Firstly ESX and ESXi are two different beasts. ESX in any way shape or form is not free.
ESXi by itself is however. Without any added features like Virtual Center etc etc Hyperv will run on just about any hardware as it uses the windows driver model where as ESXi will be a little more tricky, not buy much though, Carl was not quite right. ESXi will run fine on whiteboxes, or desktops. The only requirements that you will generally find is the scsi or sata controller is supported and the network card. I have successfully built a number using a $150 sata controller and Intel 1gb nic's. In fact my home AMD workstation is running ESXi right now. If you are looking at this from a licensing perspective (good luck) then you will need to evaluate whether buying a std, ent, dc version of Windows 2008 and the additional licenses to run Hyperv guests on that box will be something that floats your boat or not. You would also need to look at which version of hyperv you would use, full, server core or standalone. Pay some attention to how you will manage these virtual hosts too, hint# if you are planning server core or standalone then be prepared for some hoop jumping. I have used both and an unashamedly of the Vmware religion as is my job these days and so am a little biased. But I have had a fair play with Hyperv in all its forms and it still feels betaish to me. Some of the feature set outlined for the next version look great but that is 2 years away. If we compare these two versions only then I would say they both work but I like the Vmware VIClient interface and management much more than the Hyperv console. My advice, after all that would be to try them out. Presumably you are going to have to look after them and feel comfortable supporting them so I would start with building a box for yourself to test with and going through the normal procedures you would to get this into production. Then try the other type and you will get an idea of what suits your environment and your skillset. Greg From: Reimer, Mark [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2008 4:21 AM To: NT System Admin Issues Subject: Hyper V vs VMWare ESXi Hi folks, I know this has been discussed earlier, but it has been a few months, and (iirc) VMWare ESXi has come out since then. Also I think/hope some of the experts here have had a chance to try Hyper-V and/or ESXi a bit more, and might have more comments. I am under financial restraints, and thus the full ESX version, or other paid products, will not be viable for me. At this point, I'm looking at virtualizing a few web servers, using MS Server 2003. These are front end machines that "hook" to a back end SQL servers. A couple of these web servers get very little traffic, and some will have more. I'll look into Enterprise and DataCenter versions because of the multiple copies on a virtual server that are allowed. I'm planning on using the local server for disk storage, no NAS/SAN involved. I do have the hardware that can run the virtual software necessary (maybe need some more RAM). My question. Preference? Also any new links that might compare the two? I might also look into Xen/Citrix free version, so if anybody has comments on that, please let me know. Thanks. Mark ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
