Is it common with ESXi Embedded?

[rickardnobel]

Do you know if the ESXi Embedded version has been succesful? Do you see many such hardware bundles in the field?

[AntonVZhbankov]

ESXi Embedded is preinstalled by hardware vendor, but actually it has almost no differences with ESXi Installable. Maybe only preinstalled hardware monitoring agents.

HP, Dell, IBM - all offer ESXi Embedded.

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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

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[rickardnobel]

Thank you for your reply. What I did really wonder was if is common for companies to buy the server hardware with ESXi embedded?

That is, has this yet become a common way or is it unusual still?

[AntonVZhbankov]

Not sure if it is common or not, but I would not buy it.

You're buying ESXi from OEM partner and you get support from this partner. We have some licenses bought directly from VMware and a lot more from HP. HP support is just a pain in the ass actually. In most cases you spend week just to get your case confirmed and forwarded to VMware support.

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MCSA, MCTS Hyper-V, VCP 3/4, VMware vExpert

http://blog.vadmin.ru

[rickardnobel]

Thanks, just want to get a rough estimation if the Embedded option is popular for customers.

Since ESXi is so easy to install some of the point seems to be lost with getting it preinstalled from a OEM?

[shirishh2712]

yes there is absolutely no difference in the features and operations of embedded and intallable, its just that it adds hardware vendors some more revenue by selling embedded esxi.

At the user end it has no difference.

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[rickardnobel]

yes there is absolutely no difference in the features and operations of embedded and intallable, its just that it adds hardware vendors some more revenue by selling embedded esxi.

Yes, there is no difference between Installable and Embedded, however my question was mainly if the Embedded version is popular?

I am not about to make a buying decision, I just want to get a feeling how the market is for the ESXi versions by asking what your experiences are from customers.

As in, for example: "I know no one who has bought an ESXi Embedded" or

"I know of some installations" .. or

"It is very common on big companies" .. or something else.

[Borja_Mari]

Hi,

i really think esxi embedded isn't to much used. But i don't have any numbers or information, just a guess/intuition

Of course, almost all esxi embedded installations are on USB/SD:

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=102065...

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101057...

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[shirishh2712]

Tell me one thing that , if you have to keep a backup of some files, you keep it in usb or sata harddisk?

surely usb, becoz its portable and easily administered.

The same is with ESXi embedded and installable, untill and unless its hp or dell who are partners of vmware as hardware vendor, none other use it. everyone wants it in pendrive ., tbecoz thats the main beauty of it.

Inshort to your question no its not very common in market.

[rickardnobel]

Hi,

i really think esxi embedded isn't to much used. But i don't have any numbers or information, just a guess/intuition

Guesses is what I want.

[naiksidd1985]

yes agreed, its not very comman among giants. but when we are talking about emerging companies. who are planning to buy new servers for virtualization and migrating to vmware will not mind buying it. also even if we buy embeded version we can upgrade it by formating the flash memory.

its always advisible to use software embeded with hardware

[shirishh2712]

But sidd, for the newcomers wont they go for cheaper hardware rather than takimg embedded esxi hardware and then paying or support from the vendor and then to admins, rather for them its easier to have flash drives and go ahead for ESXi virtualization.

[naiksidd1985]

See wth esx 4.1 in market and esx 5.0 coming soon you cant need to have new hardware. my point is if you can just buy a new server with esxi why not go for it. besides you can also have a installable version on it.

also in any version you need to have a admin. I think a embeded software will always be more stable.

Only point is that people are not using it.

with 5.0 coming we might use only embeded as the server will boot from a comman image repository and it will be an added advantage to have a embeded copy on to the server just incase.

But yes it will remain a design decision.

[rickardnobel]

See with esx 4.1 in market and esx 5.0 coming soon

Is it known if the next release should be called 5.0?

Is it likely that will be coming "soon"?

Is it reasonable that it will be called "ESX" when 4.1 is last version with the Service Console?

[naiksidd1985]

am not sure if that should be 5.0 but according to the changes they are making they will have a different number ..

which would be 5.0 also if you search on google you will find it.

yes not really sure if that is soon but it should be out by march 2011. (again google)

and yes it should be ESX as the name esx has nothing to do with the service console.

and there will be a service console it may be hidden from normal user but it will need a service console.

remember the esx 4.0 where service console would be available after typing unsupported.

[Johnnyk1]

Anton, you are so right when you talk about how bad support is from HP. I have had to deal with them for years based on a company standard and no matter what the case was HP would drop the ball. HP never had the answers, never any follow up and it took an act of congress to get them to forward it to VMware

[rickardnobel]

>which would be 5.0 also if you search on google you will find it.

>yes not really sure if that is soon but it should be out by march 2011. (again google)

Some search on Google revealed nothing for me about a 5.0 version of vSphere or any release date. Could you provide a link?

If I should do any guessing I belive march 2011 is way to early for a new major release. With 4.1 just being in place it will take some time for companies to do upgrades and a 5.0 in just a few months does seems "too much".

and yes it should be ESX as the name esx has nothing to do with the service console.

I think it has. Today the names ESX and ESXi is the actual way to know if the host has a service console or not.

and there will be a service console it may be hidden from normal user but it will need a service console.

remember the esx 4.0 where service console would be available after typing unsupported.

That is not really correct. ESXi 4.0 has a Technical Support Mode which was enabled the way you describe, but not ESX 4.0. It is also not a Service Console in the sense that it is not a general purpose 3rd party operating system running in a VM needing patches.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

I don't have any numbers, but I would guess that it'll depend a bit on company size. If it's a smaller company racking a few servers with Embedded, powering them on and then manually configuring them isn't a big deal. If you're doing a large number of server that's a bit of a pain and likewise for server rebuilds. With Installable you can completely script the install process which scales better.

When ESXi was still in development one of the options was to PXE boot and even since 3.5 was released there have been been a number of examples of hacks to accomplish this. Should that ever make it into the product then it may represent a better option for large deployments.




Dave

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[naiksidd1985]

http://vinf.net/2009/08/07/vmware-esx-5/

explains a lot about esx 5

[rickardnobel]

http://vinf.net/2009/08/07/vmware-esx-5/

explains a lot about esx 5

I am sorry, but it does really not. It is just someone who writes about which features he would like to see in future vSphere and it has nothing to do with Vmware actually will put into it. It also says nothing of any release date or name of the product, he just uses "ESX 5" as a way to speak about this coming version.