What do you use in your enterprise? (ESX, ESXi) Why?

[rbmadison]

I would like to do a poll of what licensed version of ESX people are running in their enterprise. I've read the various posts about ESXi vs ESX and there are good points on both sides. Please keep the responses in reference to fully licensed versions for each.

I also seem to be finding more issues posted with the ESX and not ESXi. Is this the case of fewer people using it or is it more stable. I've had problems recently with some of our ESX servers running out of console memory and am leaning towards ESXi. The small footprint and no patching is a huge selling point.

Please post your most recent enviroment install or your next environment install. Which will you install and if you have a 1 or 2 line comment about the reason you chose that version please include it but keep it short. I hope we can get alot of responses on this to get a good poll. I was hoping the forum supported polls but I don't see it.

Thanks!

[mcowger]

We exclusively use ESX and will do so until ESXi+vCLI have feature, performance and compatibility parity; they do not currently.

--Matt

VCP, vExpert, Unix Geek

[sketchy00]

ESX for the 4 blades licensed and controlled by vcenter. One ESXi box that runs just one VM - that being for vcenter. Its nice because I have everything virtualized and on the SAN, but have vcenter outside of the cluster, and on a free box

[AndreTheGiant]

If prefer use ESX. Service Console could be useful in several cases.

And not all 3th part program support well ESXi.

But ESXi is very interesting in the embedded version (or in intallable version when is installed on a USB/SD disk): no local disks (usual 2 are required) without the "complexity" of the boot from SAN.

Also it used less resource compared to full ESX.

Andre

[jguide]

We have been running 2 ESXi embedded servers for over a year now.

I have been thinking about going to ESX. Sometimes it's frustrating that many of the ESX tools are not in ESXi.

One of my ESXi servers had to be re-installed but I think I caused the problem by trying to add some software for my HBA cards which were having problems until I updated to VSphere.

I probably won't make the change but when the lease on these servers is up and I get new servers in I will def. look into both version t decide which to do.

Here's something funny. I called tech support last week. The person that confirms your support kept telling me that ESXi is only a free version and I can't be running that, it has to be ESX.

Jeff

[Schorschi]

We have used ESX (classic) since 2004 (version 2.1.2 no less!) and we avoided ESX3i because we could not monitor the hardware effectively under ESX3i. With ESXi 4 the hardware monitoring is better, not perfect. We are far above or in front ot the pack, in that we will have ESXi stateless based cloud in production soon, very soon. ESXi 4 just cries out for PXE/TFTPboot loading methodology. For our older infrastructure, we will use ESXi 4 installable, once it can be fully automated in a way that is similar to ESXi 4 stateless can be done.

The amount of customization to the classic build we have done since 2.1.2, 2.5.x, 3.0.x, and then 3.5.x represents 100s if not 1000s of manhours, more because our internal security and configuration requirements than anything which for us are extreme. ESXi 4 with its reduced footprint eliminates 99% of that customization, much to the displeasure of our internal security team that wants to see ESX as a variant of Linux (still!) but our management loves ESXi big time, nevermind our operational teams.

[bulletprooffool]

ESXi exclusively.

we were running 40 ESX hosts in 7 locations and patch management etc on them was terrible. Deploying patches is a longwinded process needing multiple reboots - and when you have 40 hosts, a pain in the a$$

We also found that we pretty much NEVER use the Service Console.

We 'upgraded' to ESXi, have enabled SSH, so now we effectively have the benefits of the service console.

Patch management is now one reboot and a walk in the park (we used to patch once evey 6 months . . now we do it whenever something new appeals to us) , we have less footprint, we have no concerns about local disks on remote ESX hosts going down, as we can run without the local disk and of course our environment is more secure than it was before. We have HP servers, use the embedded HP CIM providers and are able to monitor hardware from HPSIM etc.

There is no way I will go back tothe FAT version!

As a matter iof interest, I sat the vsphere Fast track 3 weeks ago - we never used the SC for anything - and the course was Lab intensive, 8am, to 7pm for 5 days.

VMware support fully support enabling of SSH and are able to do all the troubleshooting they need.

I think the people that will tell you to go with the fat version are generally people that are old school and have never really given ESXi a full chance (and possibly don't regularly path their hosts ))

[bulletprooffool]

ESXi exclusively.

We have had up to 40 hosts in 7 locations - all were running the full fat version.

Patch management was a nightmare as the patches go down sequentially on ESX full fat - ESXi is basically a quick dump of the new files and a reboot.

ESXi with SSH enable (this IS supported by VMware) gives me everything I ever had in the full fat client.

It has the following advatages:

Security

Quicker patch management

Smaller footprint

No need to manage / stress about local disk (which is handy if you have remote offices)

Disadvatgaes that we've encountered : NONE

As a matter of interest, I sat the VCP 410 Fast Track course (5 days of lab intensive 8am to 7pm calsses - doing everything you'd want to do with ESX) We used the full fat client . . but hardly touched the SC. (and what we did do, I could do from an SSH to ESXi anyway)

We discussed this in class and the consensus was that old school VM folk that are afraid of change will opt for the full fat client . . as they are afraid to try ESXi properly - all those that have given it a go have moved over PERMANENTLY