ESXi vs.

ESX: A comparison of features

Prepared by: The ESX Team and VMware Communities

VMware made the decision to make VMware ESXi, our next generation hypervisor, freely
available to proliferate the VMware platform and allow administrators to prove its value at no
cost. However, the fact that the older platform, VMware ESX, is not also available for free
has lead some people to believe that ESXi may be inferior or not as feature-rich as ESX.
This is certainly not the case. In fact, the opposite is true. ESXi has a superior architecture
and we encourage customers to deploy ESXi as part of any new vSphere deployment. Our
future posts will compare ESX 4 and ESXi 4 in detail on topics like hardware compatibility
list, performance, and management to demonstrate that ESXi is either on par with or
superior than ESX. But for now, here are some key points you should know about ESXi vs.
ESX:

1. The functionality and performance of VMware ESX and ESXi are the same; the
difference between the two hypervisors resides in their packaging architecture and
operational management. VMware ESXi is the latest hypervisor architecture from
VMware. It has an ultra thin footprint with no reliance on a general-purpose OS,
setting a new bar for security and reliability (learn more).
2. In the future, ESXi’s superior architecture will be the exclusive focus of VMware's
development efforts.
3. New and existing customers are highly encouraged to deploy ESXi. Many Fortune
100 companies have already standardized on the ESXi platform.

Although one instance of free VMware ESXi can be managed with the vSphere Client, the
free version has two important limitations:

1. vCenter cannot manage free ESXi without a vSphere license as its APIs only grant
read-only access.
2. Automated scripts cannot change hypervisor settings. 

However, once ESXi is licensed for any vSphere SKU, its APIs become both read- and
write-accessible, unlocking the full functionality of vCLI, vMA, PERL Took Kit, Powershell
Tool Kit, or other VMware management interfaces.The table below, available here, explains
how different license levels unlock ESXi (and ESX) functionality. Please note that vSphere
Essentials, an all inclusive package that can be deployed on up to three servers, is priced at
under $1000. 
Capability VMware ESX VMware ESXi

Service Console Service Console is a standard Linux VMware ESXi is designed to make the
environment through which a user has server a computing appliance.
privileged access to the VMware ESX Accordingly, VMware ESXi behaves more
kernel. This Linux-based privileged like firmware than traditional software.
access allows you to manage your VMware has created APIs through which
environment by installing agents and monitoring and management tasks –
drivers and executing scripts and other traditionally done through Service
Linux-environment code. Console agents – can be performed.
VMware has provided remote scripting
environments such as vCLI and PowerCLI
to allow the remote execution of scripts
and commands.

Tech Support Mode (TSM) provides a

command-line interface that can be used
by the administrator to troubleshoot and
correct abnormal conditions on VMware
ESXi hosts.

CLI-Based VMware ESX Service Console has a The vSphere CLI (vCLI) is a remote
Configuration host CLI through which VMware ESX scripting environment that interacts with
can be configured. VMware ESX can VMware ESXi hosts to enable host
also be configured using vSphere CLI configuration through scripts or specific
(vCLI) or vSphere PowerCLI. commands. It replicates nearly all the
equivalent COS commands for
configuring ESX.

 VMware vSphere PowerCLI is a robust

command-line tool for automathing all
aspect of vSphere management, including
host, network, storage, virtual machine,
guest operating system, and more.

 Notes:  

 vCLI, PowerCLI, and vSphere
SDk for Perl are limited to read-
only access for the free vSphere
Hypervisor edition. To enable full
functionality of vCLI on a VMware
ESXi host, the host must be
licensed with vSphere Essentials,
vSphere Essential Plus, vSphere
Standard, vSphere Advanced,
vSphere Enterprise, or vSphere
Enterprise Plus.  
  Certain COS commands have not
been implemented in the vCLI
because they pertain to the
management of the COS itself
and not ESXi. For details, please
see thevSphere Command-Line
Interface Documentation.

Scriptable VMware ESX supports scriptable VMware ESXi supports scriptable

Installation installations through utilities like installations using a mechanism similar to
KickStart. Kickstart, and includes the ability to run
pre- and post-installation scripts.  VMware
ESXi also provides support for post
installation configuration using PowerCLI-
and vCLI-based configuration scripts.

Boot from SAN VMware ESX supports boot from SAN. VMware ESXi may be booted from SAN.
Booting from SAN requires one This is supported for Fibre Channel SAN,
dedicated LUN per server. as well as iSCSI and FCoE for certain
storage adapters that have been qualified
for this capability. Please check
the Hardware Compatibility List for
supported storage adapters.

Serial Cable VMware ESX supports interaction VMware ESXi does not support
Connectivity through direct-attached serial cable to interaction through direct-attached serial
the VMware ESX host. cable to the VMware ESXi host at this
time.

SNMP VMware ESX supports SNMP. VMware ESXi supports SNMP when
licensed with vSphere Essentials,
vSphere Essential Plus, vSphere
Standard, vSphere Advanced, vSphere
Enterprise, or vSphere Enterprise Plus.

The free vSphere Hypervisor edition does

not support SNMP.

Active Directory VMware ESX provides native support VMware ESXi provides native support for
Integration for Active Direction integration. Active Direction integration.

HW Service Console agents provide a VMware ESXi provides HW

Instrumentation range of HW instrumentation on instrumentation through CIM Providers.
VMware ESX. Standards-based CIM Providers are
distributed with all versions of VMware
ESXi. VMware partners include their own
proprietary CIM Providers in customized
versions of VMware ESXi. These
customized versions are available either
from VMware’s web site or the partner’s
web site, depending on the partner.
 Remote console applications like Dell
DRAC, HP iLO, IBM RSA, and FSC iRMC
S2are supported with ESXi.

Software Patches VMware ESX software patches and VMware ESXi patches and updates
and Updates upgrades behave like traditional Linux behave like firmware patches and
based patches and upgrades. The updates. Any given patch or update is all-
installation of a software patch or inclusive of previous patches and
upgrade may require multiple system updates. That is, installing patch version
boots as the patch or upgrade may “n” includes all updates included in patch
have dependencies on previous versions n-1, n-2, and so
patches or upgrades. forth.  Furthermore, third party
components such as OEM CIM providers
can be updated independently of the base
ESXi component, and vice versa.

vSphere Web vSphere Web Access is only VMware ESXi does not support web
Access experimentally supported in VMware access at this time.
ESX.

Licensing For licensing information, see For licensing information, see

theVMware Sphere Editions theVMware Sphere Editions Comparison.
Comparison.

Diagnostics and VMware ESX Service Console can be VMware ESXi has several ways to enable
Troubleshooting used to issue command that can help support of the product:
diagnose and repair support issues with
the server.  Remote command sets such as
the vCLI include diagnostic
commands such as vmkfstools,
resxtop, and vmware-cmd.

 The console interface of VMware

ESXi (known as the DCUI or
Direct Console User Interface)
has functionality to help repair the
system, including restarting of all
management agents.

 Tech Support Mode, which allows

low-level access to the system so
that advanced diagnostic
commands can be issues. For
more information, seeEnabling
Troubleshooting Services in ESXi
4.1 (1021928).

Jumbo Frames VMware ESX 4.1 fully supports Jumbo VMware ESXi 4.1 fully supports Jumbo
Frames. Frames.