ESX or ESXi?

[badders]

While updataing one of our ESX hosts the updates failed and the host now doesn't boot. The only way to fix it is a fresh install from CD, I've heard that in the next version of vsphere ESX hosts will no longer be supported and this seems like a good opportunity to start migrating. Should I install ESX or ESXi?

 

VCenter is currently at release 4.1.0 258902.

[timzim]

ESXi is easier than ESX

[Theblacksheep]

ESXi as like you say ESX wont be used anymore.

[Duke]

Please note that vSphere 4.1 will be the last release to include both the ESX and ESXi hypervisor architectures. Future major releases of VMware vSphere following version 4.1 will include only ESXi. VMware's recommended best practice is to utilize ESXi for vSphere 4.x deployments. Customers should plan to migrate existing ESX deployments to ESXi when upgrading to vSphere 4.1. For more information visit www.vmware.com/go/esxiinfocenter.

 

That's from VMware when you buy their products now.

 

Chris

[apaton]

Absolutely ESXi, all comment above are spot on!

 

Next question is ESXi Embedded or Installed!

 

Andy

[Butuz]

Theoretically embedded is the way forward as you would not need any local storage in each ESXi server, thus saving on purchase cost and electricity costs.

 

I have not used the embedded version though, only used the install version myself.

 

Butuz

[apaton]

Yes, embedded is cheaper & cooler as you don't need HHD's! But at a small potential risk of loss of service.

 

ESXi Installable, can be install on mirrored hard disks thus providing redundancy. ESXi Embedded only relies on the quality of the single embedded SD/USB device.

 

Now you can mitigate the risk with a vSphere HA cluster configuration, but it doesn't avoid the outage just recovers from it.

 

Andy

[Butuz]

Oh!! I thought the ESXI embedded from the likes of Dell etc was actually embedded on an EEPROM (i.e repliable) rather than a USB / SD drive? I agree the USB / SD drive is not a good idea as they are far from reliable.

 

Butuz

[Domino]

Oh!! I thought the ESXI embedded from the likes of Dell etc was actually embedded on an EEPROM (i.e repliable) rather than a USB / SD drive? I agree the USB / SD drive is not a good idea as they are far from reliable.

 

Butuz

 

Been running on our blades SD's here for 2 years with no troubles - for it to be HP certified you have to run a certain class, I forget which

 

Means we save a bundle on internal drives, deployment is a case of cloning the SD card, we can always have an extra couple chucking about just in case, etc etc.

 

Reliability hasn't been an issue at all.

 

anyway back OT:

 

as others have said you want to go ESXi, especially as there's no ESX->ESXi upgrade path and your next upgrade will require an ESXi install.

 

However you'll want to move them all to ESXi if they're clustered, as there's issues with HA and mixed clusters I believe. And it's gotta be done at some time anyway right ;-)

[Duke]

Oh!! I thought the ESXI embedded from the likes of Dell etc was actually embedded on an EEPROM (i.e repliable) rather than a USB / SD drive? I agree the USB / SD drive is not a good idea as they are far from reliable.

 

I think you're right, embedded doesn't refer to USB/SD rather than disk, but to a hardwired chip. You can use standard ESX/ESXi on a USB/SD device. I think as long as you're using decent USB/SD drives then this is a fairly standard/common way of doing it now.

[andrew-virtusolve]

I think you're right, embedded doesn't refer to USB/SD rather than disk, but to a hardwired chip. You can use standard ESX/ESXi on a USB/SD device. I think as long as you're using decent USB/SD drives then this is a fairly standard/common way of doing it now.

 

You are right, ESXi embedded is only available from supported vendors. Nothing to stop you using USB or SD cards as the boot partition for your own installation of ESXi, embedded simply means the vendor builds it with their own drivers included and sometimes some branding, but there is no major difference.