VMware vSphere

[Mi77]

Is VMware vSphere a stand alone Server OS that can be installed without an underlying Server OS? Or does the customer needs to install the VMware ESX/ESXi OS in the physical server first before they can install and use vSphere?

[Joshua Small_2]

vSphere is a marketing term for a series of products.
What your customer will be purchasing and installing is VMWare ESXi, the "Bare metal hypervisor" - fancy terms for "VMWare's OS".

There's no "vSphere" to actually go and install at this point, although if you setup a virtualised data center, you're doing it under vsphere.

[Mi77]

Thanks Joshua,

So that means we still need to advise the customer to purchase and install the VMware ESX/ESXi rather than telling them to purchase the whole vSphere package, right?

[Michal Kapalka (mikap)]

Thanks Joshua,

So that means we still need to advise the customer to purchase and install the VMware ESX/ESXi rather than telling them to purchase the whole vSphere package, right?

Vsphere is only a version name of ESX/ESXi,

so if you like to have the latest Vmware for virtualisation, you need to buy,

VMware 4 "Vsphere" update1 for example

"VSphere" = something like codename for VmwareESX server version.

more at :

http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/



mikap

[Steven Clementi]

"So that means we still need to advise the customer to purchase and install the VMware ESX/ESXi rather than telling them to purchase the whole vSphere package, right?"

Yes. There are also several different levels of licensing for ESX. Depending upon their needs (I.E. Do they want/need vmotion? HA/DRS?, Distributed vSwitches, etc.)


Steven

[Mi77]

Thank you guys, the info above really helped me a lot to respond to an HP only customer :-)

[Michal Kapalka (mikap)]

hi,

so if the information was helpfull for you , you could asign points.

how to do it.

http://forums11.itrc.hp.com/service/forums/helptips.do?#33

mikap

[Rob Buxton]

As others have said, vSphere is the product name for version 4 of Vmware's hypervisor set of products.

You can go from free, to a lot of money depending on what you're doing.

ESX or ESXi installs directly onto the hardware. You can do that at no cost and use a client to manage this, create and run virtual guest servers etc.
Where vSphere comes into it's own is the stuff you pay for. For that you need vCenter and licenses for the advanced features. These can provide high availability and dynamic resource sharing.
Try visiting the Vmware site itself to get an idea of the vSphere / ESXi product sets.

[Gordon Sjodin]

ESX/ESXi does not require an underlying server OS. They are basically a modified version of Linux. To utilize all of the features of VMWare such as vmotion you would require multiple ESX hosts connected to shared disk. Vcenter is used to manage this multi host environment. A Vceneter server does require a windows OS to be installed.

[Mi77]

Gordon, that info you shared is a homerun. Thank you Sir.