Introduction

Starting with vSphere 5.0, VMware doesn't offer the ESX classic version, but the ESXi hypervisor version. The classic version of the ESX server had a Linux-based Service Console. One of the most evident benefits of removing the Service Console is that ESX hypervisor version (ESXi) will have a smaller installation footprint. It can even be embedded on the server boards or USB drives. Because of the smaller footprint, the installation is faster. Historically, most of the security updates that VMware released were for the Service Console and not for the hypervisor component. Meaning, as we move ahead we will require less frequent patching to be done on the ESXi servers.

The vCenter Server is the component that provides centralized management of your vSphere environment. Most of the administrative tasks on a single ESXi server can be done by using the vSphere Windows Client software. As in most cases, however, when you have an environment that has multiple ESXi servers, managing each of them by making individual vSphere Client connections will be cumbersome. This is where the vCenter Server would come in handy. It would let you add more than one ESXi server to its management interface, so that all the servers can be managed using just a single vSphere Client connection to the vCenter Server. Furthermore, with ESXi servers added to the vCenter Server, could use the vSphere features such as cluster, High Availability (HA), Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS), VMware Update Manager (VUM), and vSphere Data Recovery.