VMWare ESXi is now free... :)

[Evildead666]

https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/login.php?eval=esxi&t=1

A 230Mb download, and a small registration for the free licence.
1-999 cpu's...

[Jammrock]

yes, it's very exciting for the geeks of the world, and a good move to counter Hyper-V from MS. The only thing that would make it perfect would be a builtin console that allowed you to control the installed OSs from the local console (i.e. the keyboard/mouse attached to the physical box), sort of like a virtual KVM.

[Gurm]

yes, it's very exciting for the geeks of the world, and a good move to counter Hyper-V from MS. The only thing that would make it perfect would be a builtin console that allowed you to control the installed OSs from the local console (i.e. the keyboard/mouse attached to the physical box), sort of like a virtual KVM.

Well then why would you buy ESX instead of using the free product?

I do, however, think that this is an excellent choice for someone who just wants to run a couple VM's on a single server!

[Jammrock]

The full blown command center in infrastructure has the slowest damn console though... oh well. VMware needs to take a page out of Microsoft's book when it comes to console control, because Hyper-V's is much better.

If I ever use ESXi it will be on a home server box so I could run all my management servers (like WHS, AD, etc) off a single box.

[VJ]

How does the VMWare ESX relate to the VMWare server?
(I'm currently using the latter)

Jörg

[Gurm]

How does the VMWare ESX relate to the VMWare server?
(I'm currently using the latter)

Jörg

Same basic Virtualization technology, without the base OS. Well, there IS a base OS, but it's a stripped-down Linux (RHAS, I think) with a LOT of customization. And it has all sorts of plugins and extras, seamless integration with SAN technology, v-motion, etc.

The distinction is somewhat moot on a single box, except that ESX can devote somewhat more CPU time to the VM's.

[Jammrock]

Basically what Gurm said. With VMware server you need a full-blown host OS, such as Windows or Linux. ESXi has a very small, Linux-based, host OS which drastically reduces the host OS system footprint, leaving more resources for your VMs. I believe VMware claims the full install is something like 32 MB.

It's so small in fact that server makers like Dell, HP, etc. are putting integrated SD card readers inside of servers and preloading ESXi on servers. You can boot from the SD card and run ESXi from there, leaving your HDD array completely free for VM I/O. In fact...if you use a SAN you don't even need the HDDs...

[VJ]

Ha, I knew VMWare had this, just didn't know that this was called the ESX.

Can the VMs then benefit from hardware accelleration? (in VirtualPC there apparently is an option allowing you to put an additional videocard in the computer, and use this as the videocard for a VM)


Jörg

[Gurm]

Ha, I knew VMWare had this, just didn't know that this was called the ESX.

Can the VMs then benefit from hardware accelleration? (in VirtualPC there apparently is an option allowing you to put an additional videocard in the computer, and use this as the videocard for a VM)


Jörg

The marketing answer is "yes". The real answer, as you might suspect, is "sort of".

[Gurm]

Basically what Gurm said. With VMware server you need a full-blown host OS, such as Windows or Linux. ESXi has a very small, Linux-based, host OS which drastically reduces the host OS system footprint, leaving more resources for your VMs. I believe VMware claims the full install is something like 32 MB.

It's so small in fact that server makers like Dell, HP, etc. are putting integrated SD card readers inside of servers and preloading ESXi on servers. You can boot from the SD card and run ESXi from there, leaving your HDD array completely free for VM I/O. In fact...if you use a SAN you don't even need the HDDs...

You don't need much of a hard drive for full-blown ESX, either.

But honestly once you've gone VM, you won't go back. Our entire environment runs on bladecenters, we have a couple racks of pizza boxes just sitting idle or running test environments. Even when we install a physical box, we put ESX on it and load up a VM instead of installing the OS directly.

Why, you ask?

Simple - if ESX is on it, we can vmotion that machine elsewhere later. We can take a snapshot, promote it to production, and move it onto a blade. Or we can decide it needs more horsepower and move it to another physical machine. And with vmotion, doing so is a couple mouse clicks and a couple minutes, tops.

Not to mention that we have integrated replication that ties seamlessly into ESX, we have Staging Manager and Lab Manager that let us build entire banks of servers with a couple mouse clicks (or from a web form), and we have System Center where we manage literally every machine in the environment.

[Claymonkey]

This should be interesting and I'll likely play with it.. though a few thoughts on my part.

I've been playing with vmware server 2 beta and it works extremely well. I'm running it on ubuntu server 8.04 and its pretty snappy.

I've played with ESX and there is a learning curve in using it that you just don't have in regular vmware server. You can get a lot more out of ESX but if you know vmware workstation you know server almost fully. ESX... not so much. Learning it IS worth it but if you just want to get up and running expect a longer ramp up if you haven't used ESX before. Jammrock can you comment on ESXi versus both ESX and Vwmare Server?

The other part of this.. hardware. ESX is MUCH pickier about the hardware you can use. SATA drives outside of a raid card just won't work and the network cards you can use are a pretty short list. Nvidia onboard and a trendnet gigabit card just didn't work for me. A $20 intel gigabit card though worked well.

[VJ]

At work, many of our servers also run using virtualization, but using Xen. We only use vmware to offer Windows machines (most people here only work on linux, but sometimes you need Windows exclusive software).

I'm now using VMWare server at home, as I like to keep my OS clean. So my host runs Vista and only has a minimal set of applications I trust installed. For different purposes I then have different virtual machines, each of these only has the software needed for this purpose. At first look, I think ESX might be a bridge too far for this purpose.


Jörg

[Jammrock]

I have not used ESXi yet, but I have used ESX (in the full blown enterprise infrastructure package) and VMware server. ESX server is the bomb diggity, but I agree it's picky about the hardware. From what I understand the hardware used in your ESX nodes have to be identical for vmotion to work right, down to the same stepping model of CPU.

Than may change in future releases, but for now that's a limitation. Granted it's better than what Microsoft has, which is NOTHING! Their Live Migration won't be out until 2009 last I heard. They didn't even hint at it being released any time soon at TechED. ESXi cannot do vmotion though, which is why it's free now because it can do everything Hyper-V can (though the price for Hyper-V is deceptive because you have to pay for windows to get Hyper-V for "free", but ESXi comes with a free Linux distro...)

I haven't played much with VMware Server 2 yet. I had the beta installed at some point and I'll install RC1 soon, but it's a decent product. Anyway, it's gawd aweful late so I'll sum it up.

ESX Infrastructure:
The bomb diggity of virtualization. It is the most complete package on the market, but you pay out the nose for the pleasure, and not just in software costs. For it to be worth the cash you need some high end servers and storage (i.e. a SAS SAN with some fast drives in it to handle 30-50 servers worth of IO). Cons...the command center software. It's expensive and ssssllllooooowwwwwwwww..... we dedicate an entire box just the command center and it's still slow. Oh, and VMWare Tools ***SUCK***. They work, but just barely, and they are piss poor performance wise.

ESXi:
Free. Bare metal. Low host OS resoure usage. Can't say more than that because I haven't used it ... yet.

VMware Server:
Good if you just want something on top of any regualr old OS. I highly recommend you don't run your VMs on the same disk as your OS or the system will run like garbage (but that's a rule of thumb with virtualization, it's just more pronounced with vmware server and Hyper-V). Supports 64-bit OSs (unlike Virtual Server) and has a decent interface. Cons...tools, again, and the lack of resource throttling. Meaning you can't limit a VM to only use 50% of a single CPU core. For that you must own/run ESX/i...bah! I uninstalled VMware on my work machine because of that.

Hyper-V:
"Free" if you own most versions of Windows Server 2008. The price difference between the H-V and regular editions are like $7, so it's really not free, and you still have to drop $4k+ to buy the OS (legitimate like mind you) or pay the MS tax on a monthly/yearly basis, or put on your eye patch and yell "ARGH!". Perfomrance wise Hyper-V comes very close to ESX, except when SQL is involved and VMware kicks H-V's fanny. This is mainly because the "host" 2008 OS is actually loaded like a master virtual machine by the hypervisor (bet you didn't know that) so it can play nicely with the guest OSs. And the Integration Service tools ... beautiful (in a very geeky sort of way). It's the only Vm console I have ever used that has beats the MS Terminal Services experience. The only thing it lacks is smoother video (though it does a decent job) and audio (which they claim will come out in future versions). Cons...VLAN and teaming (not a big deal for your testing environment, disaster for production). Niether feautre works with Intel single/double port NIC or any Broadcom NIC, which happens to be 95%+ of the server market...DOH! So you have to use a quad-port Intel or 10-Gb Intel (there's another) NIC to get it to natively work support. Though our network guru at work got it working through the broadcom advanced control services thing ... but he's a genius at that kind of stuff. Other cons, no VMotion like feature. To get high availability you have to useserver clustering which means you have to use Enterprise ($4k retail) or Data Center ($7.5k retail) editions. On the plus side you get a lot of "free" Hyper-V licenses of 2008 if you fork out the cash for those editions, and you can generally get them cheaper through SPLA licensing... anyway, it's a nice product, but not in ESX's league just yet.

So there you have it.

[Gurm]

Actually, they've updated again.

VMWare 3.5 reduced the VMotion requirements to "must be the same processor architecture".

The latest update (a couple weeks ago) changed those requirements to "must be running ESX", meaning you can move anything from anywhere to anywhere at any time.

And remember that VMotion moves machines WHILE THEY ARE RUNNING.

If you don't care about shutting them down, a quick image dump to VMDK and you'll be back in business anywhere.

[Jammrock]

I didn't know that. That's very cool, and much needed. And for the record you lose two pings when Vmotion'ing a system, thank you very much.