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VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

kb.vmware.com

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Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#21

Post by wannacboatmovie »

my123 wrote: post #20
wannacboatmovie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 powe…

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.

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#22

Post by Aleklart »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #19
remir wrote: post #7

*Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End of General Availability). Regrettably, there is currently no substitute product offered.* You can feel that the employee that wrote this knows this is a sinking ship.

> 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 powe…

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.

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#23

Post by Logans_Run »

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...

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#24

Post by threesevenths »

Aleklart wrote: post #22
wannacboatmovie wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 powe…

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 th…

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.

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#25

Post by schlauerfox »

akadruid1 wrote: post #9
NetworkPerson wrote: post #2

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.

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...

Hyper-V Server was a free product hypervisor. Hyper-V is a licensed windows feature that is still available on Server 2022 and beyond.

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#26

Post by JackSlateur »

wannacboatmovie wrote: post #19
remir wrote: post #7

*Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End of General Availability). Regrettably, there is currently no substitute product offered.* You can feel that the employee that wrote this knows this is a sinking ship.

> 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 powe…

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 ?

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#28

Post by merb »

spicyusername wrote: post #14

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.

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.

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#29

Post by 6th »

threesevenths wrote: post #24
Aleklart wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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 i…

>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...

Re: VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead

#30

Post by stunpix »

Saris wrote: post #8
bodeadly wrote: post #3

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?

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.

Just for note: Proxmox also can run containers (not Docker) beside VMs.
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