On Sun, Mar 27, 2011 at 9:16 AM, Eero Volotinen <eero.volotinen at iki.fi> wrote: > 2011/3/27 Drew <drew.kay at gmail.com>: >>> Any experience with the free "VMware vSphere Hypervisor"?. (It was >>> formerly known as "VMware ESXi Single Server" or "free ESXi".) >>> >>> http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere-hypervisor/overview.html >>> >>> I would need a tutorial about that... For example, does that run without >>> a host OS? Can it be managed only via Win clients? Issues with CentOS >>> 4/5 guests (all my systems are currently CentOS 4/5). >> >> vSphere ESX(i) is good product. It runs on bare metal so there is no >> OS underneath it. ESX has a linux based environment that sort of runs >> at the hypervisor level that people use for basic admin but VMware is >> trying to phase that out as most everything you can do with ESX's >> "console" can be done through ESXi's API's and the remote CLI. >> >> Only downside to the free version is certain API's are unavailable and >> if you need those features you may have to go to a paid version. > > Biggest problem in free esxi is that it lacks backup vcb api, so full > image backups are almost impossible under free esxi host .. If you have some money to spend you can solve the backup problem with VMware's $500 entry level license. The license gives you the vCenter server software, which can manage 3 ESXi hosts and unlocks a number of capabilities, like cloning and offline migration. For around $1000 per server you can look at Veam or Vizioncore for backups. Overall you can't beat the price for the reliability and ease of use. Since ESXi is a bare metal hypervisior it doesn't have as many security vulnerabilities discovered which means less reboots of the host system. I have been using ESXi since 3.5 with around 8 ESXi servers now and 50 guests. I have not had a crash of the host ESXi host and the advanced capabilities (vMotion, Storage vMotion and Enhanced vMotion Capability (EVC)) have just worked, these do not work with the $500 license. Ryan