VMware ESXi is a bare-metal hypervisor. That means that you install it as you would install any other OS and on top of it run your virtual machines. You could ask why not use a VMware server on top of a linux installation. Well it’s because you would have to administer one more linux box with every problem that this would cause (updates that brake stuff, etc). Also ESXi uses minimal resources compared to a VMware server on top of another OS.
The best news is that ESXi is FREE! You just need to register to the VMware website in order to obtain your free license key (as was the case with VMware server). After that you install it on your server, make some configuration changes (IP address and root password specifically). Then you can connect with your browser to your new ESXi server and download the Infrastructure Client through which you can administer the virtual machines and the ESXi server.
Some tips to get you started can be found here.
Good luck!
Tags: esxi, virtual machines, vmware
