The Joy of ESX

Like all VMware's platform products, Workstation, GSX, and ESX, ESX Server allows to run multiple virtualized servers or virtualized machines on one physical computer called a host. ESX Server is VMware's enterprise virtualization product. Like its brethren, GSX and Workstation, ESX allows to run operating systems and applications utilizing idealized hardware in a virtualized environment. Each operating system runs independently of the other, so if one operating system crashes, the other virtualized operating systems are not affected. Unlike GSX and Workstation, both of which are loaded and run on a physical computer with a preinstalled host operating system (either Windows or Linux), ESX has no preinstalled operating system and is loaded directly on the physical hardware running a highly specialized Linux kernel, the vmkernel. VMware describes ESX as its own operating system,. ESX is much more customizable than GSX or Workstation and supports advanced configurations such as physical-to-virtual clustering, throttling of CPU, network bandwidth, and much more.