Comments on: What’s the difference between free ESXi and licensed ESXi?

By: jlivens

jlivens — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:45:15 +0000

One point to add is that ESXi is difficult to troubleshoot if you have issues with hardware monitoring. I installed the HP version of ESXi 3.x and had trouble monitoring the hardware even though the HP drivers are included. I searched the web with no success and even reached out to a colleague at HP. Nothing worked and I eventually gave up. I am not sure if it was because of my old hardware (DL380 G3) or something else.

Once I switched to ESX 3.5 and used the CLI to directly install the HP tools, everything worked perfectly. This problem may have been isolated to my old hardware, but could impact others. IMO, non-standard or whitebox hardware would benefit from the flexibility of the full CLI in ESX. Of course, the added cost for ESX may defeat the benefit.

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:15:26 +0000

That'a bit tougher to answer.

2 cpus is good. The more sockets and the more cores the more VMs you
can run. Of course RAM and disk will also limit your guest density
too.

VMware has an onlline HCL. Google it and check your hardware there.
That's what VMware supports. Yes, you can call them for support of
your free ESXi too if you register your license. If it's not on the
HCL they won't support it.

Also google "esx or esxi whitebox". These are community hardware lists
that users maintain. They'll tell you if anyone has been successful
running ESXi on your box. A lot of hardware not on the VMware HCL can
run ESXi.

Or, if you are really feeling adventerous, google "esx in a box" and
decide if you want to learn ESXi while it's running as a VM in VMware
Workstation, Fusion or Player. - but that might just blow your mind
right now....

By: vibrate

vibrate — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:32:51 +0000

Thanks for the very informative response, rbrambley. Now my next question is centered around hardware purchase. I am looking to go with a tower system from supermicro which seems to be atleast $2,000.00 cheaper than a comparable system from HP but supermicro can't guarantee esxi compability…is hardward compitablity something I should be concerned about with the esxi 4.0? Additionaly I am looking at a 2 processor machine. Do you see that as an issue?

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:12:40 +0000

The vSphere Client will let you manage your free ESxi host, and if you
need to use remote commands there is the RCLI for ESXi. The RCLI comes
as a vm appliance or installables for windows and lunux.

You should know, however, the free version does not et you make
changes from the RCLI unless you are in your 60 day eval period. You
can report, but that's it. Once you apply the free license all config
changes therefore are made with the vSphere client.

By: vibrate

vibrate — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:25:22 +0000

Hi,

I am new to VMs and am planning to setup a white box to starting teaching myself. I was hoping to start by installing the free version of EXSi 4.0 but am concerned about the fact that it comes without a management console.

By: rbrambley

rbrambley — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:56:11 +0000

Yes, your enterprise license should work for both ESX and ESXi. The
only way it would not work is if the license is for the free version
of ESXi.

By: san

san — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 16:17:56 +0000

Hi,

I have embedded ESXi 4.0 enterprise license, my server is running fine. is it possible to use same license for ESX 4.0 instead of ESXi 4.0?. as esxi 4.0 is without service console………

thanks

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