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VMware ESXi Available For Free Starting Today

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the free-always-sounds-better dept.

Mierdaan writes "VMware's bare-metal hypervisor is available for free starting today. ESXi, which can either be installed or run from an embedded device available in certain servers, has a 32MB footprint and gives small businesses an easy way to get into the virtualization world, with easy upgrade paths to enterprise-level features such as (H)igh (A)vailability and (D)istributed (R)esource (S)cheduler. ESXi runs on most any hardware with a server-class disk controller, and previously retailed for $495. VMware is obviously shooting to prevent Microsoft's Hyper-V technology from gaining a foothold in the marketplace."

35 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. more info. by stoolpigeon · · Score: 5, Informative

    This zdnet blogger already gave it a spin on some commodity-like hardware (which it seems to me there might be a few here who will be so inclined) and has a nice write-up of the results as well as some good tips on how to avoid some trouble spots for those not fortunate enough to be putting this on enterprise level hardware.
     
    Downloading the ISO does require creating an account with a ton of required fields - so there are a few minutes of typing involved. There is also the usual eula to agree too, which I need to go over before I do anything with the disc image I've downloaded.

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    1. Re:more info. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Funny

      Virtuall first post

    2. Re:more info. by Kamokazi · · Score: 4, Funny

      Pfft, don't lie to us, you're not going to read the EULA.

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    3. Re:more info. by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 4, Funny

      Well, he could have insomnia.

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    4. Re:more info. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      ESXi server requires, at minimum, a storage controller which is not present in anything but enterprise level machines and costs about $250 street price to upgrade a compatible server (one with PCI-X slots.)

      Really? It does? I never knew my little old P4 NAT machine under the desk with an Adaptec SCSI controller (aic7xxx) in it was such a power-house.

      I guess the Broadcom 97xx (tg3) in the old Dell I've got here too is an enterprise class network interface controller. I'm all enterprise-y and I never knew it!

      Or perhaps you just haven't read the hardware compatibility lists? Yeah, I guess that's more likely.

    5. Re:more info. by nabsltd · · Score: 5, Informative

      ESX or ESXi works just fine with a bunch of plain old IDE and SATA controllers...see here for more information.

      You can't put virtual machines on an IDE drive, but you can put them on SATA disks with the controllers listed at that link. You don't get RAID on any of them, though, even if they have some sort of RAID available. ESX(i) only officially supports storing VMs on RAID arrays if the disks appear to be SCSI of some sort (including SAS, or SATA on an SAS-capable controller).

      You could also use Openfiler to create iSCSI targets that ESXi can use to store VMs, and Openfiler can use any storage that any modern Linux can use, including Linux software RAID. This allows you to have a VMware ESX(i) setup permanently (ESX was available as a free 90-day trial) on some pretty cheap hardware.

    6. Re:more info. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      "3.9 Audit Rights. You will maintain accurate records as to your use of the Software as authorized by this Agreement, for at least two (2) years from the last day on which support and subscription services ("Services") expired for the applicable Software. VMware, or persons designated by VMware, will, at any time during the period when you are obliged to maintain such records, be entitled to inspect such records and your computing devices, in order to verify that the Software is used by you in accordance with the terms of this Agreement..."

      No wonder no one wants to read the EULA.

      They don't want the VMware SWAT team busting in on them to see if they're using free software in accordance with the license.

    7. Re:more info. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You don't even need to mess with iSCSI if you don't want to: ESXi can use a plain old NFS NAS. That's not exactly a stretch.

      As I've already pointed out, ESXi also runs quite happily on a bunch of bog-standard SCSI controllers like the Adaptec AIC7xxx range, so you don't even need remote storage of any kind, and certainly not an enterprise class SAN.

    8. Re:more info. by CrazedWalrus · · Score: 3, Insightful

      I saw this too. The way I understand it (and I'm no lawyer, but...), I am not buying support or subscription, so I'm not obligated to keep records. This seems like a piece of boilerplate that doesn't really apply to a free eval version. Is there a different way to read that that I'm missing?

    9. Re:more info. by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

      That's completely ridiculous, the EULA demands are getting unreasonable

    10. Re:more info. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      If YOU knew the first thing about VMWare ESX YOU'D know that they use almost unmodified Linux drivers, and any device supported by the driver will work under ESX and ESXi just as well as it will work under Linux.

      Not to mention if YOU were actually reading the thread YOU'D know that the GGP is complaining that he has to buy a $250 "Enterprise class" SAS controller and have a server with PCI-X slots in it, which is total crap. The only reason he thinks this is because the ZDNet blogger who wrote the "review" the GGP read is an idiot who has some weird fixation with SAS and totally ignores all the other available, cheaper and less troublesome storage options such as SCSI or an NFS mounted NAS.

      Last but not least, you said it yourself: VMWare only support various certified platforms, but don't expect to get much support for ESXi anyway. ESXi will be fine in an enterprise setup you need a scratch server, or have a spare "supported" server lying around so you can be sure it will work. If you're expecting to throw ESXi on any old bit of whitebox crap and get enterprise quality server out of it, you're delusional. At the same time, whining that you can't setup a simple whitebox machine and run ESXi on it for your own uses because you have to buy a $250 SAS controller first is just uninformed crap.

      But thanks for playing.

  2. Another download link by clang_jangle · · Score: 5, Informative

    Oh, this is going to be fun, I can hardly wait! BTW the download link in TFA appears to be broken, you can get it here.

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  3. awesome... by teknopurge · · Score: 4, Informative

    In our testing VMWare is by far the best performing VM platform out there, especially on the networking benchmarks. This is nothing but a good thing.

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    1. Re:awesome... by mitgib · · Score: 4, Interesting

      HyperV is also Xen aware. I played with it for a short period when RC1 was released, but was totally dissatisfied with it. I don't think VMWare has much to worry about as HyperV was not ready for production in my opinion at the time.

      I was able to install Xen kernels in Fedora and CentOS without a problem in HyperV, but could not for the life of me get w2k3 or w2k8 to install, while both install without issue in my Xen cluster. Virtual Server 2005 was a far better product from Microsoft, but still way lacking as it required windows as the base OS.

      Another lacking part I found with HyperV was poor ethernet support for *nix, limited to a realtech driver at 100Mbit. I really don't think enterprise clients will adopt HyperV for the one main reason of support though, it only officially supports SUSE, and if big enterprise clients can not purchase support for other linux distro's, they are not going to waste their time on Microsofts product.

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  4. Re:Not FREE by clang_jangle · · Score: 5, Funny

    If it's not FREE (as in GPL v3), it's not FREE.

    Maybe that's why TFS said "free", rather than "FREE"?

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  5. Re:advertising by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

    slashdot apparently is a guerrilla marketing site. Who knew?

    *raises hand*

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  6. Re:wrong name by gEvil+(beta) · · Score: 5, Funny

    The ad got the product name wrong, it's suppose to be iESX.

    They should've just called it VMware SEXi. "I need to go fiddle with the SEXi server."

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    This guy's the limit!
  7. The First One is Free, Kid by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Informative

    Don't mind the $2500 per-physical-machine-maximum-2-cpus price tag on the version which actually lets you do stuff, like manage the machines, migrate them, share storage, etc.

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    1. Re:The First One is Free, Kid by JayGuerette · · Score: 5, Informative

      Don't mind the $2500 per-physical-machine-maximum-2-cpus price tag on the version which actually lets you do stuff, like manage the machines, migrate them, share storage, etc.

      When you're running 10-20 virtual servers on a single ESX host and look at the hardware cost, space & resource consumption, and management costs of 10-20 physical servers.... this suddenly looks cheap. We're running 100+ ESX hosts... this is an *extremely* cost-effective solution.

    2. Re:The First One is Free, Kid by hal9000(jr) · · Score: 3, Informative

      You can find a FAQ.

      I haven't looked at ESXi in depth. The biggest missing component I see is the lack of a service console--no command line. I have a few Dell 2550(?) that for some reason have CDrom issues that I need console access for.

      It looks like you have plenty of time to install ESXi and play with it. As long as your virtual servers aren't resource hogs, you can save bundles in hardware. If you step up to ESX and Virtual Ifrastructure, you can manage all your VM's through a single server. You can move, with VMotion VM's from one hypervisor to another (running, if they are using the same SAN), take snapshots (and restore!) of running machines live. virtualizaiton makes your life so much easier.

      Guess I am a bit of a fan-boi.

    3. Re:The First One is Free, Kid by mrsteveman1 · · Score: 3, Funny

      it was until it stole my girlfriend and put those photos we took up on Google Images..oh man i shoulda seen that coming

  8. Re:Not FREE by bigstrat2003 · · Score: 5, Funny

    Yes, let's get into arguments about what free is. Cause it's not like one could successfully argue (depending on one's precise definition of free) that GPL, BSD, $0, any of that, is/is not free. Come on, man, get off your high horse.

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  9. Re:Not FREE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Look buddy. If I don't have to pay for it, by definition of what I have learned "free" to be my whole life, it is free.

    "Free" as in, "short for freedom" is not, and shall never be, the default value of this term in my head. When you go to the store and get a "free sample", they are talking about cost. If I were to go to McDonalds for a promotion of "Free McNugget Wednesdays", you can bet I'll have a happy little lawsuit when they actually try to charge me and claim "It is free in that you can do whatever you want with it!"

  10. Replying to myself by Bandman · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I checked out the datasheet here(PDF), and ESXi is just the small-footprint operating system on-top of which you can run multiple virtual machines.

    So instead of having a fullblown Windows/Linux installation, you install this, and the smaller footprint leaves more resources for the guest OSes.

    Am I right? And what is the software that you need to manage ESXi?

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    1. Re:Replying to myself by jeffmeden · · Score: 3, Informative

      You are right. The management software you want is Virtual Center (included as part of ESXi). The only thing you lack is the advanced management features such as automated high availability.

    2. Re:Replying to myself by Feyr · · Score: 3, Informative

      their ESX software is an hypervisor that you must install directly on the hardware to start with. if you want to run linux/win under it, you need to get vmware server.

      ESXi seems to be ESX without the "service console" (a linux console that runs virtually that lets you manage stuff on the esx server)

      to manage it you need the VI client which you can download on their site. it's the same client for all of their software (except vmware server, because it sucks)

      VI client is, sadly, windows only

    3. Re:Replying to myself by martums · · Score: 3, Informative

      their ESX software is an hypervisor that you must install directly on the hardware to start with. if you want to run linux/win under it, you need to get vmware server.

      I disagree with the last part of what you said. The VMware Server product will let you run one or more virtual machines on top of Linux or Windows. ESXi has no underlying host OS, and is (supposed to be) a bare metal hypervisor, (god, I hate that word), allowing you to run one or more virtual machines on the bare metal, using only the hypervisor, (Without Windows or Linux booting first. The ongoing debate of whether ESX or ESXi leverages any *nix is not for me to engage in). VMware Server is a completely different product as opposed to ESX and ESXi. And now that both VMware Server and ESXi are available free, seems like VMware Server just became the red-headed stepchild.

      ESX does not require VMware Server. Two separate products, now both available free of charge.

      VMware Server might be a cheap alternative if you can't shell out the $300 for Workstation. The latter of which, is worth every penny.

      --
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  11. Re:Business Model? by cduffy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    You mean "their" business model, not "there" business model; the latter word refers to location, while the former refers to possession.

    They're VMware. They have plenty of products they charge (lots and lots of) money for; giving away low-end freebies isn't going to hurt their bottom line much, as anyone running a QA department will want to have the management tools &c. that come with the full releases, without needing a developer to write local toolage (which can be even more expensive, after opportunity cost for the staff involved is taken into account).

  12. Re:ESXi and Virtual Center by moogoogaipan · · Score: 5, Informative

    Just found this out: To use ESXi with VC you would need to purchase ESX Foundation Oh well, still, I'll try it w/o Virtual Center.

  13. Still no Firewire support? by PingXao · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That's been a showstopper standing between us and vmware forever. Maybe it is finally supported, but I RTFA, then I even went and RTFWS and I couldn't find any mention of Firewire or IEEE 1394 (a or b).

    1. Re:Still no Firewire support? by mccabem · · Score: 3, Informative

      There is no Firewire for servers or workstations.

      There's just Firewire like there's just USB. He's talking about Firewire support in VMware like there's USB support in VMware.

      -Matt

  14. Re:Not FREE by FishWithAHammer · · Score: 5, Funny

    Range Chickens? What, are these replacing clay pigeons?

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  15. Thoroughly suitable for DIY management by joe_n_bloe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Embedded ESX supports a large subset of the VI API (basically, everything that a standalone host can give you). You can write Perl or Java to your heart's content and get ESXi to jump through hoops. Virtual Center uses the VI API and it's quite possible you can write something you enjoy better. Go check out the Virtual Infrastructure SDK.

  16. Re:Not FREE by nizo · · Score: 5, Funny

    But riding my high horse is free! So I ride him everywhere because of high gas prices.

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  17. Re:Not FREE by grahamd0 · · Score: 5, Funny

    But you're playing right into the hands of big hay!