Broadcom ends availablility of the free edition ESXi Hypervisor

[Simon Clubley]

For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
be aware Broadcom have now removed the free edition download:

https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US

From that document:

|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

Simon.

[Chris Townley]

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).
Simon.

Surely nobody will be surprised...

[Simon Clubley]

Post by Chris Townley

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

Surely nobody will be surprised...

To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
as long as it did. :-(

I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by
comparison. :-)

The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

_If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives,
this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

Simon.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Chris Townley

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

Surely nobody will be surprised...

To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
as long as it did. :-(
I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by
comparison. :-)
The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.
_If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives,
this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.
IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

I find it difficult to see the point in that acquisition and
such a strategy.

Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
in 2023.

Those numbers does not work.

And VMWare's core business are facing serious challenges.

A lot of workload are moving to AWS/Azure/GCP that does not use
ESXi.

Even some of the on-prem workload is moving to k8s on bare metal
instead of k8s on ESXi VM.

If Broadcom had acquired VMWare years ago for peanuts (EMC
paid 625 M$ for VMWare 20 years ago!), then a philosophy of
"this product is dying - let us reduce all investment to zero
increase prices like crazy and milk the last profit out of
the market" could make sense.

But Broadcom need to recoup 61 B$. The "starve and milk"
approach will not get them 61 B$.

Arne

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Simon Clubley
The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.
_If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are
alternatives,
this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.
IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

I find it difficult to see the point in that acquisition and
such a strategy.
Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
in 2023.
Those numbers does not work.
And VMWare's core business are facing serious challenges.
A lot of workload are moving to AWS/Azure/GCP that does not use
ESXi.
Even some of the on-prem workload is moving to k8s on bare metal
instead of k8s on ESXi VM.
If Broadcom had acquired VMWare years ago for peanuts (EMC
paid 625 M$ for VMWare 20 years ago!), then a philosophy of
"this product is dying - let us reduce all investment to zero
increase prices like crazy and milk the last profit out of
the market" could make sense.
But Broadcom need to recoup 61 B$. The "starve and milk"
approach will not get them 61 B$.

Mostly off-topic, but another crazy acquisition involving a company
we know are heading to the court room (again):

https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/hpe_autonomy_damages/

Arne

[Chris Townley]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Simon Clubley
The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.
_If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are
alternatives,
this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.
IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

I find it difficult to see the point in that acquisition and
such a strategy.
Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
in 2023.
Those numbers does not work.
And VMWare's core business are facing serious challenges.
A lot of workload are moving to AWS/Azure/GCP that does not use
ESXi.
Even some of the on-prem workload is moving to k8s on bare metal
instead of k8s on ESXi VM.
If Broadcom had acquired VMWare years ago for peanuts (EMC
paid 625 M$ for VMWare 20 years ago!), then a philosophy of
"this product is dying - let us reduce all investment to zero
increase prices like crazy and milk the last profit out of
the market" could make sense.
But Broadcom need to recoup 61 B$. The "starve and milk"
approach will not get them 61 B$.

Mostly off-topic, but another crazy acquisition involving a company
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/hpe_autonomy_damages/
Arne

At least in the UK, we have a legal principle of caveat emptor, which
implies HP should have dug deeper

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Chris Townley

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Mostly off-topic, but another crazy acquisition involving a company
https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/hpe_autonomy_damages/

At least in the UK, we have a legal principle of caveat emptor, which
implies HP should have dug deeper

I am sure some very highly paid lawyers will be involved
in this case.

But my understanding as a non-lawyer is that caveat emptor
does not apply if seller has actively concealed
information.

Arne

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Arne Vajhøj
Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
in 2023.
Those numbers does not work.

That’s true of many (most?) of these corporate mega-acquisitions.

[Dan Cross]

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Chris Townley

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

Surely nobody will be surprised...

To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
as long as it did. :-(
I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by
comparison. :-)

It sure seems like they're trying to take a page out the IBM
license model for the mainframe. z/VM on z/Architecture _may_
be the greatest virtualization technology ever created, but IBM
does not it make it easier to build developers for it.

Post by Simon Clubley
The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

Yup. As a colleague put it yesterday, "buy a company with
locked in customers and bleed the customers dry while cutting
costs to maximize quarterly profits."

Post by Simon Clubley
_If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives,
this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

Or don't remind them and just move to those alternatives. We'll
sell you a computer! :-D

Post by Simon Clubley
IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

Short term indeed, but pretty typical.

- Dan C.

[Chris Townley]

Post by Dan Cross

Post by Simon Clubley

Post by Chris Townley

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

Surely nobody will be surprised...

To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
as long as it did. :-(
I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by
comparison. :-)

It sure seems like they're trying to take a page out the IBM
license model for the mainframe. z/VM on z/Architecture _may_
be the greatest virtualization technology ever created, but IBM
does not it make it easier to build developers for it.

Post by Simon Clubley
The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

Yup. As a colleague put it yesterday, "buy a company with
locked in customers and bleed the customers dry while cutting
costs to maximize quarterly profits."

Post by Simon Clubley
_If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives,
this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

Or don't remind them and just move to those alternatives. We'll
sell you a computer! :-D

Post by Simon Clubley
IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

Short term indeed, but pretty typical.
- Dan C.

Also KVM works well, which of course is free software

[Lawrence D'Oliveiro]

Post by Chris Townley
Also KVM works well, which of course is free software

KVM is the core Linux building block for virtualization. I suspect a lot
of other products get built with KVM as their foundation.

Sometimes, you don’t need full-on virtualization; a container-based
technology can be useful for many workloads, and is lighter weight.
Linux does not actually have the concept of a “container” as a built-in
primitive: instead, these are built out of lower-level pieces, namely
namespaces and cgroups. Examples of these container technologies are LXC,
systemd-nspawn, and of course Docker.

[John H. Reinhardt]

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).
Simon.

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform would you switch to if leaving VMWare? Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM derivative? Why? Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather than Windows based.

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by John H. Reinhardt

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform
would you switch to if leaving VMWare?  Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM
derivative?  Why?  Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather than
Windows based.

As a hobbyist VMS user then ESXi seems like an overkill anyway.

VMWare Player seems like a better fit. And it is still free for
personal non-commercial use (similar to VMS community license
program).

Arne

[Arne Vajhøj]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by John H. Reinhardt

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform
would you switch to if leaving VMWare?  Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM
derivative?  Why?  Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather
than Windows based.

As a hobbyist VMS user then ESXi seems like an overkill anyway.
VMWare Player seems like a better fit. And it is still free for
personal non-commercial use (similar to VMS community license
program).

Otherwise the release notes at:
https://docs.vmssoftware.com/vsi-openvms-x86-64-v922-release-notes/
list what VSI has tested.

Arne

[John H. Reinhardt]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform would you switch to if leaving VMWare?  Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM derivative?  Why?  Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather than Windows based.

As a hobbyist VMS user then ESXi seems like an overkill anyway.

Maybe, but ESXi is fairly easy to manage, even for trivial uses. I have a Mac Mini colocated at MacStadium running ESXi V6.5 and it just runs and runs and has for over 3 years now with no issues.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
VMWare Player seems like a better fit. And it is still free for
personal non-commercial use (similar to VMS community license
program).

I forgot about VMWare Player. I haven't used it as the most of my system emulation has been done on my Mac using Fusion. I have a NUC that I put Linux Mint on and Oracle VirtualBox to run a (ugh) Windows system for a piece of model railroading software that is Windows only.

  https://docs.vmssoftware.com/vsi-openvms-x86-64-v922-release-notes/
list what VSI has tested.

Yes. I was just curious of the choices for Linux, which ones people preferred. I've used Oracle VirtualBox on and off and had good times and bad with it. I have not used KVM directly but I did have a 2-node Oracle RAC built on a set of ProxMox VMHosts that did not work the way I wanted - issues with shared drives for the RAC.

Arne

[John H. Reinhardt]

Post by Arne Vajhøj

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform would you switch to if leaving VMWare?  Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM derivative?  Why?  Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather than Windows based.

As a hobbyist VMS user then ESXi seems like an overkill anyway.

Maybe, but ESXi is fairly easy to manage, even for trivial uses.  I have a Mac Mini colocated at MacStadium running ESXi V6.5 and it just runs and runs and has for over 3 years now with no issues.

Post by Arne Vajhøj
VMWare Player seems like a better fit. And it is still free for
personal non-commercial use (similar to VMS community license
program).

I forgot about VMWare Player. I haven't used it as the most of my system emulation has been done on my Mac using Fusion.  I have a NUC that I put Linux Mint on and Oracle VirtualBox to run a (ugh) Windows system for a piece of model railroading software that is Windows only.

   https://docs.vmssoftware.com/vsi-openvms-x86-64-v922-release-notes/
list what VSI has tested.

Yes.  I was just curious of the choices for Linux, which ones people preferred.  I've used Oracle VirtualBox on and off and had good times and bad with it.  I have not used KVM directly but I did have a 2-node Oracle RAC built on a set of ProxMox VMHosts that did not work the way I wanted - issues with shared drives for the RAC.

Arne

And the other nice thing I forgot about ESXi is that you don't have to install a Linux distro and then make sure it's optimized for the hypervisor. It's all built in.

[Craig A. Berry]

Post by John H. Reinhardt

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).
Simon.

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform
would you switch to if leaving VMWare?  Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM
derivative?  Why?  Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather than
Windows based.

I think VMWare Player/Fusion are still available for now and are not
affected by the ESXi announcement.

[Dave Froble]

Post by Craig A. Berry

Post by John H. Reinhardt

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).
Simon.

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform would
you switch to if leaving VMWare? Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM derivative?
Why? Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather than Windows based.

I think VMWare Player/Fusion are still available for now and are not
affected by the ESXi announcement.

I am curious, what are the restrictions on the use of the previously free
edition of ESXi? Are those who already have a copy allowed to offer copies to
others?

Based upon history, does anyone think that Broadcom will actually make
improvements to the product? What's there today just may be "as good as it gets".

[Hans Bachner]

[snip]
I am curious, what are the restrictions on the use of the previously
free edition of ESXi?  Are those who already have a copy allowed to
offer copies to others?
Based upon history, does anyone think that Broadcom will actually make
improvements to the product?  What's there today just may be "as good as
it gets".

A detailed discussion can be found on
<https://www.nakivo.com/blog/free-vmware-esxi-restrictions-limitations/>

TL;DR

- No Official VMware Support
- Max 8 vCPU per Each VM
- Cannot Be Managed with vCenter
- vStorage API Is Not Available

Beyond that, this article also looks interesting:
<https://borncity.com/win/2023/12/10/broadcom-plans-to-sell-vmware-end-user-computing-and-carbon-black-businesses/>

I'm curious how long VMware Workstation/Fusion will survive...

Hans.

[Chris Townley]

Post by John H. Reinhardt

Post by Simon Clubley
For those of you using the free ESXi Hypervisor to run VMS on x86-64,
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
|Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also
|decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End
|of General Availability).
Simon.

So as a Hobbyist/casual user of OpenVMS, which virtualization platform
would you switch to if leaving VMWare?  Oracle's VirtualBox or a KVM
derivative?  Why?  Something that runs on Linux, hopefully, rather than
Windows based.

I use KVM on Ubuntu, on a NUC12