VMware esxi is free again. Yes you are reading it right, the version esxi 8.0U3e is free but with some limitations. Broadcom did not announce it openly but slide it silently on its download portal and blog. When you login to download page, Look at “What’s new” section where you will find this mentioned. This is a big reversal by Broadcom after they announced end of free license few months ago. However there are some limitations are incorporated with this free version. The vCPU limit is set to 8 for Virtual Machine. You can’t over allocate because VM will not start if more 8 vCPU are allocated to VM.
This is named entry level hypervisor by Broadcom with limitations as listed below
- 8 vCPU limitation per virtual machine.
- It is non-production use.
- No Broadcom support available on it.
- Can’t join a vCenter hence can’t be centrally managed.
However we can remotely manage it through web client. For features and updates you can review the release note for this version.
Please do comment with your views about why this change of mind on Broadcom side.
