VMware ESXi

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1

hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving VMware ESXi
virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a
software application that one installs in an operating system
(OS); instead, it includes and integrates vital OS
components, such as a kernel.[2]

After version 4.1 (released in 2010), VMware renamed ESX

to ESXi. ESXi replaces Service Console (a rudimentary
operating system) with a more closely integrated OS.
ESX/ESXi is the primary component in the VMware
Infrastructure software suite.[3]
Developer(s) VMware, Inc.
The name ESX originated as an abbreviation of Elastic Sky
Stable release 6.5.0d (Build 5310538) /
X.[4][5] 18 April 2017
Platform IA-32 (discontinued in 4.0
onwards),[1] x86-64
Contents
Type Hypervisor
1 Architecture License Proprietary
Website vmware.com/products/esxi-and-esx/ (
1.1 Interface to hardware
http://vmware.com/products/esxi-and
1.2 Service console -esx/)

1.3 Linux dependencies

1.4 Purple Screen of Death

1.5 vMotion: live migration

2 Versions

2.1 VMware ESX

2.2 VMware ESXi

3 Version history

4 Lawsuit
5 Related or additional products

5.1 Cisco Nexus 1000v

5.2 Third party management tools

 6 Known limitations

6.1 Infrastructure limitations

6.2 Performance limitations

6.3 Network limitations

6.4 Fibre Channel Fabric limitations

7 See also

8 References

9 External links

Architecture
ESX runs on bare metal (without running an operating system)[6] unlike other VMware products.[7] It includes
its own kernel: A Linux kernel is started first,[8] and is then used to load a variety of specialized virtualization
components, including ESX, which is otherwise known as the vmkernel component.[9] The Linux kernel is the
primary virtual machine; it is invoked by the service console. At normal run-time, the vmkernel is running on
the bare computer, and the Linux-based service console runs as the first virtual machine. VMWare dropped
development of ESX at version 4.1, and now uses ESXi, which does not include a Linux kernel.[10]

The vmkernel is a microkernel[11] with three interfaces: hardware, guest systems, and the service console
(Console OS).

Interface to hardware
The vmkernel handles CPU and memory directly, using scan-before-execution (SBE) to handle special or
privileged CPU instructions[12][13] and the SRAT (system resource allocation table) to track allocated
memory.[14]

Access to other hardware (such as network or storage devices) takes place using modules. At least some of the
modules derive from modules used in the Linux kernel. To access these modules, an additional module called
vmklinux implements the Linux module interface. According to the README file, "This module contains the
Linux emulation layer used by the vmkernel."[15]

The vmkernel uses the device drivers:[15]

1. net/e100
2. net/e1000
3. net/e1000e
4. net/bnx2
 5. net/tg3
6. net/forcedeth
7. net/pcnet32
8. block/cciss
9. scsi/adp94xx
10. scsi/aic7xxx
11. scsi/aic79xx
12. scsi/ips
13. scsi/lpfcdd-v732
14. scsi/megaraid2
15. scsi/mptscsi_2xx
16. scsi/qla2200-v7.07
17. scsi/megaraid_sas
18. scsi/qla4010
19. scsi/qla4022
20. scsi/vmkiscsi
21. scsi/aacraid_esx30
22. scsi/lpfcdd-v7xx
23. scsi/qla2200-v7xx

These drivers mostly equate to those described in VMware's hardware compatibility list.[16] All these modules
fall under the GPL. Programmers have adapted them to run with the vmkernel: VMware Inc has changed the
module-loading and some other minor things.[15]

Service console
In ESX (and not ESXi), the Service Console is a vestigial general purpose operating system most significantly
used as bootstrap for the VMware kernel, vmkernel, and secondarily used as a management interface. Both of
these Console Operating System functions are being deprecated from version 5.0, as VMware migrates
exclusively to the ESXi model, current version being ESXi.[17] The Service Console, for all intents and
purposes, is the operating system used to interact with VMware ESX and the virtual machines that run on the
server.

Linux dependencies
ESX uses a Linux kernel to load additional code: often referred to by VMware, Inc. as the "vmkernel". The
dependencies between the "vmkernel" and the Linux part of the ESX server have changed drastically over
different major versions of the software. The VMware FAQ[18] states: "ESX Server also incorporates a service
console based on a Linux 2.4 kernel that is used to boot the ESX Server virtualization layer". The Linux kernel
runs before any other software on an ESX host.[8] On ESX versions 1 and 2, no VMkernel processes run on the
system during the boot process.[19] After the Linux kernel has loaded, the S90vmware script loads the
vmkernel.[19] VMware Inc states that vmkernel does not derive from Linux, but acknowledges that it has
adapted certain device-drivers from Linux device drivers. The Linux kernel continues running, under the control
of the vmkernel, providing functions including the proc file system used by the ESX and an environment to run
support applications.[19] ESX version 3 loads the VMkernel from the Linux initrd, thus much earlier in the boot-
sequence than in previous ESX versions.
In traditional systems, a given operating system runs a single kernel. The VMware FAQ mentions that ESX has
both a Linux 2.4 kernel and vmkernel hence confusion over whether ESX has a Linux base. An ESX system
starts a Linux kernel first, but it loads vmkernel (also described by VMware as a kernel), which according to
VMware 'wraps around' the linux kernel, and which (according to VMware Inc) does not derive from Linux.

The ESX userspace environment, known as the "Service Console" (or as "COS" or as "vmnix"), derives from a
modified version of Red Hat Linux, (Red Hat 7.2 for ESX 2.x and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 for ESX 3.x). In
general, this Service Console provides management interfaces (CLI, webpage MUI, Remote Console).

As a further detail which differentiates the ESX from other VMware virtualization products: ESX supports the
VMware proprietary cluster file system VMFS. VMFS enables multiple hosts to access the same SAN LUNs
simultaneously, while file-level locking provides simple protection to file-system integrity.

Purple Screen of Death

In the event of a hardware error, the vmkernel can 'catch' a Machine
Check Exception.[20] This results in an error message displayed on a
purple diagnostic screen. This is colloquially known as a purple
diagnostic screen, or purple screen of death (PSOD, cf. Blue Screen of
Death (BSOD)).

Upon displaying a purple diagnostic screen, the vmkernel writes debug

information to the core dump partition. This information, together with
the error codes displayed on the purple diagnostic screen can be used by
VMware support to determine the cause of the problem. A purple diagnostic screen as seen in
VMware ESX Server 3.0

vMotion: live migration

Live migration (vMotion) in ESX allows a virtual machine to move

between two different hosts. Live storage migration (Storage vMotion)
enables live migration of virtual disks on the fly.[21] During vMotion
Live Migration (vLM) of a running virtual machine (VM) the content of
the (RAM) memory of the VM is sent from the running VM to the new
VM (the instance on another host that will become the running VM after
the vLM). The content of memory is by its nature changing all the time.
ESX uses a system where the content is sent to the other VM and then it
will check what data is changed and send that, each time smaller blocks. A purple diagnostic screen from
At the last moment it will very briefly 'freeze' the existing VM, transfer VMware ESXi 4.1
the last changes in the RAM content and then start the new VM. The
intended effect of this process is to minimize the time during which the VM is suspended; in a best case this
will be the time of the final transfer plus the time required to start the new VM.[22][23]

Versions
VMware ESX is available in two main types: ESX and ESXi, although since version 5 only ESXi is continued.
VMware ESX

Version release history:

VMware (7 January 2002)

VMware ESX 1.5

VMware ESX Server 1.5 (13 May 2002)

VMware ESX 2.0 (21 July 2003)

VMware ESX Server 2.0.1 Build 22983 (13 April 2006)

VMware ESX Server 2.0.2 Build 23922 (4 May 2006)

VMware ESX 2.5 (14 December 2004)

VMware ESX Server 2.5.0 Build 11343 (29 November 2004)

VMware ESX Server 2.5.1 Build 13057 (20 May 2005)
VMware ESX Server 2.5.1 Build 14182 (20 June 2005)
VMware ESX Server 2.5.2 Build 16390 (15 September 2005)
VMware ESX Server 2.5.3 Build 22981 (13 April 2006)
VMware ESX Server 2.5.4 Build 32233 (5 October 2006)
VMware ESX Server 2.5.5 Build 57619 (8 October 2007)

VMware Infrastructure 3.0 (VI3) (5 June 2006)

VMware ESX Server 3.0 Build 27701 (13 June 2006)

VMware ESX Server 3.0.1 Build 32039 (25 September 2006)
VMware ESX Server 3.0.2 Build 52542 (31 July 2007)
VMware ESX Server 3.0.3 Build 104629 (8 August 2008)
VMware ESX Server 3.0.3 Update 1 Build 231127 (8 March 2010)
VMware ESX Server 3.5 (10 December 2007)
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Build 64607 (20 February 2008)
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 1 Build 82663 (10 April 2008)
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 2 Build 110268 (13 August 2008)
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 3 Build 123630 (6 November 2008)
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 4 Build 153875 (30 March 2009)
VMware ESX Server 3.5 Update 5 Build 207095 (20 December 2009) This was the last version to
support 32-bit systems[24]

VMware vSphere 4.0 (20 May 2009)

VMware ESX 4.0 Build 164009 (21 May 2009)

VMware ESX 4.0 Update 1 Build 208167 (19 November 2009)
VMware ESX 4.0 Update 2 Build 261974 (10 June 2010)
VMware ESX 4.0 Update 3 Build 398348 (5 May 2011)
VMware ESX 4.0 Update 4 Build 504850 (17 November 2011)
VMware ESX 4.1 Build 260247 (13 July 2010)
VMware ESX 4.1 Update 1 Build 348481 (10 February 2011)
VMware ESX 4.1 Update 2 Build 502767 (27 October 2011)
 VMware ESX 4.1 Update 3 Build 800380 (30 August 2012)

ESX and ESXi before version 5.0 do not support Windows 8/Windows 2012. These Microsoft operating
systems can only run on ESXi 5.x or later.[25]

18 July 2010 vSphere 4.1 and its subsequent update and patch releases are the last releases to include both ESX
and ESXi hypervisor architectures. Future major releases of VMware vSphere will include only the VMware
ESXi architecture. For this reason, VMware recommends that deployments of vSphere 4.x utilize the ESXi
hypervisor architecture.

VMware ESXi
VMware ESXi, a smaller-footprint version of ESX, does not include the ESX Service Console. It is available -
without the need to purchase a vCenter license - as a free download from VMware, with some features
disabled.[26][27][28]

ESXi apparently stands for "ESX integrated".[29]

VMware ESXi originated as a compact version of VMware ESX that allowed for a smaller 32 MB disk
footprint on the host. With a simple configuration console for mostly network configuration and remote based
VMware Infrastructure Client Interface, this allows for more resources to be dedicated to the guest
environments.

Two variations of ESXi exist:

VMware ESXi Installable

VMware ESXi Embedded Edition

The same installation media will install to either one or the other of these installation modes depending on the
size of the target media.[30] One can upgrade ESXi to VMware Infrastructure 3[31] or to VMware vSphere 4.0
ESXi.

Originally named VMware ESX Server ESXi edition, through several revisions the ESXi product finally
became VMware ESXi 3. New editions then followed: ESXi 3.5, ESXi 4 ESXi 5 and (as of 2015) ESXi 6.

To virtualize Windows 8 or Windows Server 2012 as a guest operating system, the ESXi version must be 5.0
update 1 or later.

Version history
Version release history:[28]

VMware ESX 3.0.0 GA (Build 27701) (16 June 2006)

VMware ESX 3.0.1 GA (Build 32039) (25 September 2006)
VMware ESX 3.0.2 GA (Build 52542) (26 July 2007)
VMware ESX 3.0.3 GA (Build 104629) (14 July 2008)
VMware ESXi 3.5 GA (Build 64607) (20 February 2008)
VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 1 (Build 82663) (10 April 2008)
 VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 2 (Build 103909) (13 August 2008)
VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 3 (Build 123629) (6 November 2008)
VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 4 (Build 153875) (30 March 2009)
VMware ESXi 3.5 Update 5 (Build 207095) (3 December 2009)
VMware ESXi 4.0 GA (Build 164009) (21 May 2009)
VMware ESXi 4.0 Update 1 (Build 208167) (19 November 2009)
VMware ESXi 4.0 Update 2 (Build 261974) (10 June 2010)
VMware ESXi 4.0 Update 3 (Build 403554) (5 May 2011)
VMware ESXi 4.0 Update 4 (Build 523315) (17 November 2011)
VMware ESXi 4.1 GA (Build 260247) (13 July 2010)
VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 1 (Build 351620) (10 February 2011)
VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 2 (Build 502767) (27 October 2011)
VMware ESXi 4.1 Update 3 (Build 800380) (30 August 2012)
VMware ESXi 5.0 GA (Build 469512) (24 August 2011)
VMware ESXi 5.0 Update 1 (Build 623860) (15 March 2012)
VMware ESXi 5.0 Update 2 (Build 914586) (20 December 2012)
VMware ESXi 5.0 Update 3 (Build 1311175) (17 October 2013)
VMware ESXi 5.1 GA (Build 799733) (10 September 2012)
VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 1 (Build 1065491) (25 April 2013)
VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 2 (Build 1483097) (16 January 2014)
VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 3 (Build 2323236) (4 December 2014)
VMware ESXi 5.5 GA (Build 1331820) (22 September 2013)
VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 1 (Build 1623387) (11 March 2014)
VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 2 (Build 2068190) (9 September 2014)
VMware ESXi 5.5 Update 3 (Build 3029944) (16 September 2015)
VMware ESXi 6.0 GA (Build 2494585) (12 March 2015)
VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 1 (Build 3029758) (10 September 2015)
VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 1a (Build 3073146) (6 October 2015)
VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 1b (Build 3380124) (7 January 2016)
VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 2 (Build 3620759) (15 March 2016)
VMware ESXi 6.0 Update 3 (Build 5050593) (24 February 2017)
VMware ESXi 6.5 GA (Build 4564106) (15 November 2016)

Lawsuit
VMware has been sued by Christoph Hellwig, a Linux kernel developer, for GPL license violations. It was
alleged that VMware had misappropriated portions of the Linux kernel,[32] and used them without permission.
The lawsuit was dismissed by the court in July 2016[33] based on a technicality and Hellwig announced he
would file an appeal.[34]

Related or additional products

The following products operate in conjunction with ESX:

vCenter Server, enables monitoring and management of multiple ESX, ESXi and GSX servers. In
addition, users must install it to run infrastructure services such as:
vMotion (transferring virtual machines between servers on the fly whilst they are running, with
zero downtime)[22][23]
 svMotion aka Storage vMotion (transferring virtual machines between Shared Storage LUNs on
the fly, with zero downtime)[35]
enhanced vMotion aka evMotion (a simultaneous vMotion and svMotion, supported on version
5.1 and above)
Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) (automated vMotion based on host/VM load
requirements/demands)
High Availability (HA) (restarting of Virtual Machine Guest Operating Systems in the event of a
physical ESX Host failure)
Fault Tolerance (almost instant stateful fail-over of a VM in the event of a physical host
failure)[36]
Converter, enables users to create VMware ESX Server- or Workstation-compatible virtual machines
from either physical machines or from virtual machines made by other virtualization products. Converter
replaces the VMware "P2V Assistant" and "Importer" products P2V Assistant allowed users to convert
physical machines into virtual machines; and Importer allowed the import of virtual machines from other
products into VMware Workstation.
vSphere Client (formerly VMware Infrastructure Client), enables monitoring and management of a
single instance of ESX or ESXi server. After ESX 4.1, vSphere Client was no longer available from the
ESX/ESXi server, but must be downloaded from the VMware web site.

Cisco Nexus 1000v

Network-connectivity between ESX hosts and the VMs running on it relies on virtual NICs (inside the VM) and
virtual switches. The latter exists in two versions: the 'standard' vSwitch allowing several VMs on a single ESX
host to share a physical NIC and the 'distributed vSwitch' where the vSwitches on different ESX hosts together
form one logical switch. Cisco offers in their Cisco Nexus product-line the Nexus 1000v, an advanced version
of the standard distributed vSwitch. A Nexus 1000v consists of two parts: a supervisor module (VSM) and on
each ESX host a virtual ethernet module (VEM). The VSM runs as a virtual appliance within the ESX cluster or
on dedicated hardware (Nexus 1010 series) and the VEM runs as module on each host and replaces a standard
dvS (distributed virtual switch) from VMware. Configuration of the switch is done on the VSM using the
standard NX-OS CLI. It offers capabilities to create standard port-profiles which can then be assigned to virtual
machines using vCenter.

There are several differences between the standard dvS and the N1000v, one is that the Cisco switch generally
has full support for network technologies such as LACP link aggregation or that the VMware switch supports
new features such as routing based on physical NIC load. However the main difference lies in the architecture:
Nexus 1000v is working in the same way as a physical Ethernet switch does while dvS is relying on information
from ESX. This has consequences for example in scalability where the Kappa limit for a N1000v is 2048 virtual
ports against 60000 for a dvS. The Nexus1000v is developed in co-operation between Cisco and VMware and
uses the API of the dvS[37]

Third party management tools

Because VMware ESX is a leader in the server-virtualisation market,[38] software and hardware vendors offer a
range of tools to integrate their products or services with ESX. Examples are the products from Veeam Software
with backup and management applications[39] and a plugin to monitor and manage ESX using HP
OpenView,[40] Quest Software with a range of management and backup-applications and most major backup-
solution providers have plugins or modules for ESX. Using Microsoft Operations Manager (SCOM) 2007/2012
with a Bridgeways ESX management pack gives you a realtime ESX datacenter health view.

Also hardware-vendors such as HP and Dell include tools to support the use of ESX(i) on their hardware
platforms. An example is the ESX module for Dell's OpenManage management platform.[41]
VMware has added a Web Client[42] since v5 but it will work on vCenter only and does not contain all
features.[43] vEMan[44] is a Linux application which is trying to fill that gap. These are just a few examples:
there are numerous 3rd party products to manage, monitor or backup ESX infrastructures and the VMs running
on them.[45]

Known limitations
Known limitations of VMware ESXi, as of April 2015, include the following:

Infrastructure limitations

Some maximums in ESXi Server 6.0 may influence the design of data centers:[46]

Guest system maximum RAM: 4080 GB

Host system maximum RAM: 6 TB (12 TB on certain certified OEM hardware platforms)
Number of hosts in a high availability or Distributed Resource Scheduler cluster: 64
Maximum number of processors per virtual machine: 128
Maximum number of processors per host: 480
Maximum number of virtual CPUs per physical CPU core: 32
Maximum number of virtual machines per host: 1024
Maximum number of virtual CPUs per fault tolerant virtual machine: 4
Maximum guest system RAM per fault tolerant virtual machine: 64 GB
VMFS5 maximum volume size: 64 TB, but maximum file size is 62 TB -512 bytes

Performance limitations

In terms of performance, virtualization imposes a cost in the additional work the CPU has to perform to
virtualize the underlying hardware. Instructions that perform this extra work, and other activities that require
virtualization, tend to lie in operating system calls. In an unmodified operating system, OS calls introduce the
greatest portion of virtualization "overhead".

Paravirtualization or other virtualization techniques may help with these issues. VMware developed the Virtual
Machine Interface for this purpose, and selected operating systems currently support this. A comparison
between full virtualization and paravirtualization for the ESX Server[47] shows that in some cases
paravirtualization is much faster.

Network limitations
When using the advanced and extended network capabilities by using the Cisco Nexus 1000v distributed virtual
switch the following network-related limitations apply:[37]

64 ESX/ESXi hosts per VSM (Virtual Supervisor Module)

2048 virtual ethernet interfaces per VMWare vDS (virtual distributed switch)

and a maximum of 216 virtual interfaces per ESX/ESXi host

2048 active VLAN's (one to be used for communication between VEM's and VSM)
2048 port-profiles
32 physical NIC's per ESX/ESXi (physical) host
256 port-channels per VMWare vDS (virtual distributed switch)

and a maximum of 8 port-channels per ESX/ESXi host

Fibre Channel Fabric limitations

Regardless of the type of virtual SCSI adapter used, there are these limitations:[46]

Maximum of 4 Virtual SCSI adapters, one of which should be dedicated to virtual disk use
Maximum of 15 SCSI LUNs per adapter

See also
Comparison of platform virtualization software
KVM Linux Kernel-based Virtual Machine an open source hypervisor platform
Hyper-V a competitor of VMware ESX from Microsoft
Xen an open source hypervisor platform
Virtual appliance
Virtual machine
Virtual disk image
VMware VMFS
x86 virtualization

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34. "Hellwig To Appeal VMware Ruling After Evidentiary Set Back in Lower Court" (http://bombadil.infradead.org/~hch/v
mware/2016-08-09.html). 9 August 2016.
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35. http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-Storage-VMotion-DS-EN.pdf
36. http://www.vmware.com/files/pdf/VMware-Fault-Tolerance-FT-DS-EN.pdf
37. Overview of the Nexus 1000v (http://www.cisco.com/en/US/prod/collateral/switches/ps9441/ps9902/data_sheet_c78-49
2971.html) virtual switch, visited 9 July 2012
38. VMware continues virtualization market romp (http://www.crn.com/news/virtualization/232900547/vmware-continues-v
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)
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Visited: 11 september 2001
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13 February 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-22.

External links
VMware ESX product page (http://www.vmware.com/support/vsphere-hypervisor.html)
ESXi Release and Build Number History (http://www.virten.net/vmware/esxi-release-build-number-histor
y/)

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Categories: VMware

This page was last edited on 12 May 2017, at 18:38.

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