The significant difference is the removal of the service console which is just a VM with special access to the vmkernel. That reduces the size of ESXi to under 32 MB so with the embedded version you can run it off a USB key. In many deployments you can eliminate any local storage in your servers and thus the risk of failure. Patching is also made much easier in that you'll just copy up a new boot image. ESXi has 2 boot partitions - primary and backup so patching will just be uploading the new image to the backup and then marking it as the primary.

In removing the service console which is Linux, you also reduce the security exposure and thus reduce the number of patches you will have to apply to the system.

The downside today is that ESXi doesn't support everything that 3.5 does - for example HA just has experimental support, jumbo frames aren't supported (I may be wrong on that). Actually here's the list of network features not supported - http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003345

With the service console gone you also have to change the way you manage ESXi. A lot of management apps / backup apps / etc rely on the service console to work so today you have to find alternatives or wait for updates. Generally I thinks it's a bit harder to manage today but down the road as experience with it increases, the feature gaps with 3.5 close and more products support ESXi it will be much easier to deal with.

Hi Guys

Thanks for the post. Please advice since there is no service console in ESXi, how can we manage ESXi using CLI/Linux as there are not lot of options availble in VC for management?

Thanks for any comments

Ajay Nabh

Thanks Dave for your prompt reply. Can I make this statement safely that "you can run most of the commands and read logs in ESXi" If I want to learn more about it do I need to download mannuals for ESXi??

Thanks again

Ajay

Thanks Dave for your efforts

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3/r35u2/vi3_35_25_u2_rcli.pdf

Duncan
VMware Communities User Moderator

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