VMware has a nearly 20-year history, from a stealth start-up to being owned by Dell and acquired by EMC, with a revenue of $7.92 billion. There are around 30 products currently available in the VMware product portfolio; the most commonly known ones are its hypervisors, of which there are two different types.
The first hypervisor, VMware ESXi, is a type 1 that runs directly on hardware using the instruction sets found in most modern 64-bit Intel and AMD CPUs. Its original type 2 hypervisor does not require virtualization instructions to be present within the CPU like they need to be in type 1. It was formally known as GSX; this hypervisor pre-dates the type 1 hypervisor, meaning that it can support much older CPUs. ...
