Chapter 2. The Hypervisor – ESXi

VMware's ESXi is a piece of software that you install on a bare-metal server. ESXi creates a layer of abstraction that allows for virtual machines to run by utilizing the server's hardware resources independently. In the previous chapter, we learned how the hardware resources such as the CPU, memory, and I/O are virtualized with the help of the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM). In this chapter, we continue discussing the architecture of the ESXi hypervisor. We will also learn different methods of deploying ESXi onto bare-metal servers.

We will cover the following topics in this chapter:

• The architecture of ESXi
• Laying the groundwork for an ESXi installation
• Installing ESXi - the interactive method
• Using the vSphere Client
• Creating additional local users on an ESXi host
• Using an ESXi Managed Object Browser (MOB)
• Understanding other ESXi deployment methods

You can download ESXi for free if you register to evaluate the product at VMware's website. At the time of writing this book, vSphere 6 is the latest of their suite of vSphere products. We will learn how it can be downloaded and installed in this chapter. Before we begin installing ESXi, it is critical to understand the architecture of it. In the next section we will walk through the architecture of ESXi.