Build a virtual infrastructure that integrates well with their existing technology investments. VMware ESX is the most broadly deployed and trusted virtualization platform in the world. With nearly 1500 technology partners, VMware has created a strong support ecosystem that gives customers peace of mind knowing that VMware solutions integrate well with their existing hardware and software investments.
See how VMware can help you:
- Get the broadest hardware support
- Access the largest number of guest operating systems
- Gain access to broad application support
- Leverage our partner support programs
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VMware Supports the Largest Number of Guest Operating Systems
VMware ESX supports far more guest operating systems than any other bare-metal virtualization platform. VMware ESX’s superior performance with unmodified (fully virtualized) guests, made possible by VMware's exclusive binary translation technology, means that ESX can run off-the-shelf operating systems with near-native performance. Other hypervisors suffer serious performance degradation with unmodified guests. VMware ESX also supports transparent paravirtualization for guest operating systems, which allows a single binary version of the operating system to run either on native hardware or on a hypervisor in paravirtualized mode. This means that support for paravirtualization interfaces is compiled into the kernel, and is present even when the kernel is running on native hardware. Working with members of the Linux community, including IBM, Red Hat, and XenSource, VMware co-defined paravirt_ops, an open-interface standard for paravirtualizing Linux guests.
VMware ESX supports all guest operating systems in a consistent, unbiased manner. For example, VMware ESX supports maximum virtual SMP for each guest, unless the guest’s SMP support on a physical machine is for fewer CPUs, like XP and Vista which are 2-way only. For ESX 4.0, the maximum vSMP limit is 8-way. In contrast, Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V supports 4-way vSMP on Windows Server 2008 guests only. Most other guests on Hyper-V R2 will be limited to one virtual CPU.
See the VMware Guest Operating System Installation Guide for full details on guest support.
| Guest Operating System Support | VMware ESX 4.0 |
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V |
Citrix XenServer |
|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL |
48
|
13 |
22 |
| Windows NT 4.0 |  |
 |
|
| Windows 2000 | |
|
|
| Windows Server 2003 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Windows Server 2003 | |
|
|
| Windows Server 2008 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Windows Server 2008 | |
|
|
| Windows XP 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Windows XP | |
|
|
| Windows Vista 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Windows Vista | |
|
|
| Windows 98 | |
|
|
| Windows 95 | |
|
|
| Windows 3.1 | |
|
|
| MS-DOS 6.22 | |
|
|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 64-Bit | |
Supported, but lacks RHEL Integration Components |
|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | |
Supported, but lacks RHEL Integration Components |
|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 | |
|
|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 | |
|
|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 | |
|
|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 64-bit | |
|
|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 | |
|
|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 64-Bit | |
|
|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 | |
|
|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 64-Bit | |
|
|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 | |
|
|
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8 | |
|
|
| Ubuntu 8.04 Linux 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Ubuntu 8.04 Linux | |
|
|
| Ubuntu Linux 7.10 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Ubuntu Linux 7.10 | |
|
|
| Novell NetWare 6 | |
|
|
| Novell NetWare 5.1 | |
|
|
| OS/2 Warp 4 | |
|
|
| Sun Solaris 10 x86 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Sun Solaris 10 x86 | |
|
|
| SCO OpenServer 5 | |
|
|
| SCO Unixware 7 | |
|
|
| Open Enterprise Server 2 | |
|
|
| CentOS 5 64-Bit | |
|
|
| CentOS 5 | |
|
|
| CentOS 4 | |
|
|
| Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 64-Bit | |
|
|
| Oracle Enterprise Linux 5 | |
|
|
| Debian 5 64-bit | |
|
|
| Debian 5 | |
|
|
| Debian 4 | |
|
|
| FreeBSD 7 64-bit | |
|
|
| FreeBSD 7 | |
|
|
| FreeBSD 6 64-bit | |
|
|
| FreeBSD 6 | |
|
|
| Asianux 3 64-bit | |
|
|
| Asianux 3 | |
|
|
| TOTAL | 48 |
13 |
22 |
Note: Microsoft and Citrix data collected on October 13, 2009
