Can we run ESXi on top of OpenStack?

Question

I want to install ESXi on top of Openstack. Is that possible? If yes, Is there any glance image available for ESX? or Can we import any raw disk which has ESXi installed in it?

Answer 1

OpenStack is a Cloud platform or toolkit that orchestrates various technologies such as storage, networking and compute, including hypervisors. ESXi is a hypervisor but not a Cloud platform or toolkit. The VMware products that most directly map to OpenStack is not vSphere or ESXi, but vCloud Automation Center and vCloud Director.

In fact, OpenStack does not have it's own hypervisor but manages different hypervisors, such as

• KVM,
• Xen,
• Hyper-V, &
• ESXi.

Source: Ask Openstack

This Image should give you an idea as to what ESXi is to OpenStack

• Unlike Linux kernel based hypervisors, such as KVM, vSphere with OpenStack requires the VM instances to be hosted on an ESXi server distinct from a Nova compute node, which must run on some flavor of Linux.
• In contrast, VM instances running on KVM can be hosted directly on a Nova compute node.
• Although a single OpenStack installation can support multiple hypervisors, each compute node will support only one hypervisor.

• So any multi-hypervisor OpenStack Cloud requires at least one compute node for each hypervisor type.

• Currently, the ESXDriver has a limit of one ESXi host per Nova compute service.

Source: Blog

Answer 2

VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) is an enterprise-class, type-1 hypervisor developed by VMware for deploying and serving virtual computers. As a type-1 hypervisor, ESXi is not a software application that one installs in an operating system (OS); instead, it includes and integrates vital OS components, such as a kernel.[2]

ref: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VMware_ESXi

As ESXi is a type 1 hypervisor, you cannot deploy it on top of kvm or another supported hypervisor of OpenStack.