At the time of this writing, VMware ESX Server 3i (thin version of ESX 3) is the latest enterprise grade virtualization product by VMware. It comes with some new features different from VMware ESX 3.x that I will dicuss about them in this entry. The end of this entry is the ESX server 3i installation, and VIM set up and configuration.

What’s new in VMware ESX 3i

VMware ESX Server 3i offers an important difference over the “regular” ESX Server 3.x. According to VMware, ESX 3i has been reduced from about 2GB in size down to an incredible 32MB in size. This is possible because the Linux based Service Console Operating System (COS) has been removed and what is left is the small ESX Hypervisor kernel. In actuality, the hypervisor that really provides the virtualization services has always been about 32MB. Over time, VMware has been moving management functions out of the service console and into remote management tools.

VMware ESX 3i functionally equivalent to current ESX Server. That means that just about every virtualization function and Virtual Infrastructure capability (VMotion, DRS, VM HA, VCB for example) you can do with ESX Server 3.x, you can also do with 3i. You can see further information of the Virtual Infrastructre Management Installation in the previous post.

The benefit to using ESX 3i

If you buy a server with VMware ESX 3i embedded, from Dell for example for now, you don’t need to install ESX 3i server. What you need to do is enter the key and reconfigure the ESX 3i server to your environment.

The number of patches will be cut down in half, because the half of the patches ESX Server 3.x were for the service console.

Without the service console OS, the ESX server becomes much more secure (because all of those Linux services and applications are gone) and reliable . Your server don’t need any disk if you use the embedded version and they use SAN storage for their virtual guest machines.

VMware envisions ESX 3i just being the default firmware on all new servers bought in the future. No matter what virtualization platform you choose, virtualization is making more and more sense because it allows you to take advantage of the more and more powerful hardware (CPU, RAM resources will be dedicated to VMs).

It is speculated that ESX Server 3i will provide greater performance than the traditional ESX. This could simply be true because all the services are putting on remote machines and now fewer demands on the ESX 3i server. This will be freeing up resources of ESX 3i server for running virual servers only.

Install VMware ESX Server 3i

Boot server with VMware Server ESX 3i CD. Follow the instructions on monitor to configure the ESX server 3i

Reboot the ESX Server 3i to configure it. In the following screen shots, I configure my ESX 3i server with the following parameters:

Server Name:  vsesx009.vcomtech.net
IP: 192.168.10.9
Netmask: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.10.254
DNS: 192.168.10.2

Configure VIM