Slightly confused on what I need…as I am a programmer with some admin background. The company I work for has fairly specific requirements (ie…what type of hardware is or is not allowed, etc…) and I could go ask them however I wanted to get external views on the matter.
First and foremost is the difference between ESX and vSphere, as they seem to be the same solutions with the only differences being one is a hardware solution and the other is a software based solution. Is that accurate? Do they coincide?
The goal is simple, purchase a machine in line with what the company allows from a hardware stance at the lowest cost possible. They mentioned that ESX is approved and vSphere…so could I order a machine without ESX and still make use of virtualization with vSphere? Would that cost me anything?
Wanting 4 – 8 VM's one to host an ASP.NET app, another to act as a DB server (low load), and the others for expansion. I want the simplest route to maintain these systems, as we will not have any dedicated admin person on the projects.
Sorry for what appears as a brain dump…
UPDATE:
This is what it sounds like it is boiling down to. Should I get ESX pre-installed by the manufacturer or just go the vSphere route after the fact based on the needed specs above.
Best Answer
When you say EXS...I assume you are taking about ESX? If so, then they are different products.
VMWare ESX is the hypervisor which runs the actually virtualization. Think about it this way - ESX is the operating system of the host server.
vSphere is the fancy name for the latest version of VMware...but it's still basically ESX. Prior to vSphere, the product line was VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3...vSphere is the name for version 4.
So in a nutshell, both vSphere and ESX are hypervisors, or what you referred to as a "hardware solution". You don't need "both", because that's like saying you need "both" windows 2003 and windows 2008 :)
If both ESX and vSphere are approved, then you could get either.
Now, to further confuse things...in the VI 3 world, the management system was called Virtual Center - which is a management server for managing multiple ESX hosts. If you only have one host, you don't really need VCenter. In vSphere, it's called vSphere.
My guess from your brain dump is that at your company, they're saying you could provision a hardware server with ESX, but also have vSphere available for management.