ESXi @ Home

[Hightower]

Does anyone use ESXi at home? I may be talking rubbish but let's say I want Linux and Windows on 1 computer at home, would ESXi be a good way of achieving this?

Does it support any OS?

[webman]

Yes it supports a load of operating systems. But you can't access the guest VM's consoles or create VMs from the ESXi installation - you have to use the infrastructure client. Once configured, it will be a headless server.

I think what you are looking for is VMWare Server. Install your native operating system be it Windows or Linux, install VMWare Server, then run your alternative OSs from within there.

[ChrisH]

It would gain you some speed and more available memory but I think most people will have one installed natively and Just have the normal VMWare server running the other.
I used to Have XP and run a Linux VM. I now run Linux and have an XP VM

[CyberNerd]

it's not really desinged for home use, you'd need a dedicated box.
better to use Vmware server, or virtualbox

[Hightower]

I use VM at home. I just thought it would have been nice to have something that can manage how much memory each machine needs etc.

Just looking at a way to speed up my VM's at home - guess I need to invest in more RAM instead.

[CyberNerd]

you don't need ESXi to add ram to a virtual computer. Just about any virtualisation software will do this.

[Hightower]

I know I can give a machine as much or as little memory as I want - what I mean is having the software decide on the spot how much each machine needs.

So if I am running a memory hungry task on a *nix VM it automatically takes some memory from a machine that isn't doing anything and gives it to the *nix VM.

[ChrisH]

You mean you want a memory pool that hihger end products offer?

[Hightower]

I don't know what I want - that's my problem.

Basically, I just saw the features of ESXi and wondered if they could be utilised at home.

[DMcCoy]

I will probably build a new server and run esxi on it as I alreaady use windows and two linux vms on the existing one. One thing to look out for is a compatible storage controller, there aren't many. While you can install on a number of SATA on board ones, it wont let you store the VMs there.