ESXI AVAILABILITY UPDATE

[LostCorpse]

More for those people not aware. bit saddened as it was a good product for homelab, dispite the restrictions.


Last Updated: 14/02/2024
Today, Broadcom announced immediate end of ESXi availability. ESXi has been an important tool for many "homelab" enthusiasts -- offering simple bare metal virtualization for small setups. Unfortunately they don't offer a replacement, except for paid subscription services

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US

 

[dlockers]

Lots of future techys lost maybe.

 

[LostCorpse]

its what got me started on the Virtual machines road and self learning back in the day.

 

[Throrik]

Be interesting to see if they go after VMUG next, I stopped using ESXi a while back in my 'homelab' just to broaden my horizons as I work as a VMware Engineer every day.

 

[paradigm]

Surprised it’s taken this long. The intention to only really want blue chip corporations in their client portfolio has been pretty obvious since the buyout.

Time for the rise of Nutanix?

 

[Throrik]

Time for the rise of Nutanix?

If/When they support SAN maybe. Would cost us more than the new VCPP pricing to replace with Nutanix as we have a significant amount of storage arrays. They're in a good position to potentially take away lots of HCI customers though if they play it right.

 

[covenantuk]

Got my free ESX8 key just before they were withdrawn. Given I'm only just upgrading now from 6.7 in my home setup, that'll last me a good while....

 

[Robert T.]

Yeah, VMUG member here. If they remove this as well, it'll be end of my interest in learning VMWare, will move to new pastures...

They tend to forget why Microsoft and Office are so popular - free licences for schools and:

what youth is used to, age remembers

 

[LostCorpse]

i can see the vmware business is changing drastically.
there is a plus side, those with vmware expirence could be highly sort after which usually mean good sallary also. it'll be a ver speciallist field to work in.

 

[paradigm]

i can see the vmware business is changing drastically.
there is a plus side, those with vmware expirence could be highly sort after which usually mean good sallary also. it'll be a ver speciallist field to work in.

Which works fine, for a short time, then the jobs dry up as does new blood.

You only have to look at say IBM AS/400 experts to see how specialist niches play out long-term.

 

[LostCorpse]

ive see a resergance of C developers, but yes i know what you mean.
and you defo wont get the new blood in. "why work with "old" tech" so to speak.
just looking for a small positive.
I guess i'll be using Proxmox and or xcp-ng going forward, both have positives and negatives.

 

[andy_mk3]

Swtiched my ESXi box at home to Proxmox last weekend. Shame, I hope it costs them dearly what they're doing.

 

[Avalon]

Look on the bright side, Proxmox just got a whole load more attention and where as you rarely saw it used commercially, that is now likely to change much more quickly.

 

[Nikumba]

We are a big user in work so will, luckily we refreshed out sites last year for 5 years so we are safe till then.

But in 3 years time will start to look at who is replacing VMWare as I am sure the cost increase will be out of our reach, cloud might be an option but we have too many servers and quirky systems that cloud probably would not work and be too costly

 

[Michael Myers]

moved back to Hyper-V here, its a real shame that its going this way with a lot of tech these days, just pushing more folks to the cloud.

 

[paradigm]

moved back to Hyper-V here, its a real shame that its going this way with a lot of tech these days, just pushing more folks to the cloud.

If it was “just” cloud then at least it would justify the subscription costs. I despise that formerly perpetually licensed software and hardware is now subscription based.

Subscriptions are the scourge of mankind.

 

[KompuKare]

Broadcom really are the ultimate short-term thinkers, aren't they?

ESXi being in most home labs (when I had a Gen 8 HP Microserver I certainly used it) may not have brought them much immediate revenue, but made VMware knowledge far more widespread than it otherwise would be.

Short-term this may bring in more revenue, but long-term VMware are heading to a niche. I'm sure they'll still make plenty of money and be in demand but if anyone wanting to gain experience has to pay them that much extra, then it will be more like Cisco or Juniper kit - in demand for those doing certs but far less well known.

Guess, Broadcom are desperate for all sales so like Apple: you want to test Safari, you have to buy our hardware.

Microsoft gives away so much stuff to students, small developers etc. and they don't do that for altruistic reasons. No Microsoft wants get people "young" and hook them long-term even if that means less sales now.

The new firm rentier capitalism. New since rentierism is usually about landlords who might go back to feudal land owners.

 

[Semple]

Despite having VMware hypervisors at work, I couldn't really get on with it at home. I'm not sure if it was perhaps the abstraction between using vCenter at work and then having to manage it directly on host at home that I wasn't fond of. Ended up swapping to proxmox years ago.

 

[wesley]

Are hyper - V server free? I remember years ago they were free.

Is proxmon free?

 

[Bluecube]

Proxmox is free to use and very good