What is the difference between VMware ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5?

September 25th, 2008

Simon Seagrave

With the release of the free downloadable version of VMware ESXi 3.5 I have found myself using it more and more in my home lab rather than ESX 3.5.

So far, apart from the obvious lack of a local service console and ESXi’s inability to allow the use of serial and parallel ports, as I reported in an earlier blog posting, things have been pretty plain sailing.

As you’d expect, or had possibly read/heard there are other limitations currently around using ESXi. Here are a couple of useful links that clearly points the comparative features between the two and the differences in the supported networking features (as this is where the majority of the differences are):

VMware Knowledge Base – VMware ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 Comparison

VMware Knowledge Base – Differences in Supported Networking Features