3i Starter -vs- Server Beta 2.0

[rbmadison]

What are the reasons someone would go with 3i starter instead of VMWare Server 2.0? Server 2.0 has more features than 3i does from reading the VMWare web site.

I also think the 3i information on the VMWare web site is very confusing in addition to the new forums being more difficult to find help and trying to post.

Thanks.

[swaterhouse]

ESX is an OS\application that is built from the ground up for hosting virtual machines. Server 2.0 is an application that sits on a variety of OS's none of which were designed from the ground up for running VM's.

[taylorb]

3i Starter is the entry level of Vmware ESX server. Basically ESX is its own operating sytem that runs on bare metal and has rock solid reliability. It also runs very lean so you have less virtualization overhead. With Vmware server you have your own OS running under VMware. So you install windows or Linux and then VMware is an app running on windows. More overhead and less reliablility that way.

Also, Server still has Beta in its name. Not something you wanna run a bunch of critical servers on. ESX is enterprise ready. I've got 40 servers running on my 3 ESX hosts and I sleep pretty well at night. Not sure I would if they were running in a Beta windows app like Server.

Basically I think the production level you are planning for the VMs will dictate what you want to run. For Dev/Test, Server is fine. For production level you need the ESX servers from Vi3.

[rbmadison]

Thanks for the info but I was comparing 3i Starter to Server 2.0. It seems that 3i starter has less features than the free Server 2.0. I understand the host OS is another layer that 3i doesn't have. But you can't do VCB backups with 3i starter, or use vSMP what's the point with going with 3i starter? Seems like your giving up features going to starter just to get rid of the host OS. Seems like VMWare is giving more away for free version than what you get when you pay for 3i starter.

[FredPeterson]

You can't really compare the two, as they are totally different suites of software.

The only things that 3i cannot do compared to v3.x are have host agents (like IBM Director) installed as there is no console operating system. Everything else that is independent of the console operating system is the same.

[taylorb]

Well like I said, it is their beta, non-enterprise product. It does have some advanced features, but not the reliability and support of VI3. Look at Red Hat linux, for example. All the latest and cutting edge kernels and features are in Fedora, but Red Hat Enterprise server is usually a rev behind. Fedora is free and RHEL is expensive. You are paying for guaranteed reliabilty and support levels.

VMware's own site says they do not recommend production servers on Vmware Server

[asatoran]

Let's go forward a bit to when Server 2 is in production. Server still requires a host OS. This means an additional license (if Windows), updates for the host OS and possible reboots (especiailly with Windows) and host memory overhead, which would be significantly more than ESX.

So for the same hardware, by running ESX, I have more free RAM to use for guests so I can perhaps run more simultaneous guests than with Server. With smaller servers that have limited RAM slots, this may be important. Additionally, ESX Starter can be upgraded to include VMotion and the rest of the features of the the other ESX packages. So ESX Starter can be the beginning of your VI system if you plan to expand later on.

One Server feature that ESX does not have, besides price, is the ability to use more unsupported hardware such as SATA drives. This is because Server relies on the host OS to handle the hardware, whereas ESX must do that itself.

[christianZ]

...and don't forget soon we will see ESX 3.5 Foundation (renamed Starter) w/o limitation to DAS (SAN possible then), single vcpu (smp there) and 8 GB host's ram.

[TomHowarth]

Limited SATA support is coming with 3.5.

Kind Regards

Tom,