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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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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, …
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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. …
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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 …
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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

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Pricing

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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

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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.

Sorry, this product's description is unavailable

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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

8.7
Avg 8.3
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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 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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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(804)

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

(1-25 of 127)
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Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We were facing multiple issues related to security and privacy due to work from home environment, and VMware helped in this regard with its top-of-the-line flagship product ESXi. Our employees love the way virtual machine work with an added layer of security, along with the great performance provided by Vmware.
Brendon Brown | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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 temporary or remote access. Using VMware ESXi allows us to invest in server infrastructure instead of end-user devices, which allows us to keep maintenance and security closer to the IT department.
Richard Potts | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use ESXi within all of our Production, Development, & Testing environments to manage and run critical workloads that the company leverages for revenue generating applications as well as day to day IT infrastructure systems. ESXi is our management center for all of these systems and allows us to modify our virtual environment as needed.
May 02, 2022

Vmware Stability

Luke Kuhlow | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
ESXI is our choice for a primary virtualization program that allows us to consolidate and centrally manage our server infrastructure with ease and confidence. It allows for load balancing and proper resource shuffling for updates and patching. Provides smooth way for migrating VM's to different devices to be able to make our datacenter more efficient.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
April 07, 2022

VMware ESXI

Satchidananda Rout | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
VMware Esxi is very good product. Which helps people to virtualize the environment or data center. I am using Exsi for last 5 years. VMware vsphere is giving graphical view to to control the servers. EXSI helps to vertiualize the network, storage, CPU and Memory. We can virualize whole data center and vm spinup time is very less.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use VMware ESXi at many sites to virtualize the servers they need and reduce the number of servers needed. This also helps when multiple software packages used would contend with each other if on the same server. We have a few different deployment styles and all of them help provide more flexibility for users and better uptime and maintenance for IT staff. This has really helped the workflow for our sites and increased productivity as we roll up new applications in addition to the ever-demanding need to update applications without taking down another application as we reboot VM servers.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
We are using the VMware ESXi to create the multiple virtual machines over single physical server. Easily we can migrate the VMs to another physical servers without any issue. Easily we can scale up and scale down the resource of VMs as per demands. VMware ESXi provides the lots easy and advanced feature like snapshot, backup & restore, resource allocation which help make project work smoothly.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use ESXi in our organization for our virtualized workloads. ESXi provides a solution for growing organizations that have way too much of a physical presence. Without ESXi, datacenters would be filled with single-purpose, standalone servers. 99% of our environment currently runs on ESXi. I have used it in my previous jobs and still do in my current one.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We are using the VMware ESXi in our different projects for different clients to manage the more than 1000 servers (Linux & Window).
We address the our problems like resource scaling and physical server load balancing. VMware ESXi provide the easy way to create the VMs and easily migrate the from one physical server to another physical online.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
VMware ESXi is used as our primary means of deploying virtual machines for any business purpose with approximately 200 virtual machines across our own infrastructure and customer infrastructure. We find it to be very user friendly with good reliable performance. ESXi has earned our trust for on-prem server deployments.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Using VMware ESXI for multiple instances of virtual machines on one physical host. It does not require an underlying operating system to function. It is scalable operates faster and overall perform better. Being a system integrator offering support service to our customers and for our lab, we need virtual machines for operating various OS and testing purposes.
Adam Friedli | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use it to host our on-premise environment. So, it is critical in order for all of our systems to operate. It is also utilized for the disaster recovery environment. It has worked extremely well since it's been in use, and we know we can count on it to keep everything running. It's also able to load balance so our resources are used efficiently and not wasted.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Consolidated all servers into 3 hosts, 2 switches, and SAN. We had many physical servers that were confined to their hardware specs. Now that we are not tied to hardware, we can share resources without having to swap any hardware.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
The majority of our servers have been virtualized, with the exception of our databases. We save money on hardware, energy, and cooling expenditures by virtualizing 25 servers. And it spares us the price and complication of doubling the gear to achieve redundancy. Using virtualization, we can swiftly increase our capacity without increasing the footprint of our infrastructure.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use VMware ESXi in our organization to host an entire rack full of virtualized servers and have run just about every operating system over the last decade from Windows 2019 to Windows 2000 and everything in between. In general, VMWare ESXi can host all of your platforms regardless of OS and they can run it reliably and with high availability.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
VMware ESXi is the basis of our virtual server infrastructure. We use it to run core services on the local network. We also use it to provide virtual workstations for our staff and for testing. It quickly provides additional services to our environment.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I implemented VMware ESXi host with 2 x 6 core CPUs, 72GB RAM and 500GB local storage. To run three Windows virtual machines with different configurations such as 1) 4 vCPU, 12GB RAM and 80GB storage 2) 3 vCPU, 8GB RAM and 60GB storage 3) 2 vCPU 4GB RAM and 50GB storage. As VMware ESXi is the type 1 hypervisor, we can reduce data centre space, power and IT administrative requirements. In our use case, it was better for IT administrative requirements.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is used as the platform to host our ICS systems, both data center, and field. These systems are out HMI and supporting functions. We have 150+ VMware ESXi-based systems deployed, in over 40 states. The VMware ESXi hosts Windows-based OS servers, in addition to Linux-based support structure VMs. We do not utilize vCenter.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
VMware ESXi allows us to run multiple virtual servers on one physical piece of hardware. We have a virtual server for the phone, one for the e-commerce site, one for the inventory application, one as a firewall/router, and one for general file storage. It allows to easily bring up a server to test a new piece of software.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
VMware ESXi with vCenter Server is how my entire server rack runs. 99% of my servers are all virtual, all running on VMware ESXi. Those 20 servers are running on 3 hosts in a cluster to maximize their fault tolerance and high availability in the event of a host failure. Over the years, I have added a myriad of Linux servers on the fly. Some Linux servers are testbeds for new systems or research into different open source systems our organization could benefit from. Others are things like intranet web servers for internal communications, database servers, or instant messaging systems. It truly gives me the flexibility to add new services as needed in my environment. My servers also run better as I move to newer hosts as I can increase memory, number of processors, and storage when needed (and when physically available on the hosts.)
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Currently, we use VMware ESXi to host our virtual environment of servers and workstations in our organization. The business problem that we address by using VMware ESXi is that it gives us a product that we can use to easily set up a virtual environment which saves us time and money. We don't have to use physical servers and workstations to set up servers and other appliances. When other functional departments in our company require servers to be stood up we can deploy it in our VMware ESXi environment seamlessly.
March 24, 2022

Easy to manage

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use VMware ESXi on all our virtual appliances and is great for managing the virtual servers on them. Makes the installation easy and straight forward and can easily remove or deploy new servers plus have all the appliances setup the same way and deploy it over and over. Would recommend it for anyone building a lot of virtual servers.
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