What Are ESX Hosts?

VMware ESX and VMware ESXi are hypervisors that use software to abstract processor, memory, storage and networking resources into multiple virtual machines (VMs). Each virtual machine runs its own operating system and applications. Hypervisors work by creating logical pools of system resources to enable multiple virtual machines to share the same physical resources.

ESX hosts are the servers/data storage devices on which the ESX or ESXi hypervisor has been installed. The use of hypervisors such as ESX and ESXi to create VMs (virtualization) is highly efficient, as one host device can support multiple (up to a dozen or more) VMs.

Microsoft’s System Center 2012 Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) is designed to help you to deploy and manage virtual machines across multiple hypervisor platforms, including VMware ESX and ESXi hosts.

VMM integrates directly with VMware vCenter Server. This means you can easily control the day-to-day operations of VMware ESX hosts and host clusters through the VMM console, including the discovery and management of ESX hosts, as well as creating, managing, storing and deploying virtual machines on ESX hosts.

Application and server management industry leader Idera’s award winning monitoring solutions, including their flagship product SQL Diagnostic Manager, provide a wide variety of performance metrics on both VMs and their hosts. A broad range of real-time system performance metrics gives database administrators the in-depth visibility they need to effectively monitor system performance and deal with problems before they become more serious.