Mark, re: bare metal; what they mean by that these days is just that you install ESX as the root/core/main/host operating system for that machine, wether it be virtual or physical. It's a very confusing term because especially in the context of virtualization people tend to think it implies physical (bare) hardware, but what it really seems to mean is just that the product doesn't co-exist with an existing OS the way that VMware Server does, rather it needs to be booted itself directly on the 'machine'. re: ESX & $$$ In general the way it works is that the core enterprise VM server component, ie: the ESX kernel is available in a particular flavor for free, and they call that flavor ESX 3i. It's free, but it has a slightly different capability to matrix and makeup to the tradition ESX 3.x server. For one thing it does not have a complete userspace setup any more, and by default you can't really even access a shell, altho it does have busybox hidden. the reality of the situation is that ESX is an extremely solid and robust product, and in either form you will not be disappointed by either the capacity it is able to suck from even a mild server platform, but also that the stability and management are very straight-forward and unified , at least to the degree that vmware is the sole vendor of ESX kernel environments, and the support implications that entails. i support xen and esx, you don't need to look any farther than Amazon EC2 for proof that xen is an intense and capable vm kernel, but i can only speak for esx in terms of being dependable for years on end in production, and enabling us to do fairly complex vlan/vswitch and storage configurations and in %99 of the time, taking most if it without missing a beat. katsu On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 7:11 PM, Dave Ihnat <dihnat@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote: > On Wed, Dec 24, 2008 at 04:03:49PM -0800, Jason Riker wrote: >> You all have me confused here. I thought ESX cost money. Is it free? > > Not AFAIK, no. I was just talking about the tech aspects. > -- > Dave Ihnat > dihnat@xxxxxxxxxx > > -- > redhat-list mailing list > unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list > -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
