Which Virtual OS?

ESXi 5.5 can be had for free - you just need to get a key online from VMware and bung it into the vSphere Client
 
as far as i know the esxi 5.5 hyper visor is free for basic functionallity, although you will need to request a free licence key, when you login to vmware down load the softwar their is a link o generate a key. you may even find it under your account settings i think its listed as : available keys
or something like that
 
vSphere is the management tool suite for ESXi, ESXi being the Hypervisor, which is a trial for 60 day, there may be a dumbed down free restricted version, but for the full version you will have to pay.

You then use vSphere as one of the tools to manage your hypervisor (ESXi) and its VM's loaded it on it.

I have a key for 5.1 but not the new version
 
You're mixing up the old and new VMware names for things. ESXi doesn't really exist any more, it is now the vSphere Hypervisor. The Windows client for managing things is called the vSphere Client.

When you have a bunch of hosts then a vCenter Server instance manages them as a group, and this itself is managed with either the vSphere Client or more recently through the vSphere Web Client.
 
Caged said:
You're mixing up the old and new VMware names for things. ESXi doesn't really exist any more, it is now the vSphere Hypervisor. The Windows client for managing things is called the vSphere Client.

When you have a bunch of hosts then a vCenter Server instance manages them as a group, and this itself is managed with either the vSphere Client or more recently through the vSphere Web Client.
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See I would have known this if I was using 5.5 :p

I only use hypervisors at home now, as my job entails purely core network and network security, where as my last job was a mixture of Network engineer, Server and DC engineer so was using VM Products all the time.

I may have a play around with 5.5 at some stage, but would only be a trial :(, had no real need to shift from 5.1
 
I'm not sure how relevant it will all be 10 years from now anyway - will the average midsize company with 10 virtual hosts running maybe 60 guests still run their own server infrastructure (plus the DR site), or will everyone be buying from Azure/AWS/other cloud provider unless they are huge, in which case they have a team of people keeping an Openstack install ticking over? I don't know the answer, but it's going to be interesting. Networking is definitely the right place to be right now.
 
YarwoodUK said:
I've been trying out XenServer and tried to run a few hotfix updates which resulted in the OS having a kernel panic when it tries to boot unless I run in "fallback" mode..

I've now installed VMWare ESXi 5.5 under the impression that it was free, however, upon logging into the vSphere Client, it says "Evaluation 60 days left"..


Which virtual OS's i.e. Xen, are actually free then?
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To answer your question, nothing in this life is "Free" :)

VMware vSphere (ESXi), Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer hypervisors are all virtualisation products from major IT players and as a result they will not be free. They do all have differing length of trials and features you can use within the trial versions though.

Is this for a permanent server? A lab? A dev box? Production Services?
 
To the OP: I've had the free version of vSphere Hypervisor (aka ESXi) installed on a HP ML110 G7 16GB for over 2 years now. Currently on 5.1, with 2 VMs running 24/7, and 2 that I fire up now and again for testing. Runs trouble free.

Download here: https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/evalcenter?p=free-esxi5&lp=default&lp=default

Mine is installed on a memory stick.

As others have said, you just need a free license key - you need to create a VMWare account to get this and the product.

Once installed on your bare metal, just browse to the IP address of the hypervisor and you can find a link to download the vSphere Client to your workstation - fire this up to manage the hypervisor and VMs.
 
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So far I've found Xenserver 6.2 the best. It's not the easiest to use but it has all the features and the only thing disabled is the auto patch from the client, you have to do it via command line instead. Compared to vSphere PCI passthrough is flawless along with USB controller passthrough; although again it is command line only so takes a bit of effort to get it right.
 
DJMK4 said:
See I would have known this if I was using 5.5 :p

I only use hypervisors at home now, as my job entails purely core network and network security, where as my last job was a mixture of Network engineer, Server and DC engineer so was using VM Products all the time.

I may have a play around with 5.5 at some stage, but would only be a trial :(, had no real need to shift from 5.1
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5.0, 5.1 and 5.5 keys are interchangeable :p
 
Yep, and no one will be notified or charged

This article provides steps to add, assign, remove, unassigned, and change the licenses of ESXi 5.x, vSOM 5.5 (vSphere with Operation Management Suite), vCloud Suite 5.x and vCenter Server 5.x.

Notes:
The vSphere 5.5 does not need new license keys. The existing 5.0/ 5.1 licenses will work and enable all the features of the software once upgraded
To determine if you need a new license key for the latest version of VMware product you own, see License key requirements for new version of VMware products (2059926)
All ESXi 5.x and vCenter Server 5.x keys work with ESXi 5.1/5.5 and vCenter Server 5.1/5.5. To update your software from 5.0 to 5.1/ 5.5, see Installing or upgrading to ESXi 5.1 best practices (2032756) and Upgrading to vCenter Server 5.1 best practices (2021193). For information on upgrading license keys, see Upgrading license keys in My VMware (2006974)
The ESXi 5.1/5.5 features are automatically enabled after you upgrade from ESXi 5.0 to 5.1/5.5. This does not need a new license key
You can view and manage your license keys in My VMware. For information on viewing your license keys, and for links to information on managing your license keys, see Viewing license keys in My VMware (2006831)
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http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=2014295
 
Cool thanks :)

Might try it out on a new USB stick and a spare drive I have lying about

I assume there would be no issues backing up any existing VM's and migrating them across on to the newer build?
 
Yep, shouldn't have any issues. I've even gone from 5.1 to 5.5 back to 5.1 then to 5.5 (of course I didn't upgrade the individual VM hardware levels). It was back when I was trying to get PCI-E and USB pass through on my home brew hypervisor working to connect to the TV as a HTPC. I didn't even use any spare drives, I left the existing one in (living dangerously :D ) and just installed 5.5 on another stick
 
Having used both Hyper-V and VMWare's ESXi, I still much prefer ESXi.

The layout of ESXi is a lot easier to work with e.g. the embedded console window you get where as Hyper V you get the pop out window.

Another bug bare for me with Hyper V is that there is no mouse support for Windows XP until you've installed the Integrated tools. I know this can be easily over come unattended install's etc... however I just feel it's something rather "basic" and should work before having to install their Integration Package.
 
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