ESXi8 is now free again.. Really .. Bang and my last ESXi server has been decommisioned. Dropped off all my VMware books and materials at the recycler

[Captain Lukey]

After 24+ Months in ESXi Turmoil… After following the ESXi saga over the last couple of years — and flirting with the idea of getting a VMUG subscription (aka I am a mug = $$$) — I finally pulled the plug on my last ESXi server and transitioned fully to Proxmox. Once I started looking at the actual costs of staying in the VMware ecosystem… it was downright eye-watering.

VMware Pricing.

• VCF (VMware Cloud Foundation) – $350 per core.
• VVEP (vSphere Essentials Plus) – 96-core pack, max 3 hosts, $35 per core. Includes vCenter.
  Total: $3,360
• VVS (vSphere Standard) – $50 per core (minimum 16 cores per socket). Includes vCenter.
  Example: 2 hosts, 16 cores each = $1,600
• VVF (vSphere Foundation) – $150 per core. Cost varies.

No wonder so many folks on the forums are jumping ship...

Around the World in 60 Days...

Head in the Clouds (As a Home User? Yeah, nah…)
I tried the cloud thing. Most services offer free tiers — 60 days to a year, or the occasional "always free" low-tier compute shapes (thanks, OCI). But let’s be real — there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Once I crunched the numbers, it was back to the drawing board.
I totally get the Enterprise "Utility model for enterprises services" - Autoscaling groups are my friend..

Save the Planet (and Some Power)
I picked up a simple, low-power server and started experimenting with:

• Proxmox
• XCP-ng
• Hyper-V
• oVirt
• Nutanix CE
• A little Ubuntu Multipass for lightweight Linux testing. (Linux-only setups? Totally worth a shot.)

The Good, the Bad, and the ProxMox

So far, Proxmox has done everything it promises on the tin.
I’ve got a healthy mix of:

• LXC containers
• Docker workloads
• Windows Server. - I know this heading to the Azure cloud as less services are offered for on prem usage
• And a VERY large buffet of Linux flavors: RH9, Ubuntu, Rocky Linux

Now i have dropped off all my VMware books and materials at the recycler — hopefully, they'll be reborn as paper coffee cups for future admins coming to the same realization.

So Here’s My Question:
Undertaking this around-the-world virtualization tour… have I missed anything? Is there software i have missed to replace ESXi? - Who knows...

 

[dioda]

Harvester hci

 

[Captain Lukey]

Well I have just found out that ESXi8u3 is now Free again..

Free ESXi8u3

Please select your identity provider. - Support Portal - Broadcom support portal

support.broadcom.com

Just need to register..

 

[Captain Lukey]

comes with a built in FREE licence!

 

[dreamkass]

VCF is still da bomb!

 

[BoredSysadmin]

https://forums.servethehome.com/index.php?threads/esxi-free-8-0-seems-to-be-the-last-one.43002/page-2#post-465122

 

[nutsnax]

I'll most likely learn proxmox before I go back to ESXi

 

[BoredSysadmin]

I'll most likely learn proxmox before I go back to ESXi

I'm (expired) DC-VCAP and will learn Mandarin before I go back to VMware products (unless my income depends on it). Definitely not at home.

 

[dioda]

for home use and small businesses I think proxmox is perfect, if you need more than that there is harverster hci or openstack. Anyone who can migrate elsewhere from vmware ecosystem for trust management, so there is no reason to run it at home unless you are working for some huge bank or similar who are still stuck there because of volume.

 

[marcoi]

BTW VMware Workstation (free version) has issues now due to update services being removed. I went to run a VM on workstation that worked last week and it failed to run correctly yesterday. So I exported all my VMs off of workstation and into VirtualBox yesterday. So now i am completely off VMWARE at home.

 

[Captain Lukey]

BTW VMware Workstation (free version) has issues now due to update services being removed. I went to run a VM on workstation that worked last week and it failed to run correctly yesterday. So I exported all my VMs off of workstation and into VirtualBox yesterday. So now i am completely off VMWARE at home.

100% VMware Workstation has also stopped working at nunber of places i know and has been
replaced now completely..

 

[nutsnax]

100% VMware Workstation has also stopped working at nunber of places i know and has been
replaced now completely..

VMware Workstation was constantly broken on Linux for me... Virtualbox actually worked better.

 

[Captain Lukey]

PS here is no free license for vCenter but it does come with a build-in 30-day trial period.

 

[kapone]

Given VMware's insistence on not supporting old-ish (really, not that old, and perfectly functional and performant) hardware in any release after 6.7...because? Just because.

Moved away from ESXI a while ago and never looked back. There are other options. Yes, the migration to something else is kinda painful.

 

[Captain Lukey]

The simplist way i found was to use the OVFTOOL for migration to move my VM's to Proxmox or K8s. - LXC - docker.
Open Virtualization Format (OVF) Tool

The export as OVF file
ovftool vi://username_on_esxi:YourPassword@esxihost//vm-name vm-name.ovf

To check as i wanted an OVF first. I then converted to OVA
ovftool vm-name.ovf vmname.ova

AND

Simple proxmox upload and import.


upload the new OVA and 99% check network and to ensure the NIC is the same and its a BIOS or UEFI boot.


Boot and go I am sure other people have even simplier ways.. I tried Vcenter to help but it cause me some issues.

 

[Greg_E]

I'm told you can boot a Clonezilla ISO on each side, and do a machine to machine clone, but I haven't tried it yet. Also said to work physical to virtual and from XYZ hypervisor to ABC hypervisor, kind of agnostic.