Definition

VMware vSphere Hypervisor

Contributor(s): Kim Hefner

The VMware vSphere Hypervisor is a free, bare-metal hypervisor from VMware that allows users to virtualize their servers and consolidate applications. The hypervisor has been available since 2008, when it was called Free ESXi 3.5.

The hypervisor lacks some of the enterprise-grade features of the full VMware ESXi version, such as vMotion, Storage vMotion, High Availability, Distributed Resource Scheduler and vSphere Data Protection. However, it does include:

Thin provisioning of virtual machine disks
Snapshot and restore capabilities
Virtual guest operating system support
Support from the vSphere client
Hardened device drivers
Memory over-commitment
Support for Fibre Channel, iSCSI and NFS shared storage

Users can upgrade to more advanced versions of the VMware vSphere Hypervisor by adding a license file.

This was last updated in December 2014

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