ESX vs. ESXi which is better?

From the archive. Originally published on dailyhypervisor.com on April 7, 2009.

So the question is which is better VMware ESX or VMware ESXi. A lot of die hard Linux fans will always say VMware ESX because of there attachment to the service console. The service is a great tool and once upon a time it served it''s purpose. Today there are many other options available to manage your VMware ESX servers without the service console. There is the Remote CLI, the VI ToolKit for Windows (powershell), and last but not least the VIMA.

With these tools you can effectively create scripts to help manage your VMware ESX environment without the service console. The service console opens up an additional security risks for each and every VMware ESX host you have deployed. Mitigating this risk increases the management overhead involved in the maintaining and deployment of these server in your environment. VMware ESX also consumes more server resources than VMware ESXi. The service console in VMware ESX uses CPU cycles and memory that you could be using for virtual machines on VMware ESXi.

As far as feature and functionality VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are equals. They both support all of the Enterprise feature available as part of VI3. There are some add-on products that require the use of VMware ESX such as Lab manager and Stage Manager but hopefully they as well will be ported to VMware ESXi. You can find the VMware ESX and ESXi comparison here.

A growing number of servers are available from all major vendors that have support for embedded VMware ESXi. If you have one of these servers their are even greater benefits to running VMware ESXi. With these their is no need for internal or SAN storage for your boot partitions. Eliminating internal storage is a great way to go green. The average coast of a 73Gb 15K SAS drive is $400.00. Typically you would have (2) for redundancy adding an average of $800.00 to the cost of each server. The estimated annual cost to run a single SAS drive is $23.00 rounded making it $46.00 per server per year. This does no include the additional cooling capacity needed for the heat produce from the drives.

If you have 40 VMware ESX server running in your environment you can save $32,000 in the acquisition of hard disks and $1,840 per year in energy costs, not to mention the benefits to the environment from the reduction in your carbon footprint and well as the reduced maintenance costs. I don''t have any figures on this but there will most definitely a savings in the overall administration effort required to support VMware ESXi vs. VMware ESX. The sheer need to lock done the service console and keep it secured is pretty demanding task.

I regularly hear "We are waiting on VMware ESXi" and when I ask why I never hear a thought out valid answer. I would like to hear your opinion on this topic. Please leave comments as to your views on VMware ESX vs. VMware ESXi I would like to gain some greater insight into why more organizations are not making the switch.