When I first heard about ESXi I thought : that sounds very familiar.
Go to a box, inject your boot-media and turn it into a VM-player without installing anything.
Forget about the host.
In a way ESX relates to ESXi like Workstation to my MOA-project (Workstation from a LiveCD)
Here is a short comparison:
| ESXi | WSi |
hardware support | very limited | ok - drivers can be added easily |
boot-time | ? | 3 min |
boot-media | USB-stick, ? | USB-stick, CD, PXE, local disk |
OS | ESX | Windows |
filesystem for VMs | vmfs | fat32, ntfs, ext2 |
local display | no | yes |
smp | yes | yes |
max RAM | ? | 3 - 4 Gb |
remote access | ssh ?, virtual Center | ssh, cifs, vnc |
sound for VMs | no | possible |
USB for VMs | no | possible |
IDE-disks for VMs | no | yes |
WLAN | ? | possible |
VMs on USB | no | yes |
VMs on encrypted disks | no | yes |
runs on notebooks | no | yes |
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got to read more about ESXi to fill the blanks in the table
Ulli
