VMWare ESXi 3.5 on free download

rick827 · 29 Jul 2008 at 11:30

They aren't really losing much revenue by giving ESXi away free anyway. Im sure single node VM servers dont count for many of their sales

riddlermarc · 29 Jul 2008 at 12:53

Are the hardware requirements still pretty much the same? We run ESX at work and I was going to try it on one of my home dev boxes - had to have non-IDE disks though IIRC?

ThomP · 29 Jul 2008 at 13:14

sweet. thanks for the heads up on this.

J1nxy · 29 Jul 2008 at 13:30

riddlermarc said:
Are the hardware requirements still pretty much the same? We run ESX at work and I was going to try it on one of my home dev boxes - had to have non-IDE disks though IIRC?

Yep

yimpster · 29 Jul 2008 at 16:32

really interested in this. i'd love to try it out but do you need to run it on compatible server hardware?

i have spare desktops but no spare servers.

growse · 29 Jul 2008 at 16:37

oddjob62 said:
A move usually doesn't take much more than 30secs, all that needs to be "moved" is the active memory really.

It's more useful as part of DRS (move VMs to different hosts in order to maintain full availability of resources) and HA (restart VMs on different host in the event of a host failure)

Moving the VirtualCenter VM on my cluster between hosts takes a bit more than 30 seconds. But then it is effectively trying to move itself

oddjob62 · 29 Jul 2008 at 16:41

yimpster said:
really interested in this. i'd love to try it out but do you need to run it on compatible server hardware?

i have spare desktops but no spare servers.

There's a limited set of drivers. Have a google around. There are several articles on what "cheaper" hardware you can use.

rick827 · 30 Jul 2008 at 08:35

oddjob62 said:
There's a limited set of drivers. Have a google around. There are several articles on what "cheaper" hardware you can use.

Like here

Stolly · 31 Jul 2008 at 19:50

riddlermarc said:
Are the hardware requirements still pretty much the same? We run ESX at work and I was going to try it on one of my home dev boxes - had to have non-IDE disks though IIRC?

Not sure about ESXi but the full fat ESX 3.5 works fine with SATA disks. Even supports the intel controllers found on many motherboards.

Mine runs on a proper RAID controller though, can be had for a few hundred.

Or grab a PERC 6 off a well known auction site.

mdjmcnally · 31 Jul 2008 at 20:37

I found a single SATA disk no problem but canb't find raided on Intel ICH. Instead this is what I have for my ESXi Servers.

Asus P5WS64Pro
Q6600Pro
8Gb RAM
7100GS
1 x 500Gb on ICH7
Adaptec 5405 SAS/SATA £220-230
4 x 500gb SATA in RAID5 on above controller
Dual Intel Pro1000T NIC Card x 2. £70-80 each

Onboard NICs not found by ESXi hence Intel Cards.

Motherboard has 4 x PCI-E x16 slots, 3 at x8 and 1 at x4 in this configuration. Which is why I originally picked this board. Only the NICs and the Adaptec are more then standard PC parts. Picked them as on the offical supported list.

drak3 · 3 Aug 2008 at 21:09

Is there a remote management client also for free?

rick827 · 4 Aug 2008 at 08:13

drak3 said:
Is there a remote management client also for free?

Yup, once installed open http://esxserver/ and you can download and install the Virtual Infrastructure Client from there. Its got an odd limitation however where you cant clone/create templates so i've had to use VMWare converter to copy the VMs

J1nxy · 4 Aug 2008 at 08:14

No it doesn't have an odd limitation cloning and templates are a function of Virtual Center.

rick827 · 4 Aug 2008 at 10:28

J1nxy said:
No it doesn't have an odd limitation cloning and templates are a function of Virtual Center.

Yes i know....

I mean it's odd in that they consider it a function more akin to a multi node setup along with HA/DRS etc etc. I'd consider it a pretty important feature of even a single node ESX server and perhaps they stripped ESXi a bit too much.

Putting the advanced features on the VC and charging for this is fine, but templates/cloning on VC-only seems like a spanner in the works of anyone considering a simple setup on a small budget

Curiosityx · 4 Aug 2008 at 22:31

This is quite possibly the best news to come out of Vmware for the last 5 years! Specially for smaller entities, with the advent of dual/quad core cpus and lower costs for storage and memory, you can have upwards of 5 - 10 virtual machines running on a single server, makes a much better business case for a company concerned with power and cooling costs.

Throw in Vmware Converter for free and migration of existing hardware is a breeze

Caged · 7 Aug 2008 at 01:59

Who wants to compete for the prize of "least suitable ESXi box"? I installed this on a ThinkCentre A52 (P4 3.0Ghz, 4GB RAM) at the weekend and it didn't throw any warnings at all, and is actually running really well.

rick827 · 7 Aug 2008 at 09:32

Pretty good

Support for nvidia based stuff seems good, went on mine without issue -

Asus M2V-somethingorother
(6100NB/430SB)
onboard nforce gbit NIC
4gb ram

Connected to my solaris NAS via iSCSI without trouble too. Beats fighting Xen into shape

Curiosityx · 7 Aug 2008 at 21:14

Has anyone got round to installing this yet, could you let me know if you can use the virtual infrastructure gui management client as you can with full blown ESX?

Stolly · 7 Aug 2008 at 21:21

Curiosityx said:
Has anyone got round to installing this yet, could you let me know if you can use the virtual infrastructure gui management client as you can with full blown ESX?

I think thats the idea yes. Not installed it yet though. I know you can manage it with Virtual Center though, and you use the VI client to manage that.

J1nxy · 7 Aug 2008 at 22:09

Yep, you use the VI Client to manage it. You log onto the web interface and pull the client, bash in the IP/Hostname, userid and password and away you go.