ESX vs ESXi for UC applications.

chrisnoon11 · ‎08-01-2012

Hello,

I understand that Cisco rather explicitly states that only ESXi is supported for UC apps (8.5 and 8.6), however my VMWare guys are emphatic that the guest OS has absolutely no visibility into the VMware layer and that ESX and ESXi are indistinguishable to the VM's. Is this a fight worth having? Will Cisco not support UC on ESX at all?

Side note, are there any caveats to consider when moving UC VM's between ESX and ESXi hosts?

Thanks,

Chris

Rob Huffman · ‎08-01-2012

Hi Chris,

Fighting with the VMware guys is a no win been there done that. But "support"

always wins out in our environment.

Here is the official word;

Q: Is Cisco planning on supporting ESX?

A: Cisco is not planning to support ESX. ESXi provides better support for realtime applications.
ESXi is the next generation architecture as compare to ESX.

https://supportforums.cisco.com/docs/DOC-8973#comment-7303

Please keep the following in mind when purchasing VMware from Cisco:

A vSphere license purchased from Cisco entitles both ESX and ESXi, but remember that UC only supports ESXi.

http://docwiki.cisco.com/wiki/Before_You_Buy_or_Deploy_-_Considerations_for_Design_and_Procurement

Cheers!

Rob

"Always movin' ahead and never lookin' back" - Springsteen