VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead(kb.vmware.com)
kb.vmware.com
VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518
38 comments
> Regrettably, there is currently no substitute product offered.
Not quite.
Microsoft gives away Hyper-V Server for free, no license key needed. It is not time limited or crippled in any way.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-...
It runs in Server Core mode and the learning curve is much steeper outside an AD domain or for non-Windows turbonerds; but once set up properly it is extremely powerful and I prefer it over VMware. Linux support for Hyper-V is built-in and outstanding.
Not quite.
Microsoft gives away Hyper-V Server for free, no license key needed. It is not time limited or crippled in any way.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-...
It runs in Server Core mode and the learning curve is much steeper outside an AD domain or for non-Windows turbonerds; but once set up properly it is extremely powerful and I prefer it over VMware. Linux support for Hyper-V is built-in and outstanding.
Well, obviously, there is "currently no substitude product offered unless you are willing to move to something else"
In which case, of course, Proxmox is there since years. So why would you encrap yourself with hyper-v and postpone the show for only a couple of years when you could implement a robust solution ?
In which case, of course, Proxmox is there since years. So why would you encrap yourself with hyper-v and postpone the show for only a couple of years when you could implement a robust solution ?
Hyper-V isn't so bad in traditional enterprise. You can buy a perpetual license on something which includes patches for the next 10 years (despite people saying for the last 10 years Microsoft is imminently going to force new products to subscription only), that license can cover the guest VM Window licensing, and support comes through the same contract you manage your desktop/laptop clients from. It integrates with the management of the rest of your domain and is, generally, actually pretty decent what it does for the given customer use case.
If you're building a hip new product with a bunch of Linux VMs you defined yourself greenfield then it probably seems a little ridiculous, especially since most of your stuff is likely containers or at least hybrid cloud conscious out of the gate. At that point you can grab a low cost subscription for your couple of servers and call it a day for a few grand a year.
Nutanix is probably the option most people looking at (or currently using) Hyper-V would be weighing right now.
If you're building a hip new product with a bunch of Linux VMs you defined yourself greenfield then it probably seems a little ridiculous, especially since most of your stuff is likely containers or at least hybrid cloud conscious out of the gate. At that point you can grab a low cost subscription for your couple of servers and call it a day for a few grand a year.
Nutanix is probably the option most people looking at (or currently using) Hyper-V would be weighing right now.
wdym not crippled and powerful? it was always a literal cripleware that not only lacks of basic VM flexibility (usb/devices passthru etc) and cant run any guest except windows and linux, but also hard to mange due to lack of basic cli / gui. It has no advanced features that were added for datacenter edition back in 2016 and in fact pretty much dead as windows server itself
microsoft virtualization is long stuck in the past and forgotten, iykwim
if you need something more or less sane luke esxi, proxmox or even xen are way to go.
microsoft virtualization is long stuck in the past and forgotten, iykwim
if you need something more or less sane luke esxi, proxmox or even xen are way to go.
Let’s clear some things up here if you don’t mind.
All HyperV hosts can only run Windows and certain Linux distros, this is not a limitation of the free offering.
Passthrough is also not available for most types of hardware in all versions of HyperV. An imperfect workaround is to use passthrough with Remote Desktop. I’m not telling you it’s good I’m telling you it exists.
HyperV server has a basic cli interface and it is indeed harder to manage than Windows Server with a desktop experience. When using the Server Core versions which do not have the desktop experience or the LTSC versions, the ui is the same. Some commands are not available.
Yes there has not been a release of the dedicated HyperV offering since 2016. It does not mean Microsoft will not release another one.
All HyperV hosts can only run Windows and certain Linux distros, this is not a limitation of the free offering.
Passthrough is also not available for most types of hardware in all versions of HyperV. An imperfect workaround is to use passthrough with Remote Desktop. I’m not telling you it’s good I’m telling you it exists.
HyperV server has a basic cli interface and it is indeed harder to manage than Windows Server with a desktop experience. When using the Server Core versions which do not have the desktop experience or the LTSC versions, the ui is the same. Some commands are not available.
Yes there has not been a release of the dedicated HyperV offering since 2016. It does not mean Microsoft will not release another one.
> All HyperV hosts can only run Windows and certain Linux distros, this is not a limitation of the free offering.
I'm not sure where y'all are picking this up from, FreeBSD is even officially supported. I've run Redox and Haiku in it as well.
For non-production use cases though I recommend grabbing the latest Windows Server via a trial instead. The downside is you get 180 days per period and it can be renewed for 3 periods before it expires. The upside is you can just install Server Datacenter and get the kitchen sink, including full desktop. You do one VM migration and re-install and then the when that trial fully expires it's time to upgrade to the newer version of Windows Server anyways.
I'm not sure where y'all are picking this up from, FreeBSD is even officially supported. I've run Redox and Haiku in it as well.
For non-production use cases though I recommend grabbing the latest Windows Server via a trial instead. The downside is you get 180 days per period and it can be renewed for 3 periods before it expires. The upside is you can just install Server Datacenter and get the kitchen sink, including full desktop. You do one VM migration and re-install and then the when that trial fully expires it's time to upgrade to the newer version of Windows Server anyways.
A hot tip is that Datacenter licensing allows you to activate VMs using a special CD key, so you can run a cluster of fully licensed Windows Server Standard VMs. Not sure if the Datacenter trial also works in the same way but I'd be kind of surprised if it didn't.
>It does not mean Microsoft will not release another one.
Sure seems to be the way they are thinking / acting / talking in public though.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-server-inside...
https://www.reddit.com/r/HyperV/comments/pejok9/microsoft_is...
Sure seems to be the way they are thinking / acting / talking in public though.
https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/windows-server-inside...
https://www.reddit.com/r/HyperV/comments/pejok9/microsoft_is...
Hyper-V Server stops at the 2019 release - post 2029 it's dead (no Hyper-V Server 2022)
So that buys you five years at essentially no cost to figure out your next move. I'm not complaining.
*for now
There is no substitute product offered by Broadcom.
There are several substitute products, Proxmox being a common one.
There are several substitute products, Proxmox being a common one.
Very well worded:
"VMware vSphere Hypervisor (free edition) is no longer available on the VMware website"
Almost an invitation to download it from various alternative places.
"VMware vSphere Hypervisor (free edition) is no longer available on the VMware website"
Almost an invitation to download it from various alternative places.
Dread.
I run all of my Windows Server / 10 / 11 client VMs on ESXi for testing my Java software product.
I'm getting the impression that proxmox is the only real alternative for Windows guests?
I do need to get packet captures from the host so maybe Linux is better than something like Hyper-V?
I run all of my Windows Server / 10 / 11 client VMs on ESXi for testing my Java software product.
I'm getting the impression that proxmox is the only real alternative for Windows guests?
I do need to get packet captures from the host so maybe Linux is better than something like Hyper-V?
Proxmox is a nice UI and extra utilities on top of KVM for VMs, KVM can be installed on any Linux system.
I'd install Proxmox in a VM and give it a try if you want to see how it goes.
I'd install Proxmox in a VM and give it a try if you want to see how it goes.
Xcp-ng is also an option (it's based on Zen)
You can run QEMU/KVM using docker/podman. I made a simple container here for it that lets you use cloud-init: https://github.com/candiddev/shared/tree/main/containers/qem...
And in the end, KVM stands as the best free option with a wide range of support and 3rd party applications using it. ProxMox, Virtualbox on kvm, etc.
I recently started at a new role where they offer a VMware OVA disk image for their software solution (basically just Ubuntu running Apache/MySQL/Ruby on Rails)
They were preparing to spin up an entire EC2 dedicated instance plus purchase another VMware license for me to onboard with for learning. I was absolutely pleading with them to just let me use KVM, I already have a Linux box at home I can just run the VM as-is for free
After pressing the CEO about it he finally relented and let me set it up on my little home server. From what I can tell thanks to virtio and KVM treating Linux as a first class citizen it actually feels faster than the VMware setup
I'm absolutely chomping at the bit to push for us to become "hypervisor agnostic" and bring on Hyper-V and Proxmox at the very least. There's no sense in being tied to VMware anymore as customers are scrambling to escape it
They were preparing to spin up an entire EC2 dedicated instance plus purchase another VMware license for me to onboard with for learning. I was absolutely pleading with them to just let me use KVM, I already have a Linux box at home I can just run the VM as-is for free
After pressing the CEO about it he finally relented and let me set it up on my little home server. From what I can tell thanks to virtio and KVM treating Linux as a first class citizen it actually feels faster than the VMware setup
I'm absolutely chomping at the bit to push for us to become "hypervisor agnostic" and bring on Hyper-V and Proxmox at the very least. There's no sense in being tied to VMware anymore as customers are scrambling to escape it
most wondering thing for me - escalating "VMWare OVA disk.." questions to CEO level - has he better things to do or it's some small company where CEO still knows everyone?
Proxmox isn’t as nice of a hypervisor as esxi, but it’s certainly good enough these days
I would say, in fact, it's better. A lot of the things ProxMox does out of the box would require both ESXi and vSphere. LXC and VM, Ceph and SDN are all native to the latest version of Proxmox. And since it's based on Debian you can do nice things to the underlying system that makes life easier. For example, in my homelab I can run Tailscale natively on the host which means full OOB management from anywhere. Proxmox also has a fantastic API at this point.
I feel as though, roughly 2 years ago, Proxmox became better in the simplistic manner of doing the right things like how ESXi became the defacto hypervisor. VMWare's antiquated management for upgrades of the entire ecosystem became a nightmare in the last 5 years. I worked in the NSX Security group for a while and just getting it installed internally was a nightmare of dependencies. RIP ESXi, the nostalgia will live on, but it was past its prime.
I feel as though, roughly 2 years ago, Proxmox became better in the simplistic manner of doing the right things like how ESXi became the defacto hypervisor. VMWare's antiquated management for upgrades of the entire ecosystem became a nightmare in the last 5 years. I worked in the NSX Security group for a while and just getting it installed internally was a nightmare of dependencies. RIP ESXi, the nostalgia will live on, but it was past its prime.
I appreciate the fact that whoever wrote that is clearly unhappy with the decision.
Another bit of good news for those making money off Proxmox, Kubevirt, and OpenShift.
Hard to see how vSphere / ESXi survives this acquisition, long term, even if many companies limp along for the next so many years.
Another bit of good news for those making money off Proxmox, Kubevirt, and OpenShift.
Hard to see how vSphere / ESXi survives this acquisition, long term, even if many companies limp along for the next so many years.
I mean the pricing for essential plus kit (3 hosts) was raised by like 2x, if something will be twice as expensive as before, something is wrong.
Although not the author, a comment made on the issue by someone on another forum [1] expresses it much more eloquently than I can.
" Ignore the SMB/homelabber at your peril...
VMware (20+ years ago) cast their net out as far as possible. They embraced partners, channels, users big and small, experienced and beginner. That formed the foundation of a massive ecosystem of community knowledge around their products that made them attractive (in addition to the stability & ease of use). None of their rivals ever came close to this. That's part of the reason they have such a massive market share (80% of VM workloads not running in the cloud run on VMware).
ESXi free was extremely limited, but it allowed users easy access to the hypervisor to deploy it in a home environment to see what the fuss is about. It gets beginners/novices interested in the product, and eventually the add-on products. From there it's an easy hop to VMUG licensing and additional products to get familiar with the rest of the VMware stack.
Those novice users are usually employed at entry-level jobs at smaller companies, and they tend to stick with what they know or have learned, so ESXi free becomes an easy deployment for those businesses. From there it's an easy hop to adding additional licences as they realise they need a vCenter and more of the advanced features to stay on top of everything (and the beauty of ESXi is that it's just a licence key change to unlock all of the features, no reinstall of a full version over the top of the free one).
Those novice users gain experience, some move on to larger companies in more senior positions, and that knowledge, experience and product inertia continue to snowball into more VMware deployments, more add-on products used (maybe some of the vRealize/Aria stuff, or NSX, or vSAN) and you have a full ecosystem of end-users who are advocates for the solutions used.
That was certainly my journey - I deployed ESXi free about 15 years ago onto a single host in my network lab to see what the fuss was about. It ended up sparking an interest and knowledge in a field that culminated in me eventually being employed by VMware and working with their biggest customers and partners globally.
You can ignore those SMBs and home users and still make money, but don't be surprised if in 5+ years time you have a massively reduced market share further up the tree with large commercial/enterprise customers. With Broadcoms pricing changes I'd suspect it'll be even sooner than that... "
[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/02/13/broadcom...
" Ignore the SMB/homelabber at your peril...
VMware (20+ years ago) cast their net out as far as possible. They embraced partners, channels, users big and small, experienced and beginner. That formed the foundation of a massive ecosystem of community knowledge around their products that made them attractive (in addition to the stability & ease of use). None of their rivals ever came close to this. That's part of the reason they have such a massive market share (80% of VM workloads not running in the cloud run on VMware).
ESXi free was extremely limited, but it allowed users easy access to the hypervisor to deploy it in a home environment to see what the fuss is about. It gets beginners/novices interested in the product, and eventually the add-on products. From there it's an easy hop to VMUG licensing and additional products to get familiar with the rest of the VMware stack.
Those novice users are usually employed at entry-level jobs at smaller companies, and they tend to stick with what they know or have learned, so ESXi free becomes an easy deployment for those businesses. From there it's an easy hop to adding additional licences as they realise they need a vCenter and more of the advanced features to stay on top of everything (and the beauty of ESXi is that it's just a licence key change to unlock all of the features, no reinstall of a full version over the top of the free one).
Those novice users gain experience, some move on to larger companies in more senior positions, and that knowledge, experience and product inertia continue to snowball into more VMware deployments, more add-on products used (maybe some of the vRealize/Aria stuff, or NSX, or vSAN) and you have a full ecosystem of end-users who are advocates for the solutions used.
That was certainly my journey - I deployed ESXi free about 15 years ago onto a single host in my network lab to see what the fuss was about. It ended up sparking an interest and knowledge in a field that culminated in me eventually being employed by VMware and working with their biggest customers and partners globally.
You can ignore those SMBs and home users and still make money, but don't be surprised if in 5+ years time you have a massively reduced market share further up the tree with large commercial/enterprise customers. With Broadcoms pricing changes I'd suspect it'll be even sooner than that... "
[1] https://forums.theregister.com/forum/all/2024/02/13/broadcom...
[dupe]
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39352090
Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39352090
ugh, forgot to download this. Luckily I'm stuck on 6.5/7.0 because my hardware is old.
https://mirror.mahanserver.net/VMware/ESXI/
dont forget to compare-check MD5 in vmware pages
Loving proxmox, so I don't care
XCP-NG is another option right now. But this is going to fully end and kill the software.
This sucks!
Oh look, it’s that last nudge I needed to go ahead and move my home stuff to HyperV.
Suppose I could fire up proxmox but meh, I’m already too familiar with HyperV for how much my clients use it.
Suppose I could fire up proxmox but meh, I’m already too familiar with HyperV for how much my clients use it.
Hyper-V Server has also been discontinued, although the 2019 release will be supported for a while yet
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/31/hyper_v_server_discon...
https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/31/hyper_v_server_discon...
Hyper-V Server was a free product hypervisor. Hyper-V is a licensed windows feature that is still available on Server 2022 and beyond.
[deleted]
Regrettably, there is currently no substitute product offered.*
You can feel that the employee that wrote this knows this is a sinking ship.