What is the Differences Between ESXi and ESX

[Simran]

What is the difference between VMware ESXi and VMware ESX, i want to Use Either of Them so wanted to know the Difference Before using either of them , please help thanks in advance

[kattman]

The main difference ESXi is the absence of the "Service Console". The "Service Console" is actually a virtual machine with a dedicated access to the VMFS file system and the hypervisor (VMKernel).

This virtual machine based on a modified Red Hat Enterprise is available in SSH or console since the physical server and includes many tools for ESX (As esxcfg-utility for example). Particularly in the virtual machine that operates a number of operations, configuration and implementation of administration scripts particular.

[Macarenas]

VMware ESXi is the latest generation of hypervisor offered by VMware. This version is lighter and allows for simplified integration as installation, configuration and deployment is faster. It is lighter in terms of size but not in terms of functionality. VMotion, DRS etc.. operate fully in this release, subject to the acquisition of additional licenses

[JonathanD]

The first difference, not least between VMware ESX and VMware ESXi is free of it. Thus, it is now possible to partition a server and use a type of hypervisor VMware bare-metal free. This free version can take advantage of all the basic functionality of the product. Still later, prices ESXi no significant difference compared to ESX if you wish to acquire more advanced licenses (Foundation, Standard and Enterprise).

[Glenny]

From a more technical level, the major difference is the absence of Service Console. The Service Console is a Linux Standard (RHEL3 fully Repackaged by VMware), which provides preferential access to the VMkernel. This environment is fully customizable and allows you to install third-party tools such as supervisory officers, agents or backup your own scripts. Advanced users of VMware ESX product feels may be somewhat limited by the Remote CLI tool (Remote Command Line Interface) tools that complement the government of ESXi (VMware Infrastructure Client). It has however the advantage of being installed on a client running under Linux. For those who want access to VMkernel SSH directly, it is possible to activate it, but its use is not supported.

[Eric B]

VMware ESX
Service Console is a standard Linux environment through which a user has privileged access to the VMware ESX kernel. This Linux-based privileged access allows you to highly customize your environment by installing agents and drivers and executing scripts and other Linux-environment code.


VMware ESXi
VMware ESXi is designed to make the server a computing appliance. Accordingly, VMware ESXi behaves more like firmware than traditional software. To provide hardware-like security and reliability, VMware ESXi does not support a privileged access environment like the Service Console of VMware ESX. To enable interaction with agents, VMware has provisioned CIM Providers through which monitoring and management tasks – traditionally done through Service Console agents – can be performed. VMware has provisioned RCLI to allow the execution of scripts.

Check this Link For more information
http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mic...rnalId=1006543