Notably the biggest difference between ESX and ESXi, is the fact ESXi does not have a service console. There is now a remote CLI that can be run from a windows system to perform the majority of commands available from the similar ESX service console.
However lacking the service console has some drawbacks that may restrict some from running ESX server based backups, 3rd party monitoring and other custom applications from the red hat based service console.
There are other feature differences and also licensing and upgrade path differences as shown below.
|
|
ESXi – Free License (ESX not available without VI) |
VI Foundation (with ESX or ESXi) |
VI Standard (with ESX or ESXi) |
VI Enterprise (with ESX or ESXi) |
|
Core hypervisor functionality |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Virtual SMP |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
VMFS |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
VirtualCenter Agent |
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Update Manager |
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Consolidated Backup |
|
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
High Availability |
|
|
Yes |
Yes |
|
VMotion |
|
|
|
Yes |
|
Storage VMotion |
|
|
|
Yes |
|
DRS |
|
|
|
Yes |
|
DPM |
|
|
|
Yes |
VMware KB ESX ESXi Comparison
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