▷ What is vmware vsphere and vmware esxi

Among the most important advances in software in recent years, we must highlight the development of virtualization. In this article we are going to dedicate ourselves to getting to know VMware vSphere and VMware ESXi and this professional virtualization environment from the leading company in virtualizing all types of operating systems and servers.

Index of contents

Thanks to virtualization, many companies have been able to optimize all their technological resources, the expense of money and, above all, the physical space occupied by servers and workstations. Solutions like VMware vSphere are geared towards a fully professional environment for advanced server virtualization. We will see in more detail what this Hypervisor consists of and what differences we can find with VMware Workstation, the best known of the brand.

What is VMware vSphere

VMware vSphere is a complete virtualization suite that is designed to virtualize through hardware servers and data centers. It is a native virtualization environment installed directly on a server that is mainly used to virtualize data centers in businesses and that we can integrate with VMware vCenter Server so that these data centers become part of a cloud.

There are several versions of vSphere available on the company's website, all for a fee and not exactly cheap. This product suite includes the following subtleties:

• VMware ESXi: It is, so to speak, the Hypervisor operating system on which vSphere is supported. We will explain it in more detail below. vCenter Server: client tool to manage virtual machines remotely. Update Manager: update tool. vShield Zones: protection shield for malicious attacks on virtual machines vRealize Operations: it is a suite of tools to automate IT processes on virtualized servers. vSphere Integrated Containers: tool suite designed to facilitate the performance of virtual machines in production environments where large workloads are expected.

Many times vSphere, this complete suite of programs aimed at virtualization in the cloud, is confused with vSphere Hypervisor, and it is that the brand has so many names in its applications that in the end we make a mess of ourselves.

Difference between vSphere and vSphere Hypervisor

Unlike vSphere, VMware vSphere Hypervisor is just a native Hypervisor capable of virtualizing servers and data centers. Let's say that it is the tool of the previous suite that provides the basic and necessary means to perform this type of virtualization.

vSphere Hypervisor runs on the ESXi operating system, like the main suite and most importantly, it is a Hypervisor that we can acquire for free, something really remarkable and interesting.

This tool can also be managed through vCenter through remote access.

How VMware vSphere Virtualizes

VMware virtualizes using the hardware virtualization system. It is a tool installed directly on a server that performs the functions of host or Hypervisor in which the virtual machines that are created with their corresponding operating systems and the physical hardware assigned to each of them will be executed.

With vSphere, an evolution of VMware Infrestructure, you implement the concept of cloud computing. This, basically, is about having a series of high-level, configurable computing resources, which can be managed through the internet.

Then, vSphere will provide us with the necessary tools to be able to access its virtualization cloud to manage its virtual machines from any end using remote access. We must understand, of course, that these machines will be physically located on the hard drive of a server or on network hard drives, with vSphere running on it.

VMware vSphere basically consists of two packages to achieve virtualized resource management, on the one hand, VMware ESXi (VMware ESX in old versions) and on the other, VMware vCenter Server. There is no doubt that the guys at VMware like to put "Vs" in front

What is VMware ESXi then?

Also called by the company VMware ESXi Hypervisor, it is basically a lightweight operating system that implements virtualize functionality at its core. This means that it is a Hypervisor operating system.

VMware ESXi is installed directly on a physical server so that we can create from it, several logical servers or virtual machines. It then uses hardware virtualization of the host. Within this Hypervisor operating system, we can create and run other operating systems within it.

The power of this Hypervisor system is precisely that, being directly installed on a physical server, it uses the hardware available on it to distribute it among the virtual machines that are installed on it. It means that it will distribute RAM memory between each machine, hard disk, CPU and everything in it.

ESXi is a fairly light system, less than 200 MB and that has been based on the core of a Linux system modified by the company itself to virtualize.

And what is VMware vCenter Server?

Well if the other was the operating system, this will be the tool that will be able to provide us with the means to manage all our virtual machines. With it we will be able to create, join and thus visualize, clusters of virtual machines between several ESXi servers. So we can see our entire virtual system in the cloud, perhaps now you understand better about working in the cloud, and manage it from a client team wherever we are.

In fact, the so-called vClient will be able to access the ESXi resources through an HTML 5 compatible web browser. vCenter then, will not be installed on the ESXi server, but on its client computer, and it is an application like any other, which we can download from VMware paying the symbolic figure of 8, 500 euros.

What's the difference between VMware WorkStation and VMware vSphere?

VMware vSphere Hypervisor uses hardware virtualization, it is an operating system that is installed directly on the physical machine. This means that we will not need any other operating system to run the Hypervisor. This means that the virtual machines will directly take the available hardware and vSphere will manage it (Hardware virtualization). In order to access the configuration of the machines, we will need a client, usually via the web.

Another big difference is that this tool can be purchased for free, while VMware Workstation is a paid license, although with a free trial version.

On the other hand, we have VMware WorkStation, which uses software virtualization. Workstation will be installed on top of another operating system, in the form of an application. Furthermore, from the application itself we create and manage virtual machines, where the hardware resources will be shared between the host (physical) operating system and the virtual machines installed on top of it. This will make the physical and virtual hardware delivery system much less optimized, despite the virtualization technologies implemented by manufacturers Intel and AMD.

Because vSphere uses hardware virtualization, this will provide us with a more advanced and resource-optimized machine management system on Workstation.

Well, we believe that with this information we have more or less made it clear that it is VMware vSphere, vSphere Hypervisor, VMware ESXi, VMware vCenter Server and the difference between these and VMware Workstation.

We also recommend this information to expand your knowledge about virtualization:

Did you know it was vSphere? If you want to know more about all this tangle of information leave us in the comments some topic that especially interests you.