Back in late July, VMware made the decision to offer their ESXi product for free. Previously the only server product they offered for free was their previously-named GSX Server, now called VMware Server. That product required installation on a Windows or Linux host using the host’s filesystem. This provided for slow, sloppy virtual disks.
ESXi uses VMFS, VMware’s high speed filesystem designed specifically for large virtual disks, so there is an immediate plus. ESXi also provides all of the core functionality of VMware’s fully-featured ESX server product, plus virtual SMP support. If you have a VirtualCenter server to manage multiple ESXi hosts, you also get Update Manager, Consolidated Backup and High Availability. The only things you can’t do with ESXi is Vmotion, DRS and DPM. If I’m confusing you with all of these terms, I apologize – I do encourage you to visit VMware’s site to learn about these features if you’re considering a virtualization or server consolidation project in your datacenter. In my opinion, VMware cannot be beaten in the datacenter.
So why did VMware decide to make ESXi free? Well, in their own words:
VMware is making its standalone ESXi hypervisor available at no cost in order to help companies of all sizes experience the benefits of virtualization. Customers have shown tremendous interest in ESXi due to its innovative architecture, simple setup, and high performance. Allowing IT administrators to obtain VMware ESXi for free enables everyone to gain access to VMware’s datacenter technology and prove its value in their own companies.
The really cool thing about ESXi that I like is twofold:
- The install is really, really simple. You don’t have to worry about partitioning or anything like that – it is all automatically done for you. Once the install itself is completed, the network configuration is simple to complete. From there, everything else can be done using the included VI Client.
- The installed footprint is a measly 32 MB on the disk, leaving you extra precious room for your virtual machines.
I have an ESXi server at my house which runs 5 VM’s. I probably don’t need 5 for the purposes of what I actually use them for, but I treat it as sort of a lab environment. I also host this website on it. My host has 4 GB of RAM, and somewhere in the neighborhood of 300GB of storage. I could do with more of both, but it serves me fairly well. My CPUs are never fully utilized unless I boot up all 5 VM’s at once.
If you want something for personal use for your own home lab, or if you’re looking to get into the virtualization game in your datacenter, ESXi is a good choice. Again, just be sure of the features you need if you’re looking to configure a highly available cluster.
