Virtualization is an advanced technology, efficiently utilizing hardware resources to reduce IT expense and boost production efficiency.
VMware is now the most popular virtualization platform. Most companies have chosen their products, so using VMware suit is a very important skill for virtualization engineers.
If you are new to virtualization or VMware, you must want to figure out the difference between vSphere, vCenter, and ESXi. To put it simply, vSphere contains vCenter and ESXi, ESXi is the hypervisor, creating virtual machines, and vCenter manages all virtual machines.
Their relationship looks simple, but all of them have powerful features. The following sections of this passage would tell you what they can do and how they work together.
What Is Vsphere?
vSphere is a comprehensive cloud computing virtualization platform released by VMware, which contains many applications including vCenter and ESXi. You could regard it as the name of a software suite.
When people say they are “using vSphere to create virtual machines,” they are usually referring to performing this task through the vSphere management interface rather than the underlying hypervisor directly. In most cases, this means using the VMware vSphere Client to access vCenter Server and deploy a new virtual machine within a managed environment.
In practice, the process is carried out through a guided workflow in the vSphere Client. Users open the client in a web browser, navigate to Hosts and Clusters, select a target data center and host, and then start the New Virtual Machine wizard from the Actions menu. From there, they proceed step by step: choose the creation type >assign a name and folder > select compute resources and storage > set compatibility options > define the guest operating system > customize hardware configurations > and finally review the settings before completing the deployment.
What Is Esxi?
ESXi is formerly called ESX, is a type 1 hypervisor.
VMware has developed several kinds of hypervisors including VMware Workstation, ESXi, etc. VMware Workstation is a type 2 hypervisor, also called hosted hypervisor, which means it needs to be installed as a software application on an existing operating system like Windows or Linux.
ESXi, also called bare-metal hypervisor, is directly installed on the physical machine like a server (OS not required) to fully control the hardware. It is regarded as the most important component of vSphere suite because you need to create virtual machines with hypervisor in vCenter.
VMs on ESXi contain important information, so remember to backup ESXi VMs.
What Is Vcenter?
vCenter, also called vCenter server, is the control panel of vSphere virtual infrastructure. As is said before, you could use vSphere client to visit vCenter via web browser. In vCenter, you can export VM to OVF template.
What can you do in vCenter?
vCenter is a visualized centralized management platform. You could easily manage all the host machines and virtual machines on the server in vCenter like performing VM migration.
vCenter is often installed on Windows server. There is also some useful information on it including vCenter Server core configuration, inventory, and historical data such as statistics, events, and tasks. If you think it's necessary, learn how to backup VMware vCenter.
If you have the licence, live VM migration is supported in vCenter. What's more, it is supported to migrate VM across vCenters in the lastest vSphere. Refer to Advanced Cross vCenter vMotion.
How Do Vsphere, Esxi, and Vcenter Work Together?
If you want to use VMware’s virtualization platform, you typically deploy a set of products developed by VMware vSphere. This suite brings together several core components, including VMware ESXi and VMware vCenter Server, which work together to form a complete virtual infrastructure.
At the foundation level, ESXi is installed directly on physical servers as a type-1 hypervisor. It is responsible for running and managing virtual machines on individual hosts. On top of this, vCenter Server provides centralized management, allowing administrators to control multiple ESXi hosts and their virtual machines from a single interface.
To interact with the environment, users typically access the system through the VMware vSphere Client via a web browser. The vSphere Client connects to vCenter Server, which in turn communicates with all connected ESXi hosts.
In this architecture, ESXi handles the actual virtualization at the host level, vCenter coordinates and manages the overall infrastructure, and the vSphere Client serves as the access point for administration. Together, they form a unified virtualization ecosystem where compute resources can be efficiently created, managed, and scaled.
How to Backup Your Vmware Vms With Vinchin?
In a VMware environment, VMware ESXi runs directly on physical servers to host virtual machines, while VMware vCenter Server provides centralized control over multiple hosts, and the VMware vSphere Client serves as the web interface used to access and manage the entire infrastructure.
Although this architecture makes virtualization highly efficient and flexible, it also introduces the need for reliable data protection and fast recovery. Therefore, many organizations complement their VMware environments with dedicated backup solutions.
Among them, Vinchin’s Backup & Recovery stands out as it’s a professional, enterprise-level VM backup solution supporting over 15 VM platforms, including VMware, Hyper-V, Proxmox, oVirt, OLVM, RHV, XCP-ng, XenServer, OpenStack, ZStack, etc.
It offers a rich set of VM-protection features like forever incremental backup for minimal windows, data deduplication and compression to save storage, and V2V migration for flexible recovery use cases. It also provides robust protection for critical data through throttling policies, GFS retention, HotAdd and quiesced snapshots, and backup data verification.
The web console is intuitive. To back up a VMware VM, you simply:
1. Select the VM to backup
Start the backup job, select your VMware vSphere environment, and choose the target VMs from the VM list.
2. Choose backup storage
Move to the "Backup Destination" page, select the target backup node and the corresponding storage location as needed.
3. Select a backup strategies
Then, move to the next step. Set a custom backup schedule (e.g., weekly full backup every Friday at 17:11), and configure backup modes and related parameters.
4. Submit the job
Finally, verify all job settings (including source, destination, and strategies), then submit the job to complete the creation.
Vinchin's global customer base and high ratings speak for themselves. Try the full-featured 60-day free trial today and click below to download the installer for easy deployment.
Vmware Deployment FAQs
Q1: How do I add an ESXi host to vCenter?
Go to Hosts and Clusters in vCenter, select Add Host, input the ESXi IP and login credentials, confirm the certificate, then follow the wizard to complete the addition.
Q2: Can I live-migrate VMs without downtime?
Yes, you can use vMotion to migrate running VMs across compatible ESXi hosts with zero service interruption.
Q3: What’s the best way to monitor VM performance?
Check the Performance Charts under the Monitor tab in vCenter to view real-time and historical CPU, memory, disk and network metrics of VMs.
Conclusion
For vSphere suite users, it is necessary to know the differences among vSphere, ESXi, and vCenter. This passage has told you their concepts and features, and how they work together.
To protect the data in data center, you could use Vinchin Backup & Recovery to backup virtual machine data on different platforms with an all-in-one solution.
