VMware - What is this hypervisor and why do large companies choose it?

In a world where fault tolerance, scalability, and efficiency of IT infrastructure come to the fore, virtualization has long ceased to be a fashionable trend - it is a standard. And in this market, the name VMware has been the benchmark for more than two decades.

In this article, we will analyze what the VMware hypervisor is, how it works, how it differs from other solutions, and where it should be used in 2025.

🧠 What is a hypervisor?

A hypervisor is a software layer that allows you to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single physical server. It isolates resources (CPU, memory, disk, network) for each VM, creating the feeling that each has its own machine.

There are two types of hypervisors:

Type 1 (bare-metal) - runs directly on the hardware (example: VMware ESXi)

Type 2 (hosted) - installed on top of the OS (example: VMware Workstation)

⚙️ What is VMware ESXi?

VMware ESXi is a Type 1 hypervisor from VMware. It installs directly on the physical server, bypassing the traditional operating system, and provides efficient virtualization with minimal overhead.

Features:

• Small footprint (installed from USB or iLO/IPMI)

• Web management interface (vSphere Client)

• Support for thin and thick disk allocation

• Integration with storage systems (SAN, iSCSI, NFS)

• Live Migration support (vMotion)

🏗️ VMware architecture

A typical VMware-based architecture may look like this:

• ESXi hosts — physical servers with an installed hypervisor

• VMs — virtual machines with Linux/Windows/FreeBSD

• vCenter Server — central cluster management point

• vSphere Client — GUI for admins

• vSAN / shared storage — fault-tolerant storage

• NSX — network virtualization, firewall, VPN, segmentation

🚀 VMware advantages in 2025

✅ Platform maturity: VMware is one of the most stable hypervisors with rich functionality

✅ Integrations: easily works with backups, CI/CD, monitoring (Veeam, Zabbix, Grafana)

✅ Scalability: hundreds of hosts, thousands of VMs in one cluster

✅ Built-in HA and DRS: automatic VM recovery in case of node failure

✅ Security: disk encryption, micro-segmentation, access control

✅ HCI support: you can deploy hyperconverged infrastructure with VMware vSAN

💡 Where is VMware used?

🔒 Financial sector — high stability and fault tolerance

🏥 Healthcare — HIPAA certification, compliance support

💻 Enterprise segment — flexible management of large VM parks

🛒 eCommerce — fast releases, service isolation, dev/test environments

🛡️ Cybersecurity — isolation of critical systems, Honeypot infrastructure

🤔 Why not Open Source?

Proxmox, KVM and XCP-ng supporters often point to the high cost of VMware. And indeed — vSphere, vCenter and NSX licenses are not cheap.

But it is worth considering:

• Level of support (24/7, SLA, bug fixes)

• Integration with enterprise products

• Possibility of official certification for partners

• Availability of audit tools and standards compliance

📌 Conclusion

VMware is a mature, scalable and reliable virtualization platform that continues to be the de facto standard for businesses where stability, high availability and security are important.

Yes, this is not the most budget option, but when it comes to critical applications, databases, financial systems - VMware ESXi + vCenter are still one of the best solutions on the market.

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