Starting with ESXi 5.0 the Service Console has been removed, and is no longer a necessary component. All management tasks that were previously done in the Service Console can now be performed by esxcli commands in the ESXi Shell, and remotely using vCLI, Power CLI, or the vSphere Management Appliance.
- What is the difference between the vSphere ESX and ESXi architectures?
- http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/esxi-and-esx/faqs.html
- vSphere ESX and ESXi are both bare-metal hypervisor architectures that install directly on the server hardware. Both provide industry-leading performance and scalability; the difference resides in the architecture components and the operational management of the vSphere host. Although neither hypervisor architectures relies on an OS for resource management, the vSphere ESX architecture relied on a Linux operating system, called the Console OS (COS) or service console, to perform two management functions: executing scripts and installing third party agents for hardware monitoring, backup or systems management. In the vSphere ESXi architecture, the service console has been removed, drastically reducing the hypervisor footprint and completing the ongoing trend of migrating management functionality from the local command line interface to remote management tools. The smaller code base of vSphere ESXi represents a smaller “attack surface” and less code to patch, improving reliability and security. The functionally of the service console is replaced by remote command line interfaces and adherence to system management standards.
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