Build a virtual infrastructure that integrates well with your existing technology investments. VMware vSphere Hypervisor is the most broadly deployed and trusted virtualization platform in the world. With more than 1,600 technology and consulting 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
Questions? 1-877-486-9273
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VMware Supports the Largest Number of Guest Operating Systems
VMware vSphere Hypervisor supports more guest operating systems than any other bare-metal virtualization platform. VMware vSphere Hypervisor's superior performance with unmodified (fully virtualized) guests, made possible by VMware's exclusive binary translation technology, means that vSphere Hypervisor can run off-the-shelf operating systems with near-native performance. Other hypervisors suffer serious performance degradation with unmodified guests. VMware vSphere Hypervisor 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 vSphere Hypervisor supports all guest operating systems in a consistent, unbiased manner. For example, VMware vSphere Hypervisor supports 32-way virtual SMP for any supported guest OS (unless the guest's SMP support on a physical machine is for fewer CPUs, such as XP and Vista, which are 2-way only). In contrast, Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 with Hyper-V supports 4-way vSMP on Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 guests only. Most other guests on Hyper-V R2 will be limited to one or two virtual CPUs.
See the VMware Guest Operating System Installation Guide for full details on guest support.
| Guest Operating System Support |
MS Hyper-V R2 SP1
|
Citrix
XenServer 5.6 FP1 |
VMware vSphere 5
|
|---|---|---|---|
| TOTAL |
22
|
31
|
81
|
| Windows 2000 |
|
|
|
| Windows Server 2003 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Windows Server 2003 R2 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Windows Server 2003 R2 |
|
|
|
| Windows Server 2008 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Windows Server 2008 R2 |
|
|
|
| Windows Home Server 2011 |
|
|
|
| Windows Small Business Server 2003 |
|
|
|
|
Windows Small Business Server 2003 R2
|
|
|
|
| Windows Small Business Server 2011 |
|
|
|
|
Windows Storage Server 2008 R2
|
|
|
|
| Windows 7 |
|
|
|
| Windows 7 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Windows Vista |
|
|
|
| Windows Vista (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Windows XP |
|
|
|
| Windows XP (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Windows XP (64-only) |
|
|
|
| Windows 98 |
|
|
|
| Windows 95 |
|
|
|
| Windows NT |
|
|
|
| Windows 3.1 |
|
|
|
|
MS-DOS 6.22
|
|
|
|
| RHEL 2.1 |
|
|
|
| RHEL 3 |
|
|
|
| RHEL 3 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| RHEL 4 |
|
|
|
| RHEL 4 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| RHEL 5 |
|
|
|
| RHEL 5 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| RHEL 6 (32/64) |
|
|
|
|
SLES 8
|
|
|
|
| SLES 9 |
|
|
|
| SLES 9 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| SLES 10 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| SLES 11 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Debian 4 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Debian 5 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Debian 6 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Debian Lenny 5 |
|
|
|
| Debian Squeeze 6 |
|
|
|
| CentOS 4 |
|
|
|
| CentOS 4 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| CentOS 5 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Oracle OEL 4 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Oracle OEL 5 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Oracle Linux 6 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Asianux 3 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Asianux 4 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Ubuntu 7 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Ubuntu 8 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Ubuntu 9 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| Ubuntu 10 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| FreeBSD 6 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| FreeBSD 7 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| FreeBSD 8 (32/64) |
|
|
|
|
Solaris 8
|
|
|
|
|
Solaris 9
|
|
|
|
| Solaris 10 (32/64) |
|
|
|
| OS/2 Warp 4 |
|
|
|
| NetWare 5 |
|
|
|
| NetWare 6 |
|
|
|
| eComStation 2 |
|
|
|
| SCO Unixware 7 |
|
|
|
|
SCO OpenServer 5
|
|
|
|
| Mac OS X 10 (32/64) |
|
|
|
