Table of Contents
- VMware ESXi Overview
- ESXi Free vs Paid – Differences
- ESXi Free (VMware Hypervisor) – Limitations
- Entry Level Package or Cheapest package of ESXi
- VMware vSphere Editions
- Free ESXi use case
- Downloading Free ESXi
- VMware ESXi 6.7 Features and Latest versions
- Summary
VMware ESXi is a bare-metal hypervisor that provides a virtualization layer which abstracts the underlying hardware resources (CPU, Memory, Network and Storage) and distributes them to the resource consumers (Virtual Machines).
In this post, we’ll take a look at the following:
- VMware ESXi Overview
- ESXi Free vs Paid – Difference
- ESXi Free Use Case & Download
- Entry-level ESXi package
- ESXi 6.7 New Features
VMware ESXi Overview
VMware released ESXi after the release of their VMware ESXi version 4.1 in 2010. ESXi is currently running on version 6.7 which includes bug fixes from previous ESXi versions and some other major enhancements that have been made available from ESXi 6.0 to 6.5 and 6.7.
One of the examples is, with ESXi 6.x wherein the overall scalability was increased from 32 ESXi hosts in a cluster to 64 ESXi hosts in a cluster and upto 8000 Virtual Machines running inside the cluster.
ESXi has a small disk footprint and provides additional security protection with features like:
Firewall (Internal Firewall to minimize the risk of attack )
Memory Hardening (ESXi Kernel, user mode applications, and executable components like drivers and libraries are located at random)
Kernel Module Integrity (Digital Signing ensure the integrity and Authenticity of Modules and applications when they are loaded by VMkernel)
Trusted Platform Module (Hardware Element Affirming the boot process and genuine drivers )
UEFI Secure Boot (Verifier started at boot time before other processes to verify the VIB’s chain to the certificate in the firmware)
Lock Down Mode (To limit the management of ESXi to vCenter Server only)
ESXi can be installed on a Hard Disk, a USB device xor even on a SD card, using VMware vSphere Auto Deploy feature ESXi can also be installed on diskless hosts.
ESXi Hypervisor is available as a free version or can be purchased as a licensed version with vSphere.
ESXi Free vs Paid – Differences
The free version of ESXi is pretty much identical to the paid version which means we get most of the features and functionalities available except for some limitations mentioned below.
All the features are available to be used for 60 days during the evaluation period, post that some of the features wouldn’t be available to use and a license will be required to restore the non-working functionalities.
ESXi Free (VMware Hypervisor) – Limitations
- Can not be managed via vCenter Server (Management Platform), but vSphere client can be used to manage standalone ESXi host
- Up to 2 physical CPU per Host is possible
- Maximum amount of vCPUs which can be assigned to a VM is limited to 8
- VMware Support is not available
However, the standalone ESXi host can be managed via vSphere client and there is also no limitation on physical memory and cores per CPU.
Entry Level Package or Cheapest package of ESXi
Now that we have understood the key limitations of free ESXi, it’s time to understand the entry-level packages available for purchase and the key features they provide, VMware vSphere Essentials delivers virtualization platform for small business at an affordable price. vSphere Essentials has two editions: vSphere Essentials kit and vSphere Essentials Plus kit.
The vSphere Essentials Kit licenses are perpetual and do not expire. It includes 6 CPU licenses of vSphere Essentials (for 3 servers with up to 2 processors each) and 1 license for vCenter Server Essentials.
** Support available for either 1 Year or 3 years which cover updates and new releases of vSphere essentials.
The vSphere Essential Plus kit includes 6 CPU licenses of vSphere Essentials Plus (for 3 servers with up to 2 processors each) and 1 license for vCenter Server Essentials and other important features like vSphere Data Protection, vSphere High Availability, vSphere vMotion, Cross Switch vMotion, vSphere vShield Endpoint, vSphere Replication.
** Support level Basic (Technical Support, 12 Hours/Day, per published Business Hours, Monday through Friday) and Production (Technical Support, 24 Hours/Day, 7 Days a week).
VMware vSphere Editions
VMware vSphere is the flagship suite by VMware which offers a complete package of VMware hypervisor, vCenter Server (Management Solution) and a lot of other cool features like High Availability, Distributed Resource Scheduler, vMotion, Fault tolerance that helps to transform data centers.
vSphere is licensed on a per-processor basis which means each physical processor (CPU) in a server needs to have at least one processor license key assigned to run vSphere.VMware vSphere licenses are simple license keys (25-character alphanumeric strings) that contain encrypted information about vSphere edition.
Have a look at the complete details of vSphere Editions and Licensing Considerations here.
Free ESXi use case
ESXi Free (VMware Hypervisor) is suitable for Home Lab purposes, and for those who want to try out Virtualization for the first time and don’t want to invest heavily on the licenses.
Downloading Free ESXi
The free version can be downloaded directly from VMware which comes in the form of an ISO image which is exactly the same as the paid version, the only difference is the License key applied.
VMware ESXi 6.7 Features
With ESXi 6.7, ESXi Quick Boot was introduced which allows the ESXi to reboot without re-initializing the physical server bios reducing the overall boot time and speeding up the patching and maintenance operations which require ESXi reboot.
ESXi Quick boot is integrated with vSphere Update Manager workflows which are performed during remediation operations, ESXi Quick boot works only on ESXi 6.7 with native drivers only and is enabled by default if it’s available on an ESXi host and can be disabled to allow a full boot order to occur.
Not all the servers support the Quick boot feature, Update Manager will list quick boot as an option for those servers which support quick boot and if the server doesn’t support the feature the ESXi host will perform a regular reboot instead of Quick Boot.
Windows.iso: VMware Tools image for Windows Vista or higher
Linux.iso: VMware Tools image for Linux OS with glibc 2.5 or higher are bundled with ESXi
VMware Tools 10.3.2 ISO (Solaris.iso, freebsd.iso and darwin.iso) are available for download
One of the most important features made available with ESXi 6.7 Update 1, is that we can make use of vSphere vMotion to migrate virtual machines configured with NVIDIA virtual GPU to other hosts with compatible NVIDIA Tesla GPUs.
ESXi 6.7 update 2 provides support for VMFS6 automatic unmap processing on storage arrays and devices which report to ESXi hosts with an unmap granularity value greater than 1 MB. On arrays that report granularity of 1 MB and less, the unmap operation is supported if the granularity is a factor of 1 MB.
For a list of latest versions, visit here: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2143832
Summary
Installing ESXi in a datacenter is quick and easy because of its small disk footprint and easy to configure options. And, the simplified GUI help administrator to easily create and manage virtual machines.
We can make use of the free version of ESXi for testing purposes or we can go ahead and buy the vSphere licenses which includes ESXi and vCenter Server for centralized management of the ESXi and the Virtual Machines.
Related Posts
Creating custom ESXi Image
VMware ESXi USB Passthrough Overview and Configuration
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