Comments on: Understanding VMware vSphere, ESXi, and Release Cycles http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/ Informed Virtualization Criticism Fri, 07 Jun 2013 16:44:22 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.5.1 By: Salty http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-16614 Salty Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:51:50 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-16614 Thanks! That is what the VMware site seemed to indicate, but I didn’t want to wast time then find out it does not work.

]]> By: Eric Gray http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-16613 Eric Gray Fri, 08 Feb 2013 17:24:14 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-16613 Yes, stand-alone single host home lab is an ideal use case for free ESXi. You would install the free vSphere Client on Windows and just point directly to the ESXi host for VM management. Clustering, vMotion, HA, and other more advanced features are enabled by vCenter Server.

Eric

]]> By: Salty http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-16561 Salty Thu, 07 Feb 2013 22:28:00 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-16561 I am still confused on the point of can you do anything with the free ESXi hyperviser offered by VMWare, or is it strictly useful when purchased with vSphere?

Just so I don’t get a bunch of answers asking how/why I would want to do this in a data-center environment… I don’t!

From a small (home) lab perspective, can I install and use ESXi to host and interact with various guest OS without purchasing vSphere?

]]> By: Stephen http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-11905 Stephen Tue, 31 May 2011 23:06:35 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-11905 I’d argue that both Vmware and MS will be blindsided by Xen in the hypervisor/managment space.

Definitly an interesting few years coming up!

]]> By: Stu Fox http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-11877 Stu Fox Thu, 26 May 2011 01:51:45 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-11877 Danny, maybe it’s because Eric is full it and he knows it? Like his cherry picked “customer quote” (to be fair, I wouldn’t necessarily call a blog comment a “customer quote”, like I wouldn’t call my comment on Eric’s blog “an official Microsoft position”) from a blog article in October, a full 5 months before dynamic memory shipped.

When Hyper-V releases new features, VMM supports those new features in a reasonably short timeframe. Windows 2008 R2 SP1 was released in February, VMM SP1 was released the next month in March. Sure, it’s not a synchronised release, but it’s not an un-coordinated release either. On the flip side, doing it this way means that VMM can release on a faster cycle than Hyper-V can, which means we can add additional management capability quicker – for instance the Server App-V technology that is coming in VMM2012 (to choose just one example). If it were VMware we’d be waiting until they had a hypervisor release to do.

]]> By: Larry http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-11871 Larry Wed, 25 May 2011 20:20:38 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-11871 This is funny stuff. It good reading on one screen, while on the other SCVMM 2008 R2 converts VMware VM’s to Hyper V.

]]> By: Danny http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-11870 Danny Wed, 25 May 2011 18:33:12 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-11870 Gee, James and Stu, why don’t you compare apples to apples? The obvious point of the article was to only show how the hypervisor and management server releases differ between the two vendors. View is neither of those and I’m sure MS has never released a patch or upgrade that broke another products functionality; otherwise we would have to test all of those patches before installing on production.

At least Stu is transparent in his relationship to MS. Too bad James wasn’t as honest.

Bringing Cloud into the discussion is, again, a desperate attempt to misdirect. Market share figures and competitive practices??? Wow, what next? Comparison of CEO lifestyles???

]]> By: James Richard http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-11862 James Richard Wed, 25 May 2011 05:56:44 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-11862 Let us see some examples from VMW own product stack of products that are inconsistent-
1. vCloud Director is extremely difficult to install and works only with RHEL and Oracle databases (no SQL support) in its present version.
2. It’s automation software – vCenter Orchestrator is not integrated with vCloud Director. Can you believe a private cloud without automation? Certainly VMW thinks it’s possible.
3. It is missing a robust policy engine or any kind of SLA framework
4. I have talked to many admins and they say getting vCloud director working is extremely difficult- someone spent weeks and still couldn’t get all pieces working..

List goes on..the point is not whether a product has all the features at a given time. the point is that Hyper-V is gaining market share 3 times faster than ESX/ESXi according to latest IDC numbers and since 80% of VMW revenues comes from vSphere, they want to protect that turf from their competitors, mostly Microsoft.
So this kind of article that basically doesnt have a valid point..

]]> By: Stu Fox http://www.vcritical.com/2011/05/understanding-vmware-vsphere-esxi-and-release-cycles/#comment-11858 Stu Fox Wed, 25 May 2011 00:00:35 +0000 http://www.vcritical.com/?p=3582#comment-11858 Is an integrated platform like when you released vSphere 4 U2 and it broke PCoIP for View? Is that the sort of thing you mean?

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