Two needs.
1. Professional Development
2. Small home office virtualization
1. Professional Development
My background is I support Windows servers and most of these are virtual. I use a Vcenter Web client to do basic guest OS management things - restarts, console session 0 required tools, etc. I have VMware Workstation and VMware Player. I've done P2V to Player and Workstation. So basically I don't have the keys to the kingdom in the enterprise VMware where I work, but I do use it.
I am having trouble finding the right documentation to understand the VMware server (ESX) products. There is confusing product naming and also the differences in licensing. Is there a recommended place to start with progressive depth for someone who knows their way around the inside of a data center?
For example, this comparison: http://www.vmware.com/products/vsphere/buy/editions_comparison.html does not include the free ESXi product; that is an error; the chart should have four columns, shouldn't it?. And what is "Vsphere"? I keep seeing this reference - is it a product or a collection of products? Also sometimes I see "ESXi 5.0" other times "Vsphere Hypervisor" - are those the same thing?
2. Small home office virtualization
The other thing is we have a small home business and also a family with lots of Ethernet devices including Windows servers and workstation machines. I've made do with a physical machine running Windows XP as our family "server" for a while, but it is getting old and unmanageable. Cost is the most important factor. Obviously this is not an enterprise with a big budget.
I've installed ESXi 5.0 on surplus hardware that can be upgraded. It isn't an actual commercial server - it is white box and parts. I picked parts that would run ESXi. I'd like a FREE VMware host where I can install cheap or free guests and tools. I'd like to be able to do backups and restores of the raw vmdk files (to make the guests portable to new hardware and the like) and I'd like some visibility into the the health of the RAID direct attached disks. I keep running into disclaimers about using ESXi "free" that won't let me do backups or have a client to manage the host. What "free" pieces of VMware-branded software is available for managing the ESXi host and its guests? I'm having trouble finding this information. Is ESXi 5.0 a true stand-alone useful free product (emphasis on useful)?
Thank you in advance.