Confused with ESXi options

[E_W_]

Hi,

I'm in the process of 'testing the waters'  for ESXi (or specifically vSphere) to establish some sort of

possible scenario for work.

Now while going over the whole vSphere portion, I'm finding it a little overwhelming.  As far

as I understand it, vSphere is the 'overall' technology.  The actual pieces that do the work

is ESXi and vCenter and client.  Am I correct?

While also browsing this site, I also remembered seeing a link (lost it) that allows

me to download some 'thing' which allows me to test out on my desktop what it is

like to run vSphere (ESXi and vCenter).  Am I reading it wrong?  I think it was

an appliance, but I seemed to have lost the page.  I just need something to test

out this vSphere concept at the comfort of my own home (under VM Workstation

6 (soon to be upgraded to 7.1)).

Any clarifications appreciated.  Thanks.

Ed

[mittim12]

vSphere is the product suite.

ESXi is the hypervisor that will be loaded onto your physical hardware.  

vCenter is the management server that you will utilize to manage all of your ESXi host

vCenter client is the client that will allow you to access the vCenter server.

[weinstein5]

And to add the vSphere client can also be used to manage a single ESXi server -

The product I think you are referring to is either VMware Player ior VMware Server = both are free products and can be installed onto laptop to give you an idea how virtualization wortks -

You can also download a free version of ESXi that you can install on a server that is a fully functioning copy of ESXi - 

[DSTAVERT]

You might want to watch the VMware Part One and Two webcasts. http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-14673

[pdeul]

If you want to try out the whole vsphere product line without having to dedicate physical hardware you can sign up for a trial of vmware workstation and vsphere. Install workstation and create a new vm and install esxi. You will need to create another windows 2008 x64 server inside of vmware workstation to installl virtual center. Once you have that up and running you will get the feel of the product line. You will be able to create virtual machines on the esxi host but they must be x86 because of a limitation in having a virtual ESXi host.

[E_W_]

Thanks for the answers!