Management Services & Service Console (VMware ESX Vs ESXi)

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What are ESXi and ESX? Difference between ESX and ESXi. VMware ESX VS ESXi. Both ESX and ESXi are bare-metal hypervisors of VMware and work as industrial production-proven on Small Scale to a large scale. The market of these leading hypervisors is going down today.

Their operational expenses improve security and intensify the work power of virtual IT operations and infrastructures. In this post, we’ll explain VMware ESX and ESXi and the difference between ESX and ESXi.

How to Select Best Hypervisors for VMware Workstation?

In this post, you will get 12 Basic and Useful differences between VMware ESX and ESXi. That will help you in the selection of the best hypervisors for VMware Workstation.

ESX is an earlier OS-independent and thin architecture hypervisor. But ESXi is the latest OS independent hypervisor that is more advance with the thinnest architecture. Both perform very well. It is difficult to say which one is the best. But it’s also true that they can be explained based on some technical differences and needed IT infrastructure. It’s your choice which one suits you.

What is ESX?

The Full form of ESX is Elastic Sky X. A Linux-based service console manages the VMFS file of the ESX. Its Management Services and Service Console system provide full rights to the users. They are free to run drivers, Linux codes, agents, and applications. The Management Services and Service Console manage the hardware and perform as a management interface to monitor the hypervisor.

VMware ESX Architecture Vs VMware ESXi Architecture 1

What is ESXi?

The Full form of ESXi is Electric Sky X integrated. It does not support any Management Services and Service Console. The ESXi can’t access by any SSH. ESXi can only manage with the help of DCUI.

Management Services for ESX and ESXi

VMware ESX VS ESXi

ESX and ESXi and be managed with the help of the following services. Here are 12 Basic differences between VMware ESX and ESXi.

1. CLI Management

You can use APIs to manage ESXi. vCLI Full form = vSphere command-line interface. With the help of the vCLI and Power CLI, we can monitor and host management. To troubleshoot the ESXi and control fault, you can remotely operate these agent-less command lines. I’m sure the response will be positive. Functionality and services provided in both commands are the same as shell commands do in the service console. The VCLI also can manage and configure to ESX.

You’ll need at least one of the licenses either, vSphere Standard, vSphere enterprise editions, or vSphere essentials, to fully use the functionality of VCLI.

2) The Basic Ultra-thin Architecture

The ESXi covered very little Memory 32MB only as a footprint after removing the comparatively 2GB memory footprint of ESX. It means ESXi can perform faster and reduce the booting time than ESX with the lowest memory overhead. With a pack of smaller codebases, ESXi makes the shield of code safer.

vmware esx vs esxi comparison

3. Secure Serial Cable Link

You can connect and Communicate ESX hosts in VMware ESX through a serial cable but, there are no such facilities provided in VMware ESXi.

4. Special Hardware Embedded

You don’t need to install ESXi on any storage device. By using thin-Architecture Technology, it can be directly embedded in servers. Its compact size makes it possible to be stored and installed on a Type of removable drive. After complete installation, it can also boot from there. On the other side, ESX supports booting from SAN but, ESXi doesn’t support SAN booting.

5. Easy Hardware Monitoring

The health Status can easily find under the configuration heading in VMware ESXi After opening the hypervisor console. In ESXi, you can see and monitor the live status of total hardware parts inside the health status feature like processors version, memory capacity, RAID controllers, Added Power supply, etc. It helps administrators to monitor the Doubtful behavior of the component. So, they can take action before preventive measures promptly. Unfortunately, this feature is not available in VMware ESX.

6. Active Directory Users

With the help of the service console, you can install any 3rd party software which helps you in the authentication of the windows active directory. But VMware ESXi doesn’t support the integration of the active directory.

7. Fast Troubleshooting methods

There are a few limited methods only to diagnose and troubleshoot entire problems in VMware ESX. You can troubleshoot the VMware ESX’s problem only by the service console. But it’s the opposite in VMware ESXi – There are many ways to resolve the ESXi’s problem. To diagnose the problems in the VMware ESXi, you can use these two remote commands Vmkfstools and VMware-cmd. Here is also a management agents restart option to repair the system through the DCUI console. With the help of Tech-support mode, you can carry the advanced diagnostics in VMware ESXi.

8. Easy VSphere Web Access: ESX Vs ESXi

You can easily install the VSphere client in ESXi and fully enjoy Management Capabilities but, if we talk about VMware ESX, it has only Experimental level VSphere Limited Access.

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9. Software updates and Patches Deployment: ESX Vs ESXi

The patches and latest Updates of Software are dependent, which means you can’t apply automatically in VMware ESX. To successfully apply the new software updates and patches in the ESX Console, you’ll need, repeatedly reboot VMware ESX. On another side, there is no need for earlier version patches in the ESXi.

It has similar to the firmware update option. Also, there is no need for VMware ESXi base components to update any 3rd party components.

10. Super Locked-down Mode: ESX Vs ESXi

VMware ESXi has a Locked-down mode with vital security features. It can use to protect and restrict the access of remote users to the Host. The Lock-down security mode is not available in VM ESX.

How to set Locked down Mode in VMware

11. Auto Deployment Time Saver

Both VMware ESX and ESXi take much time during installation but, you can make this installation faster with the launching of VMware VSphere5 with the inbuilt feature of Auto Deploy. This auto-deploy feature can automate both ESXi installation and host configuration. Unfortunately, no such features are available for ESX.

12. Easy Image Customization

You can customize the already created ESXi images with the help of ESXi-Customizer. The new drivers and add-ons can also add to the ESXi images if already been Created. But once more, it is not possible with ESX images.

OK, you have learned a brief explanation of VMware ESX and ESXi, the architectural and theoretical differences between VMware ESX and ESXi. It can help you in your job interview. And will increase your virtualization knowledge if you are a System administrator. This knowledge is also helpful in the selection of the best hypervisor software for your company. You should try the free evaluation versions of both ESX and ESXi.

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