Free VM's for Everyone!
March 07, 2018
Free VM's for Everyone!
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Overall Satisfaction with VMware ESXi
We use VMware ESXi as the platform for virtualization for a marketing agency. In this case, it is used to run multiple, critical servers including a pbx phone system, a high capacity and volume file server with lots of video and image files, a development IIS server, and multiple other virtual machines to test and do other work on. We have found this technology especially useful for this environment, as we operate on mostly a Mac environment for creatives. This allows them to have virtual machines they can access when they need to use software only available on a Windows environment.
- VMware ESXi does a great job of getting multiple VMs setup quickly. The interface is intuitive and simple to use.
- ESXi is a stable platform where mission critical VMs can run without concern.
- ESXi is free. Really, it's free.
- The management software is PC only, and does not seem to work with Wine for Linux or MacOS.
- No on server interface to start/monitor/or reset machines.
- Free license limits it to physical 2 CPU's.
- In this environment, it has allowed us to purchase one quality server instead of 4 lower quality machines to handle the different workload required by the organization.
- The decrease in power from running one machine instead of 4 is not negligible.
- The ability to fire up test machines or provide remote systems has saved a precious time for remote workers.
VMware ESXi, along with being free, was easy to setup and get started with. Compared to the Windows Server environment, I found VMware tools more intuitive. Also, we were able to use VMware ESXi on lower powered servers with little overhead cost compared to the Microsoft Windows solutions. This meant that we didn't need to spend as much on hardware, and still accomplish our goals.