Difference between VMware ESX and ESXi

It’s been a long debate that everyone has been asked by what is the difference between ESX and ESXi. Most of the admins would have asked this question during interviews and also asked by new learners of VMware virtualization. I decided to post on the topic to give architectural difference always as to compare the different level capabilities between ESX & ESXi along the tabular comparison to explain the difference between VMware ESX and ESXi. Even though ESX is no more available, I thought it would be helpful especially for the new administrators to understand the architectural difference between VMware ESX and ESXi.

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What is VMware ESX ?

ESX (Elastic Sky X) is the VMware’s enterprise server virtualization platform. In ESX, VMkernel is the virtualization kernel which is managed by a console operating system which is also called as Service console. Which is Linux based and its main purpose is it to provide a Management interface for the host and lot of management agents and other third-party software agents are installed on the service console to provide the functionalists like hardware management and monitoring of ESX hypervisor.

Graphics Thanks to VMware

vSphere 6.5 Blog posts:
What’s New with VMware vSphere 6.5?
vSphere 6.5 -What’s New with vCenter 6.5?
What’s New with Virtual SAN 6.5? – New Features Overview
vSphere 6.5 -What’s New with vSphere 6.5 HA & DRS
vSphere 6.5 – What’s is in VMware vSphere 6.5 Fault Tolerance?
Download VMware vSphere 6.5 – Get your Copy to Evaluate!!!
vSphere 6.5 – Deploying vCenter appliance 6.5
Deploying vCenter 6.5 External Platform Services Controller
Deploying vCenter Server appliance 6.5 with External PSC
vSphere 6.5 – Configuring vCenter Server 6.5 HA
vSphere 6.5 – vCenter 6.5 Native HA Failover Testing
vSphere 6.5 Configuration Maximums – What’s New?
vSphere 6.5 – How VM’s are Secured using vSphere 6.5 Security Features?
Migrate Windows vCenter Server 6.0 to vCenter Server appliance 6.5

What is VMware ESXi?

ESXi (Elastic sky X Integrated) is also the VMware’s enterprise server virtualization platform. In ESXi, Service console is removed. All the VMware related agents and third party agents such as management and monitoring agents can also run directly on the VMkernel. ESXi is a ultra-thin architecture which is highly reliable and its small code-base allows it to be more secure with fewer codes to patch. ESXi uses Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) instead of a service console to perform management of ESXi server. ESXi installation will happen very quickly as compared to ESX installation.

Graphics Thanks to VMware