Vmware platform of choice is esxi??? Surely not

[ranj]

Hi

Just wanted to put some news I have heard...

Apparantely I have heard VMware are ditching ESX and in the future esxi will be their platform of choice

Anyone heard this from official sources? Just heard it from one of our suppliers and just wanted to see if anyone else had heard this news?

[nephilim]

ESXi is pretty decent, but why they are doing this is beyond me. ESX was much better than ESXi.

[Theblacksheep]

ESX has been going for a while. They suggested with the 4.1 update to transition to ESXi at that point to make it easier for when 5.0 comes along. I've been using ESXi on any new servers, just the first ones I'll need to clearup next time round.

Doesn't make much difference, ESXi is just as good now.

[andyrite]

I've been running ESXi for a few years now. Never had any real issues with it.

[riffleman]

My instructor told me that ESX was offically being phased out in favour of ESXi last year when I did my VCP course. The footprint of ESXi makes it so much easier to spec up host servers as you can run the host diskless, and the advantages of using ESX are negated when you use VMA. Never used ESX anyway, always used ESXi...

[FN-GM]

ESX has been going for a while. They suggested with the 4.1 update to transition to ESXi at that point to make it easier for when 5.0 comes along. I've been using ESXi on any new servers, just the first ones I'll need to clearup next time round.

Doesn't make much difference, ESXi is just as good now.

Do you know when is ESX 5 out by the way?

[Duke]

You guys know ESXi is pretty much identical to ESX, except for the fact it doesn't contain the service console, right? ESXi is not the hardware embedded version of the hypervisor, nor is it the cut-down free version (at least not in the context we're talking about here). You get exactly the same features as you had in ESX, you just can't access the service console directly on the host server, instead you use this: vSphere Management Assistant (vMA).

Just thought that was worth a mention.

[riffleman]

Do you know when is ESX 5 out by the way?

Was talking to a guy from Trend yesterday about their Deep Scan AV products for VMware. He let it slip that they are working on their updated products for 5 at the moment and expect a release in August.

[riffleman]

You guys know ESXi is pretty much identical to ESX, except for the fact it doesn't contain the service console, right? ESXi is not the hardware embedded version of the hypervisor, nor is it the cut-down free version (at least not in the context we're talking about here). You get exactly the same features as you had in ESX, you just can't access the service console directly on the host server, instead you use this: vSphere Management Assistant (vMA).

Just thought that was worth a mention.

See my previous post

[Duke]

See my previous post

Oops, missed your bit about VMA, sorry! Just wanted to make sure people didn't interpret you saying "you can run the host diskless" as referring to ESXi being the embedded version of VMware's hypervisor. Obviously you can run ESXi diskless either using an SD card or PXE booting it. Cheers.

[Arthur]

Anyone heard this from official sources?

It's been known for at least six months or so, there will not be an ESX v5.0. The following is taken from the VMware website...

Currently, customers can deploy VMware vSphere using either VMware ESXi or VMware ESX hypervisor architectures. However, VMware vSphere 4.1 and its subsequent update and patch releases are the last releases to include both ESX and ESXi hypervisor architectures. Future major releases of VMware vSphere will include only the ESXi architecture. VMware will continue to provide technical support for VMware ESX according to the VMware vSphere support policy.

Existing vSphere customers who run ESX are encouraged to look into migrating to the ESXi architecture when upgrading to vSphere 4.1. (Source)

Apart from ESXi v5.0, I'm looking forward to when Veeam release Backup & Replication v6.0 for Hyper-V in Q4 2011.

[andrew-virtusolve]

ESXi is far more secure than ESX, people be-moan the lack of service console, but there is very little you cannot do with the vCLI - which is far easier to deploy than the VMa. Its much more lightweight than ESX, requires far less patching and maintenance and is very secure. To me, it's just good sense using a hypervisor with the smallest possible footprint.

[Theblacksheep]

Do you know when is ESX 5 out by the way?

Rumblings of Oct. features like storage drs, 32vcpu vms and vcenter appliance.

[andrew-virtusolve]

We are official beta testers, but are subject to NDA, so we can only re-post what other people are reporting:

VMware ESXi 5.0 Rumours/Details « The VS Blog

Big things coming for the enterprise (100+ servers), more cloud focus, a few cool things in the storage space, but for the average user - not much to get too excited about - our latest beta's are due next week - we will update the blog as soon as we are allowed to release info

[ranj]

Just received a useful tweet from VMware about steps to transition over to ESXi. Worthwhile having a look especially as they have offered some free training to move over to ESXi so customers understand the differences and implications (if any).....

VMware: VMTN Blog: Guest post: How prepared am I for ESXi?