VM /ETC

Posts Tagged ‘feature comparison’

Updated 12.08.08 – The difference between free ESXi and licensed ESXi has been a very popular topic and one of my most read posts. Now with the release of ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 3 there have been some feature changes in the free ESXi that I want to point out. I have also made a few corrections. I have left my original text for reference. Thanks go to Mike Dipetrillo for asisstance with these updates.

update 12.15.08 – the ESXi 3.5 Update 3 RCLI API was unintentionally opened. The remote administration abilities will be locked down again in the next release. Please see my updated post on this new information.

In case you’ve been “holed up” in the data center for the last month (I don’t doubt that a few admins have) and maybe haven’t heard yet, VMware now offers a free version of ESXi. Yes, VMware has made a version of it’s enterprise class, bare metal installable hypervisor available for download at no charge. There is no trial period or demo license required. There are no guest limitations on the host. So, there has to be a “gotcha”, right? Not really, but you do need to understand the differences between the free ESXi and VI ESXi (licensed) versions.

Although ESXi runs the same code and is on the same distribution schedule as ESX, VMware’s intended usage is a little different than what VMware administrators are used to, and therefore the ESXi product has some functional differences that need to be understood – especially for the free ESXi version. This post explores some of the major differences, and can hopefully help VI administrators make the correct decisions about what version of ESX to implement. I concentrate most on the differences between the free and licensed versions of ESXi as they are the most likely versions to confuse administrators used to VMware’s full ESX 3.5 enterprise solution. Read the rest of this entry »

The title of this post is part of a quote from David Davis’ SearchCIO article titled COMPARISON: Microsoft vs. VMware. David’s article was published back on June 4, and it’s been sitting in my drafts “screaming at me” to comment on here at VM /ETC. Now, with Hyper-V having been released and Microsoft’s marketing machine starting to cloud virtualization reality, I point my readers to David’s arguments as examples of sane and logical analysis of the two products. Here’s the entire quote my title is taken from in the context it was written:

“VMware is obviously the most experienced company when it comes to delivering a virtualisation product. The company has 10 years of virtualisation experience and a huge customer base, including 100% of the Fortune 500 companies and 92% of the Fortune 1000, totaling over 100,000 customers worldwide. VMware also holds 11 virtualisation patents, and in 2007 their revenue hit the $US1.33 billion mark.

This is in comparison to Microsoft which has a new virtualisation product, little enterprise virtualisation experience, and, to date, no Fortune 500 customers who have adopted their enterprise virtualisation product in a production environment. Ask yourself, which of these companies sounds more qualified to deliver your enterprise virtualisation solution?”

David’s article goes on to make excellent comparison points about Read the rest of this entry »

Jason Perlow of blogs.zdnet.com has written a great feature comparison post of the 2 best multi-platform, free virtualization products in my opinion – Sun xVM VirtualBox 1.6 and VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2.

Personally, I used to run VMware Server 1.x on my XP notebook until I was tempted to try VMware’s first beta of version 2.0. Although not an officially supported OS for any version of VMware Server, my use of Server on XP was for basic research and test purposes, and I chose the free version over VMware Workstation. Like most, after the switch to 2.0 beta 1 I experienced frustration with the web interface. Now, since I discovered Sun’s xVM VirtualBox 1.6 seamless feature and the ability to run virtual machines created in VMware’s .vmdk format, I have switched. I am extremely happy with VirtualBox, and I even consider it to be a closer open-source replacement for VMware Workstation with features that rival the still in beta version of Workstation 6.5. I also use VirtualBox 1.6 on both 64 bit and 32 bit Ubuntu at home.

Jason’s comparison focuses on using the products in a true virtualization host capacity, and he provides some interesting performance analysis. Read the rest of this entry »

I was researching Dell’s latest announcement, Dell Unveils Virtualization Blockbuster – From Servers and Storage to Software and Services and trying to find definitive proof of the $99 price for embedded ESXi or the $299 price for embedded Citrix XenServer Express as reported by virtualization.info. Although I did not find the pricing in the announcement, I was able to find it by going through the process of using the Dell Online Store to build a R805 server. By clicking the green “customize it” button I was eventually able to see the Optional Virtualization Offerings section with the pricing for the embedded hypervisors. See the screenshot to the right. (click for larger view)What surprised me during this process was the “Help me Choose” link in this section. Clicking that link took me to a Help Me Choose: Hypervisor page from Dell that is basically accurate and helpful for comparing high level features of ESX 3.5, ESXi, Citrix XenServer and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Here is a screenshot of the comparison table from Dell’s page. Read the rest of this entry »

Innotek VirtualBox is a free, open-source alternative to VMware workstation. Aquired by Sun Microsystems earlier this year, VirtualBox has quickly become one of the leading developer platforms for the desktop with current features that rival even VMware’s latest version 6.5 currently in beta testing. I have used VirtualBox in the past, but because I had not used it in over almost over a year I was not aware of the latest features in the most recent releases. The feature that specifically caught my attention was the seamless window integration of Microsoft Windows virtual machines. Like VMware Workstation and Fusion’s Unity feature, VirtualBox allows Windows applications in the VM to pop out of the VM session making it available from the host operating system’s desktop.

Quoting from Sun’s announcement: Read the rest of this entry »

When I was linking to RTFM Education from my post Combining multiple VMware .lic files is a thing of the past I noticed Mike wrote a quick post about discovering the new LAN based backup features of VCB. I had to get my own copy of the VMware Consolidated Backup Improvements in Version 3.5 .pdf and understand the new LAN-based backup feature. In short, the requirement for a storage area network, and therefore the installation of VCB on a physical server with HBA(s) has been removed. Installing VCB on a Windows 2003 virtual machine is now possible. Maybe not recommended for larger environments, but possible and a achievable design for smaller infrastructures.

The .pdf also reveals that there are several other new features of VCB that were previously restrictions of the older versions. Read the rest of this entry »

RTFM has become a common acronym among IT professionals. An administrator having a good day will tell you it stands for “Read The Fine Manual.” On a bad day the expression can become a little more colorful. The point of bringing it up is that I actually read the ESX Server 3 Installation Guide and was surprised to find out that the VMware FLexlm License Server no longer needs to use a single .lic file. In VC 2.x you can simply place multiple .lic files in the Licensing Server’s directory.

In the ESX 3 Guide mentioned above page 59 starts out: Read the rest of this entry »