

VSphere 8.0 introduces vSphere Distributed Services Engine that provides the ability to offload some of the infrastructure functions from a server CPU to a data processing unit (DPU). The vCenter Server appliance contains all the Platform Services Controller services from earlier releases, preserving all previous functionality, including authentication, certificate management, and licensing. You can only deploy or upgrade to vCenter Server using an appliance. Want to know what is in the current release of vSphere? Look at the latest vSphere release notes.

vCenter Server is the service through which you manage multiple hosts connected in a network and pool host resources. ESXi is the virtualization platform where you create and run virtual machines and virtual appliances. The two core components of vSphere are ESXi and vCenter Server.
