Manage

Overview
This article provides a high-level overview of the manageability aspects of the VMware ESXi solution on Dell PowerEdge Servers. It discusses the various facets of manageability and the management tools that an IT Administrator can use to deploy, monitor, inventory, configure, and update an ESXi system.

VMware ESXi is the next-generation hypervisor and a core building block for the vSphere platform. Functionally, ESXi is equivalent to VMware ESX; however, the Linux-based service console has been removed, dramatically reducing the footprint to improve security and maintenance. Because ESXi no longer includes a service console, many of the management activities performed on the ESX platform—for example, configuring user access to the service console and administering management agents running in it—are no longer necessary. Other management tasks previously performed in the service console are now performed in one of several ways.

This article focuses primarily on the hardware management aspects of the Dell/VMware solution.