It seems that VMware has finally determined and announced the end of life for ESX Classic! The fate of the Service Console is now eminent…With the release of ESX 4.1 VM admins are faced with the best time to start moving towards the new face of ESX, ESXi. One of the most significant changes that VMware has announced was the next generation being without a Console Operating System (COS).
With this announcement you may feel better about knowing that you should move to ESXi by this direct statement by VMware, announcing the end of life:
…Going forward customers will be able to deploy vSphere only using ESXi. Although the infrastructure management tasks once performed by the Service Console are now handled by tasks running under the VMkernel, some ESX users may still depend on the custom scripts, third-party products, or operational procedures that use the Service Console.
This will provide admins with the perfect time to start planning on their migrations to ESXi. Allowing them to eliminate the dependencies on the Service Console. Here is a quick list of what to look at:
Replace COS-based hardware monitoring with CIM-based tools
Replace COS-based backup technologies with products that use the vStorage APIs
Replace COS-based scripts using the VMware Management Assistant, the vCLI, or vSphere PowerCLI
