Item: VMware ESXi
Rating: 10
Author: Verified User

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use VMWare ESXi standard edition as bare-metal Hypervisor hosts on our physical servers. We have virtualized all our servers on VMWare ESXi and do not have any physical servers, aside from the ESXi hosts. The guests are a mixture of Linux and Windows and with the guest addons agent installed, management and data sharing between ESXi and guest OS is seamless.

Pros and Cons

Management console is comprehensive.
Easy to spot resource intensive machines, resource bottleneck.

Advanced features are cryptic and require external explanations to decipher.
Disk management features to reduce virtual drives is not present.

Return on Investment

Moved disparate hardware physical servers to VMs on standardized hosts.
Utilized snapshots to facilitate easier rollback for patch management.

Alternatives Considered

Citrix Hypervisor (formerly XenServer), Oracle VM VirtualBox and Hyper-V

We used Oracle VM VirtualBox for sandbox and local testing. It is not a HyperVisor, but a virtualization platform. It requires a Host OS to install on. When we implemented VMWare ESXi, the cost of Citrix Hypervisor was more, and Hyper-V was still in its infancy. Ultimately the support and stability of VMWare ESXi won out. If deploying Microsoft guest OS(s), it is worth reviewing Hyper-V as you would not have to worry about licensing a portion of the Guest OS(s), vs. the others which would require a license for each guest OS, plus the Hypervisor license costs. Note - Versions of ESXi are compatible with specific processors and chipsets. Confirm your licensed version will run on the chosen hardware platform, especially important when utilizing older hardware. Security issues can arise if left unpatched.

Support Rating

We only required support once in 6 years and we were able to resolve the query with a reboot of the ESXi host.
We have found VMWare ESXi to be inherently stable. Applying patches to the ESXi is a pain point as the VMs need to be shutdown (if failover cluster is not implemented). I think this is the case with all HyperVisors.

Key Insights

Do you think VMware ESXi delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with VMware ESXi's feature set?

Yes

Did VMware ESXi live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of VMware ESXi go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy VMware ESXi again?

Yes

Other Software Used

Veeam Backup & Replication, Oracle VM VirtualBox, Microsoft Office 2016

Likelihood to Recommend

VMWare ESXi is well suited for consolidating light to medium workload guests. As long as the physical resources are not oversubscribed, the guest OS will work in their respective resource silos. Oversubscribing allows increased density as guest OS(s) utilize their full allocation only a few times. VMotion licensing is quite high and is necessary to seamlessly move VMs between multiple ESXi hosts. Patches to the ESXi require the shutdown of all guest VMs which can be tricky in a production environment.

VMWare ESXi Brings Stability

Overall Satisfaction with VMware ESXi