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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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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

(806)

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)
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March 24, 2022

Ease with Esxi..!!

Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • COnfiguration is easy the self explanatory in ESXi.
  • ESXi supports various operating systems as well.
  • ESXi is reliable and gives great performance.
  • ESXi makes functionality seamless.
  • Unable to integrate with 3rd party backup applications.
  • Integration with 3rd party applications could help simplify tasks and reduce multiple applications.
  • Performance tracking should be available in data analytics format.
M. Randy Harris, Jr. | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Wayne Ragusa | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Ease of Access to all of my Virtual servers.
  • Great performance visibility.
  • Easy to Grow at a moment's notice.
  • Complexity - if you're not familiar with the product there is a learning curve.
  • VMware ESXi could find a way to boot faster.
Arvind Kumar | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Hardware Virtualization.
  • Supports multiple OEMs.
  • Can be aligned with other important infrastructure tools.
  • Single host management should be improved.
  • One-click SSL certificate renewal from custom location cannot be done.
  • Host isolation management can be improved.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Incredibly quick to deploy. Total installation time of less than five minutes
  • Able to easily mount ISCSI storage devices to VMWare ESXi hosts within the GUI
  • Allows you to run the product for free - if you stay under the physical core count (and with some reduced features)
  • Incredibly stable software - we have not run into any issues that were a direct result of VMWare ESXi being at fault
  • Very low hardware resources utilized to run this product
  • It would be nice if it was easier to upgrade between versions/releases
  • Trying to find some of their software downloads can be difficult, as their website is not the greatest - also requires you to be logged in to view any of their software downloads (which is difficult if you're working with a reseller)
  • When you click on "Virtual Network Cards" as a hotlink - it generally breaks your session. So that small bug could also be patched.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Reseller
  • It partitions applications from underlying hardware to cut costs.
  • It abstracts the CPU, RAM, Storage, etc from physical hardware into multiple virtual machines.
  • You can host multiple applications with different OS, different nature of applications on each virtual machine hosted on the server.
  • It provides live migration and automatic load balancing through features like VMotion, HA, etc.
  • No official VMware technical support
  • Does not support all operating systems like UNIX, AIX
  • Permission structure can get confusing sometimes
Michael Haberkern | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Deploys virtual server very well
  • Deploys .ova very well
  • Great details, notes, and alerts
  • Very scalable
  • It can be cost prohibitive for some small to medium-sized businesses
  • With its integration with EMC VxRail, getting the right support for the issue can sometimes prove difficult
  • Based in VmKernal cli, so if you ever need to ssh, it can get hair pretty quick if you're not in there regularly
May 13, 2021

Great Product!

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • HA protection
  • Workload Balancing
  • Elastic resource allocation
  • We are looking for more flexibility with vvol usage
  • Better and more descriptive error logging in vcenter
  • Permission structure can occasionally get confusing
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Very small resource footprint.
  • Easy to manage.
  • Very easy to install.
  • Capable of hosting large environments.
  • Manage large amount of networks (VLAN's, etc.).
  • There is nothing really to add.
  • With some releases there were some minor issues.
Tom Blazek | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • I like how easily it integrates with windows
  • Snapshotting is very easy to setup
  • There are also many integrations to extend ESXi functionality
  • Pricing is a barrier for most companies
  • A deployment can get quite complex and overkill for a small company
  • I would like to see more options for setting it up in a hyperconverged manner
February 18, 2021

ESXi Industry Standard

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Network segmenting.
  • Quick and easy management of resources.
  • Backup and restore capabilities.
  • Moving resources from one cluster to another seamlessly.
  • Pricing and Licensing.
  • DSwitches.
  • Vmotions & SAN.
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Quick rollout of new VMs through templates
  • Advanced networking capabilities
  • Easy migration of virtual machines to new compute and storage
  • Easier upgrade process
  • Less expensive options for mid-tier organizations (Essentials is too small)
Tim Enders | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Virtualization - it allows you to take full advantage of your hardware investments
  • Flexibility - it allows you to run services across disparate hardware types
  • Scalability - it allows you to expand and deploy new services rapidly
  • Complexity - if you're not familiar with the product there is a learning curve.
  • It does require other licensed VMWare products (vCenter Server, etc.) for full functionality.
March 06, 2020

ESXi is great.

Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Monitoring and reporting of virtual machines in environment.
  • In-depth configuration and management of hypervisor and virtual machines.
  • Uptime 900+ days.
  • Some of the events could be more informative.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • 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.
January 23, 2020

Highly recommended

Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
  • Allows control of VM's on the host, which is helpful if vSphere is unavailable.
  • As you would expect, it integrates perfectly with vSphere.
  • A better interface to monitor the logs in VMware Esxi would be helpful.
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