VMware ESX Server incorporates a resource manager and a service console that provides bootstrapping, management and other services.

The design of the ESX Server core architecture implements the abstractions that allow hardware resources to be allocated to multiple workloads in fully isolated environments.

The key elements of the system's design are:

• The VMware virtualization layer, which provides the idealized hardware environment and virtualization of underlying physical resources
• The resource manager, which enables the partitioning and guaranteed delivery of CPU, memory, network bandwidth and disk bandwidth to each virtual machine
• The hardware interface components, including device drivers, which enable hardware-specific service delivery while hiding hardware differences from other parts of the system