The Vmkernal cannot boot it by itself, so that it takes the help of third party operating system.In vmware case the kernal booted by REDHAT Linux system.
My question here: this same boot process will support for ESXI? or only for esx?
Have a look at this post from Andreas Peetzpeetz
VMware Front Experience: A myth busted and an FAQ: ESXi is *not* based on Linux! But what is it?
Hi,
yes, classic ESX used a Redhat Linux based Service Console OS to bootstrap the VMkernel. But ESX is long gone and ESXi is the current architecture.
ESXi boots the VMkernel directly on the hardware and no longer relies on a Service Console OS. Read this white paper to learn more about its architecture:
My blog post that jrmunday mentioned explains more about the relationship of ESXi and Linux. It still holds true, and to shortly summarize that you could say that ESXi and Linux share a common fundament (GNU C libraries and tools) and ESXi has a compatibility layer for some Linux hardware drivers, but it does not use a Linux kernel.
- Andreas