ESXi vs vSphere ?

[Louis-FR]

Hi guys,

I am working in a company which has two servers with ESXi installed. But, I don't really understand the difference between ESXi and vSphere? How can I get vSphere from ESXi ?

I am looking for installing a cluster with my two servers. Must I use vCenter (VCSA) to deploy it ?

 

I hope my questions are not too vague.

 

Louis

[Patrik Kernstock]

VMware vSphere is the virtualization platform as a whole, including the vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) and vCenter Server. (VMware vSphere Hypervisor is the new/official name for ESXi.) So both terms can't be really compared.

vCenter is deployed on a already existing ESXi host by mounting the ISO and starting the installer - see docs for more information: https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/7.0/com.vmware.vcenter.install.doc/GUID-F06BA415-66D8-42CD-9151-701BBBCE8D65.html

Hope this helps!

[Louis-FR]

Thank for your awnser, this is more clear in my head.

I deployed VCSA but now I don't understand how to add my ESXi host to vCenter. What kind of user do I need to use to login on vCenter ?

[Patrik Kernstock]

When you're on the HTML5 WebUI of vCenter you can e.g. right-click on a datacenter to add a host there. Then enter the credentials of the ESXi host which has enough permission to add the host to the vCenter - in most cases simply the root credentials. vCenter then takes care adding the host to vCenter and creates its own customer user (vpxuser) to interact with the host from this point on.

When deploying vCenter you specify the SSO admin - by default [e-mail]. Use this to logon in your vCenter HTML5 Client.

[Louis-FR]

Oh thanks a lot, I was using bad credentials (root and not 'administrator@<domain>').

I feel noobie... But I have to start somewhere !

[Scott Vessey]

Hopefully this set of statements helps you:

• ESXi is the software you run on each single physical system to host VMs.
• vCenter Server is how you manage multiple ESXi hosts.
• vSphere is the collective name given to a setup where you have vCenter Server and multiple ESXi hosts.
• You must use vCenter Server if you want to use vMotion, High Availability (HA), Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), and many many more vSphere features.
• HA and DRS are the features where you create host clusters.
• ESXi hosts are licensed with vSphere licenses.
• You can also use ESXi on a standalone system (not managed by vCenter Server) with a free license - that's when ESXi is called vSphere Hypervisor.

 

[Louis-FR]

Thanks ! Simple and efficient