Where do I get this ESXi mentioned in installation docs?

[vaxman]

Subject said it all. Google pointed me to Broadcom? Can't find it there.

[mberryman]

ESXi was a VMware product. After Broadcom bought VMware, the following became true:

VMware ESXi no longer offers a free edition as of February 12, 2024. The cheapest option for licensing is a single host license for vSphere Standard, which costs approximately $800 a year, while a VMUG Advantage Subscription, which provides access to various VMware products, costs about $210 a year.

[arne_v]

ESXi is a commercial product. You call your "friendly" Broadcom (used to be VMWare) sales person and ask for it.

Quotation marks around friendly because Broadcom has been hiking prices 100%-1000% after acquiring VMWare.

If this is for production then go for Linux with KVM.

If this is for development then go for Linux with KVM and QEMU or the VMWare Workstation product (which is now free).

[amuir]

ESXi was a VMware product. After Broadcom bought VMware, the following became true:

VMware ESXi no longer offers a free edition as of February 12, 2024. The cheapest option for licensing is a single host license for vSphere Standard, which costs approximately $800 a year, while a VMUG Advantage Subscription, which provides access to various VMware products, costs about $210 a year.

While this is certainly true, there has been a recent update to this. I won't quite call it a reversal, but you may find this a workable option: https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundati ... all-users/

[arne_v]

Note that even though base ESXi used to be free, then the advanced management stuff always costed money. It just used to be "ordinary expensive" - now it (also covering base ESXi that used to be free) is "bloody highway robbery expensive".