January 28, 2023

What Is VMware ESXi and Which Operating Systems Does It Support?

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Wondering about VMware EXSi and how it works? We’ve got you covered.

Virtual machines are really useful for people who often work with two operating systems. For example, if you do all your development work on Linux but still need Windows for gaming. In such cases, running a Linux virtual machine on your PC saves you from buying a second computer.

That said, most virtualization programs run on top of an existing ‘host’ OS. But if you want to remove the middleman and make the virtualization program interface directly with the hardware, you will have to use a bare-metal hypervisor like VMware’s ESXi.

What Is VMware ESXi?

VMware ESXi is VMware’s bare-metal hypervisor, also called a Type 1 hypervisor. It’s essentially a special operating system that runs directly on top of your system’s hardware and allows guest OSes to interact directly with the system components, hence the name: bare metal.

This differs from other virtualization programs such as Wine or VMware’s own VirtualBox, which are Type 2 hypervisors. In a Type 1 hypervisor, the guest VM (virtual machine) and, by extension, the OS running on said VM interfaces directly with the system’s hardware. In contrast, Type 2 hypervisors run as regular programs on top of a host OS which can then run VMs on top of the host OS.

This means that a single VMware ESXi server can support multiple installations of the same or different OSes all running in isolated environments. This practice is called server consolidation and is often practiced in large-scale enterprises where savings on hardware, cooling, and power costs can be significant.

Overall, ESXi is one of the components offered in the vSphere software suite provided by VMware. Other products that usually work in tandem with ESXi include VCenter Server, VMware Directory Service, and vCenter Server Database, among others.

There are several major differences between these two types of hypervisors. That said, Type 1 hypervisors are generally considered better as they give better performance and are more secure as the VMs are isolated by nature.

VMware ESXi Features

Designed with enterprise applications in mind, ESXi offers a host of features, including:

• Small footprint: The entire package is only around 200MB in size. This means that ESXi can run on machines with lesser available resources, and it acts as a security measure, as a smaller footprint means a reduced attack surface.
• Wide OS support: ESXi servers support just about every OS you can install on a regular machine. Windows, Linux, and macOS all can be installed using ISO files just as you would set up a regular VM.
• Easy administrative access: Managing ESXi VMs is simple thanks to its HTML-based web interface. Once installation is complete, you can access ESXi much as you would access a server. This means VMs can be created, deleted, and managed remotely.
• Safety: Outside the security that a bare metal hypervisor provides by default, VMware also secures your ESXi VMs using built-in encryption, role-based access, and some pretty good logging and auditing capabilities.
• Easily scalable: A single ESXi installation can use more than one CPU simultaneously. It can also be set up to run up to 128 virtual CPUs and 120 VMs on up to 6TB of memory.
• Customer support and compatibility: Since it’s a popular enterprise platform, you get extensive support and vendor capability. Its small footprint also means you can quickly set up and deploy ESXi servers.

ESXi Requirements and Installation

As mentioned before, ESXi hypervisors don’t have a big footprint, meaning the minimum requirements are as low as follows:

• A host CPU (64-bit, x86 processor) with at least two cores. Check the VMware ESXi Requirements for a full list of supported processors.
• At least 4GB RAM and 4GB storage.
• One or more gigabit or a faster ethernet controller.
• Support for hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x or AMD RVI) for 64-bit VMs.

As you can guess, you can convert just about any modern machine into an ESXi server as long as you meet the aforementioned requirements. As per VMware, there are additional requirements for more advanced things like storage redundancy. Booting into ESXi can be done using USB drives, hard drives, or CDs using UEFI.

Installing ESXi is also rather simple. VMware provides an easy-to-use installation wizard similar to installing an OS on your machine. Just boot into the installation wizard using any of the aforementioned bootable media and follow along with the instructions. The video above provides a look at how to install VMware ESXi.

Updating VMware ESXi Hosts

There are several ways to update your ESXi host. While you should always install the latest version (version 7.0 at the time of writing) in case you’re setting up a new ESXi host, updating one is also rather easy.

You can upgrade your version 6.5 or 6.7 ESXi hosts to version 7 using a CD, DVD, or USB drive, depending on the host. A scripted upgrade, ESXCLI, or vSphere Lifecycle Manager upgrade is also possible.

Installing and Updating VMware Tools on ESXi Hosts

If you want additional functionality out of your VMs, you can also install or update the VMware Tools ISO on your VMs. This is usually taken care of using either the VMware vSphere Update Manager (VUM) or VMware vSphere Lifecycle Manager (vLCM), but it can also be done manually.

That said, a complete installation of ESXi should install VMware Tools by default, so your only real concern here is keeping the entire system up to date, which should also happen automatically when you update your ESXi host.

Backing Up VMware ESXi VMs

Data redundancy and backups are a rather important part of IT enterprise workflows. Depending on what kind of backup you want to take, you have the following options.

• Backing up the VM hard drive: If you’re only interested in backing up your VM’s hard drive, you can choose to only save the VMDK file associated with a particular VM in vCenter.
• Backing up an entire VM: If you want to save yourself the hassle of setting up another VM and just want a ready-to-go copy, exporting your VM to an OVF template in vCenter is the quickest way. This ensures that your configuration files, data, and any installed programs are all migrated over to a single OVF file, which can be used to quickly redeploy the VM on another ESXi host or even VirtualBox installation.

Virtual Machines Can Be Helpful

Installing and using VMware’s ESXi hypervisor is surprisingly easy, even for someone just starting in the world of VMs and IT infrastructure management.

Even if you don’t want to go down the ESXi host and server application rabbit hole, VMware’s VirtualBox allows you to run practically any OS on top of your existing one and opens up a whole new world of possibilities.

Reference: https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-vmware-esxi-and-which-operating-system-does-it-support/

Ref: makeuseof

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