VMWare
NSX vs NSX-T vs NSX-V
TL;DR: NSX-T is the successor of NSX-V, and NSX-T is renamed to NSX in 4.0 (2022). So now it is just NSX.
NSX: Networking and Security Virtualization.
NSX-T: NSX-Transformers. For network virtualization (predecessor: NSX-V / NSX-vSphere) improvement: NSX-T isn’t confined to one vCenter deployment, and it’s possible to connect multiple servers, use one NSX manager, and view the entire virtual network from one controlling interface.
With NSX-T, it’s possible to build highly agile software-defined network infrastructures that allow multiple cloud networks in different environments to interact with one another and be controlled from one central location.
VMXNET3
VMXNET3 (VMXNET Generation 3) is a virtual network adapter designed to deliver high performance in virtual machines (VMs) running on the VMware vSphere platform.
ESXi vs vSphere vs vCenter
- vSphere: the platform. "an enterprise-scale virtualization platform"; the brand name for VMware’s suite of virtualization products and features. VMware calls vSphere "the heart" of a modern software-defined data center (SDDC).
- vCenter: management of the virtual data center / vSphere environment. It allows you to assign custom roles to users, create new VMs, search the vCenter Server inventory.
- ESXi hosts VMs (ESXi itself may run on baremetal or VMs). ESXi is the hypervisor that provides a means of deploying and serving virtual machines (VMs) ESXi is a hypervisor, or a type of virtualization software that allows you to create and manage multiple virtual machines using a single physical host. A.k.a vSphere Hypervisor. ESXi has two versions: free and paid. Free version still requires a license.
- NSX: networking abstration (e.g. segments, DHCP profiles, etc) used to network together VMs.
- Tanzu: kubernetes.
ESX and ESXi are equivalent in terms of functionality and performance. The difference lies in the architecture. In ESXi, the Linux-based service console has been replaced with new remote command line interfaces. This offers a way to reduce the on-disk footprint to less than 32 MB (as opposed to 2 GB in ESX 3). In turn, a smaller footprint allows you to reduce the overall attack surface.
ESXi runs on VMs on GCVE (https://cloud.google.com/vmware-engine)
| VMWare | GCE | AWS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall platform / brand | vSphere | Google Cloud | Amazon AWS |
| management | vCenter | Cloud Console | AWS Console |
| Hypervisor | ESXi | KVM / gVisor | Xen / Nitro |