulting in service loss. If the hardware running ESXi fails or develops a fault condition, the virtualized server can be automatically or manually migrated to a functioning host while the fault condition is addressed. An additional layer of resilience is provided by snapshot technology; prior to making any system changes a snapshot can be taken to supplement existing backups and provide a point-in-time recovery. Snapshots also make backups less intrusive when a compatible platform is used.
- High availability/vMotion for hosted VMs is a must-have in any business. No one wants their systems to fail, knowing that the hosted systems are protected and always available is a great stress reliever.
- Load and resource balancing (with proper licensing) keeps busy servers from consuming all available resources on a given host. DRS and StorageDRS make short work of balancing workloads, I find this a must-have feature.
- 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.
100%
10.0
- We have successfully run many workloads in ESXi, from backup systems to Exchange servers. Hardware costs are predictable and easier to manage, and ESXi hosts can be introduced or retired with little to no impact to production systems, allowing for rolling hardware upgrades.
- Management time of individual staff is reduced. This is enabled by the powerful and flexible automation options in the platform.
Hyper-V is a viable solution, but in my experience the management toolkit has always been its Achilles heel. vCenter provides everything in one UI, whereas Hyper-V requires multiple tools to accomplish similar tasks. Licensing costs are higher with VMware, mostly because they can't just bake it into their operating system, but with the added cost comes top-notch support via phone or email. Hyper-V is perfectly capable, but doesn't enjoy the same wide base of community support that VMware does. ESXi is also extensible by third parties to a degree unmatched by other platforms. There's a reason many organizations feel that the ROI is worth it and invest in VMware, making it a de facto standard of sorts.
Yes
We run a 24x7x365 production operation. Knowing that someone will pick up the phone and troubleshoot a severity 1 issue is well worth the price.
Yes
In fairness the bug was with an add-in component (NSX Endpoint, formerly vShield). Nonetheless, support owned this, provided a workaround, and ultimately provided a release that addressed the initial problem.
I've previously noted that we encountered an issue with NSX Endpoint. This manifested itself as a problem in networking on individual servers - mail delivery was slow, for example - and VMware treated this with high priority. The tech walked me through a method of managing the issue we faced while the development team addressed it. The tech even followed up a month later to see if we were still facing the same problem and to ask if there was anything additional he could offer by way of support.
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.
90%
9.0
- Using 1 physical system, we are running 8 VMs, fully utilizing the hardware of that system. We have saved tremendously in money spent on hardware for a lab environment.
- ESXi is a free product, so 100% ROI.
- A small learning curve for some of the admins in the initial deployment/configuration of teh system. Much different than the competitors.
I strongly prefer VMware over the others. The robust solution that VMware offers is far better, and easier to use. The smaller hypervisor footprint, and resource requirements far outdo the competition. The performance of the VMs in turn is also better compared to the competition.
15
IT department to development group.
2
System Administrators with a couple years of overall experience can support this very easily. Entry level into VMware can support within about a week of working with it.
- Test and Lab environment.
- Production environment.
- Free product (ESXi)
- Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
- Administrators with no VMware experience setting it up. Still stood up and functional within 1 day.
- After setup/configuration, how do I access the VMs?
No
We use the Free product, and there is more than enough knowledge / documented without using VMware support.
No