VMware ESXi is a purpose-built bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, ESXi is more efficient than hosted architectures and can effectively partition hardware to increase consolidation ratios and cut costs for our customers.
Customer Reviews
Michael K.
Advanced user of ESXiEase of use. Breadth of features. Reliability. Performance. Basic ESXi virtualization is free. Depending on how many hosts you need, this may be all that's required for your environment.
We started with multiple standalone ESXi hosts for several years. We then moved into an ESXi Essentials model ( VCenter and up to 3 2 processor hots). This gave us centralized management over our hosts.
Currently looking into a larger scale VCenter installation (potentially a VXRail).
Cost for advanced paid features. Even for education the cost is fairly high.
Make an inventory of your physical machines in order to appropriately size your ESXi installation. Many times you'll find that almost all of your physical hardware can be combined into one host. If this is the case, start with a free ESXi installation and go from there.
Consolidating multiple physical servers into one host. Decreasing datacenter footprint.
