Managed and Standalone ESXi Hosts

You can run ESXi as a managed or standalone ESXi host.
  • Standalone ESXi hosts are standalone hosts with limited capabilities. The inventory of a standalone host can support multiple virtual machines and multiple resource pools, but it contains a single default datacenter and a single root folder. The default datacenter and root folder are not visible in the vSphere Client, but they exist in the inventory of a standalone host and they are visible in the MOB.
  • Managed ESXi hosts have been added to the vCenter Server inventory. Available features depend on the licenses available for that host. For example, you can configure two or more hosts for VMware DRS resource management or VMware HA failover protection.
The following table summarizes the differences between the number of objects that an inventory can contain. See also Figure 1 and Figure 1.
ManagedEntity Subtype
ESX/ESXi Inventory
vCenter Server Inventory
ClusterComputeResource
None.
Multiple instances supported.
ComputeResource
Exactly one only.
Multiple instances supported.
Datacenter
Exactly one only. Cannot be destroyed. Transparent.
Multiple instances supported.
Datastore
Multiple instances supported.
Multiple instances supported.
DistributedVirtualSwitch
Multiple instances supported.
Multiple instances supported.
Folder
Exactly one only. Cannot be destroyed. Transparent.
Multiple instances supported.
HostSystem
Exactly one only.
Multiple instances supported.
Network
Multiple instances supported.
Multiple instances supported.
ResourcePool
Multiple instances supported.
Multiple instances supported.
VirtualApp
None.
Multiple instances supported.
VirtualMachine
Multiple instances supported.
Multiple instances supported.