Difference between vSphere, ESXi and vCenter

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Difference between vSphere, ESXi and vCenter

Thursday, 14 May 2015

Difference between vSphere, ESXi and vCenter

Posted on August 24, 2012 by Bipin (http://www.mustbegeek.com/author/bipin/) | 153 Comments (http://www.mustbegeek.com/difference-between-vsphere-esxi-andvcenter/#disqus_thread)

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There is a lot of buzz of VMware virtualization solution these days. No doubt that VMware is the number one virtualization solution provider in
the industry. People who are new to VMwares virtualization platform often get confused in getting to know about vSphere and its
components. So today I will be explaining all about vSphere and its components. Folks face difficulty to know about major components of
vSphere. Its important to know the difference between vSphere, ESXi and vCenter. To get in-depth knowledge and experience of vSphere
you can install vSphere inside VMware Workstation (http://www.mustbegeek.com/virtualization/installing-vsphere-in-vmwareworkstation/) with little cost.

Difference between vSphere, ESXi and vCenter

VMware Inc. is a software company that develops many suite of software products (http://www.vmware.com/products/) specially for
providing various virtualization solutions. There are many cloud products (http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization
/vcloud-suite/overview.html), datacenter products (http://www.vmware.com/products/datacenter-virtualization/), desktop products
(http://www.vmware.com/products/desktop_virtualization/) and so on.
vSphere is a software suite that comes under data center product. vSphere is like Microsoft Office suite which has many software like MS
Office, MS Excel, MS Access and so on. Like Microsoft Office, vSphere is also a software suite that has many software components like
vCenter, ESXi, vSphere client and so on. So, the combination of all these software components is vSphere. vSphere is not a particular
software that you can install and use, it is just a package name which has other sub components.
ESXi, vSphere client and vCenter are components of vSphere. ESXi server is the most important part of vSphere. ESXi is the virtualization
server. It is type 1 hypervisor. All the virtual machines or Guest OS are installed on ESXi server. To install, manage and access those virtual
servers which sit above of ESXi server, you will need other part of vSphere suit called vSphere client or vCenter. Now, vSphere client allows
administrators to connect to ESXi servers and access or manage virtual machines. vSphere client is installed on the client machine (e.g.
Administrators laptop). The vSphere client is used from client machine to connect to ESXi server and do management tasks. So now what is
vCenter? Why we need it? Try cloning existing virtual machine (http://www.mustbegeek.com/create-copy-of-existing-virtualmachine-in-esxi-server/) using just a vSphere client without vCenter server.
vCenter server is similar to vSphere client but its a server with more power. vCenter server is installed on Windows Server or Linux Server.
VMware vCenter server is a centralized management application that lets you manage virtual machines and ESXi hosts centrally. vSphere
client is used to access vCenter Server and ultimately manage ESXi servers. vCenter server is compulsory for enterprises to have enterprise
features like vMotion, VMware High Availability, VMware Update Manager and VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS). For
example, you can easily clone existing virtual machine in vCenter (http://www.mustbegeek.com/clone-virtual-machine-in-vmwarevcenter/) server. So vCenter is another important part of vSphere package. You have to buy vCenter license separately.

(http://www.mustbegeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/vSphere-product.png)
The diagram above shows vSphere suite in a more descriptive way. vSphere is a product suite, ESXi is a hypervisor installed on a physical
machine. vSphere Client is installed on laptop or desktop PC and is used to access ESXi Server to install and manage virtual machines on
ESXi server. vCenter server is installed as virtual machine on top of ESXi server. vCenter server is a vSphere component which is mostly

5/14/2015 2:19 PM

Difference between vSphere, ESXi and vCenter

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used in large environment where there are many ESXi server and dozens of virtual machines. The vCenter server is also accessed by
RECENT client
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in small environment. In larger

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environment, vSphere client is used again to access vCenter server which ultimately manages ESXi server.
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More

Filed in: VMware (http://www.mustbegeek.com/vmware-virtualization/), vSphere (http://www.mustbegeek.com/vmware-virtualization

/vsphere/)
Tags: difference (http://www.mustbegeek.com/tag/difference/), esxi server (http://www.mustbegeek.com/tag/esxi-server/), vcenter
(http://www.mustbegeek.com/tag/vcenter/), vsphere (http://www.mustbegeek.com/tag/vsphere/)

Bipin (http://www.mustbegeek.com/author/bipin/)
Bipin is a freelance Network/System Engineer with expertise on Cisco, Juniper, Microsoft, VMware, and other
technologies. Follow Bipin Giri on Google+ (https://plus.google.com/116321830250449646953). Bipin enjoys writing
articles and tutorials related to Network technologies. Some of his certifications are, MCSE:Messaging, JNCIP-SEC,
JNCIS-ENT, and others.

5/14/2015 2:19 PM

Difference between vSphere, ESXi and vCenter

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http://www.mustbegeek.com/difference-between-vsphere-esxi-and-vcenter/

153 Comments

antunin

hi, is it possible for the vcenter be an separate physical box ? how it is connected to the ESXi and manages it ?
thank you ./a/.

Prabodh

Thank U so much sir for your article.I have gone through so many articles to clearly understand the actual
difference between the three and finally got some clear idea.
Loved it.

SR

Very well explained. Thank You.

JP

Simplified explanation

Aman

Great Article nice job done cheers

cybes

thank you

Saurabh

Thanks for the superb explanation

Rishabh Sanghvi

Awesomely explained, cleared all my jumbled thoughts. Thank you !

Jax Jargalsaikhan

The best explanation. Thank you.

MVP

great article..simply explained

Shen

Thank for the explanation... :)

Steve

Thank you, this is precisely explanation and clarify for all these three components of the vSphere as I am totally
new to vmware environment.

Michael Ho

Bipin, I agreed with some of the folks on here. This is the best explanation ever. thanks much!

Michael Ho

Hey, this is an excellence article. thanks a bunch!

Prakash

Thank you very much..very helpful

Mohamed Ismail

Great article explains in a simple way. I too confused over the different terms used. Anyway thanks a lot for sharing

5/14/2015 2:19 PM