VMware ESXi serves as a hypervisor enabling virtualization by transforming physical servers into virtual infrastructures, supporting efficient server management, development, and production environments.
| Type | Title | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Server Virtualization Software | Jun 29, 2025 | Download |
| Product | Reviews, tips, and advice from real users | Jun 29, 2025 | Download |
| Comparison | VMware ESXi vs Proxmox VE | Jun 29, 2025 | Download |
| Comparison | VMware ESXi vs VMware vSphere | Jun 29, 2025 | Download |
| Comparison | VMware ESXi vs Hyper-V | Jun 29, 2025 | Download |
| Title | Rating | Mindshare | Recommending | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proxmox VE | 4.3 | 17.9% | 98% | 62 interviewsAdd to research |
| Hyper-V | 4.0 | 14.1% | 86% | 143 interviewsAdd to research |
Organizations utilize VMware ESXi for its high availability and ability to host diverse workloads effectively. Known for stability and maturity, it efficiently handles server, networking, and storage demands, with integral features like vMotion and memory compression. ESXi integrates well with data center operations, allowing seamless resource allocation and virtual machine migration. Despite impressive capabilities, users encounter challenges with setup complexity, licensing costs, and technical support delays, leading some to explore different solutions.
What are the main features of VMware ESXi?Industries deploying VMware ESXi benefit in sectors requiring robust IT infrastructure, including finance, healthcare, and education. Its capability to support high availability and diverse workloads proves essential for critical applications, enhancing productivity and agility in dynamic environments.
Primarily, it's a mature and stable solution compared to other hypervisors. Price-wise, it was okay until Broadcom took over. But customers are looking for stability, and it simply works.
The ease of use would be the first feature I like, then reliability. It's stable. It probably goes down, like, once in a very long time. So, in terms of the user experience, reliability, and stability, those would be my key takeaways.
A lot of AI features have been brought with version eight. Version seven didn't really have the AI integrations, so it's still an area we are assessing and testing, probably for the next year or so.
Right now, with the Broadcom takeover, I think the price point could be improved. A lot of people are complaining in the industry, so they probably need to revise their pricing. But the technical capabilities are sufficient for current day-to-day use. I'm sure they keep on improving other things.
I've worked with VMware for a couple of years. I also work mainly with vSphere suite, which includes vCenter and ESXi. Also, Cloud Director and vRealize Operations. Those are the key ones I've been working with for the past two years.
I would rate the stability a nine out of ten.
It's a scalable solution. If you want to scale up your infrastructure and add more hosts, it's quite simple, whether it's scaling up, scaling down, or even scaling out.
It is suitable for enterprise businesses.
With the Broadcom takeover, the quality of the customer service and support has really gone down to a five.
Because of the team reorganization, ticket acknowledgment can now take an hour or two. Resolution can even take up to two days. That has really changed.
So, the wait time for responses has increased since the Broadcom acquisition.
Neutral
I've used Commvault. I've been focusing more on VMware technologies.
The initial setup is not really complex because I've been using it for all these years, and it's become more and more simple for me to use.
We use it in our on-premises environment. These days, integrations are quite simple.
The deployment time varies. Internally, we have our own on-premises setup, just ESXi and vCenter. That takes a bit longer since the automation isn't fully implemented.
But for VMware Cloud Director (VCD), they have a Lifecycle Manager tool that makes it really easy. Two years ago, Cloud Director used to take about three hours to set up, but now, with Lifecycle Manager, it takes about 40 minutes. That's a real improvement.
I'm a customer, a partner, and an implementer.
Efficiency has definitely gone up, but now at the expense of cost. It's become really expensive. For example, if I paid about $10,000 for three years, now I'm paying the same for one year. So that has really gone up. It really increased in terms of pricing.
I would rate the pricing a ten out of ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive.
Technically, I would recommend it. Considering the cost aspect, I'd put it at seven out of ten.
