Hey All!

I'm sure I read it somewhere before that they made ESXi free again, but probably didn't really let it soak in or believe it.

Anyhow, yesterday I went to the Broadcom site, and sure shit, as of 8.0 Update 3s or something, it is free again to download after you setup an account on the site. I got excited.

I downloaded it, burned it to a USB stick with Rufus, shut down all my VMs and rebooted into the installer. Once I got to the point where I pick the drive to install the new medium on (it is supposed to look for an already installed ESXi), it saw my drives, but didn't show ESXi installed on any of them.

Much further digging, and the latest versions of ESXi don't support my old ass hardware any more (Proliant ML310e Gen8). I think the latest I could go is either 6.7 or 7.0 Update 3 with some kind of a customized build for pre-Gen9 HPE hardware. I'm currently at 6.5, so don't really care to bother with it any more. I was more excited to try out the new and shiny, but that didn't work out too well for me. ;)

Eh well, that was a waste of a few hours. lol

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Hey All!

I'm sure I read it somewhere before that they made ESXi free again, but probably didn't really let it soak in or believe it.

Really, all the same free features as before?

I moved to proxmox a while back, been running fine since. Seems like more effort then anything to go back?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
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Hey niter3!

On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 20:56:00 -0500, you wrote:

Really, all the same free features as before?

As far as I can tell, yes.. I think the announcement was something in the lines of "as of ESXi 8.0 update 3s" or something, and they're now on "update 3w").

I moved to proxmox a while back, been running fine since. Seems like
more effort then anything to go back?

I would agree with you there. If I were ever to snag up some new hardware, I'd most likely switch also. But the fact that I'm already running ESXi 6.5 update 1, I figured I'd try an easy upgrade to the shiny new stuff without having to migrate my VMs or anything. I was severely disappointed, though.

I have no issues with ESXi 6.5 except some quirky shit I can get around (as easy as refreshing the page) in the web GUI, so I'll stick with it for the remainder of this server's lifespan, which could be awhile yet unless I come across something for the right price. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Re: ESXi
By: Accession to All on Tue Nov 04 2025 05:05 pm

Much further digging, and the latest versions of ESXi don't support my old ass hardware any more (Proliant ML310e Gen8). I think the latest I could go is either 6.7 or 7.0 Update 3 with some kind of a customized build for pre-Gen9 HPE hardware. I'm currently at 6.5, so don't really care to bother with it any more. I was more excited to try out the new and shiny, but that didn't work out too well for me. ;)

VMWare dropped support for my 4-year old Dells, and VMWare Workstation for Linux only worked with certain kernels. Update your kernel and VMWare would break until you updated it - if they had an update for a version other than the latest and greatest.

That's what attracted me to Proxmox - I've run it on the cheapest, EOL crap and it just runs. I'm seriously tempted to move my production servers at work to it; I'm mostly running utility and dev workloads on them now.
--- SBBSecho 3.30-Win32
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Much further digging, and the latest versions of ESXi don't support my
old ass hardware any more (Proliant ML310e Gen8). I think the latest I could go is either 6.7 or 7.0 Update 3 with some kind of a customized build for pre-Gen9 HPE hardware. I'm currently at 6.5, so don't really care to bother with it any more. I was more excited to try out the new
and shiny, but that didn't work out too well for me. ;)

OMG. So they made it free again, but made it so you had to be on CORPORATE prod hardware??? Great... at this point, just install PVE and PBS and move on - Proxmox is the shyyyyttttt!



|07p|15AULIE|1142|07o
|08.........

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2024/05/29 (Linux/64)
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paulie420 wrote to Accession <=-

OMG. So they made it free again, but made it so you had to be on
CORPORATE prod hardware??? Great... at this point, just install PVE and PBS and move on - Proxmox is the shyyyyttttt!

Veeam has been making inroads regarding support for PVE, if they can get support working by the time my support contract is due I'll be looking
hard at PVE.



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Hey poindexter!

On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 20:58:50 -0800, you wrote:

That's what attracted me to Proxmox - I've run it on the cheapest, EOL
crap and it just runs. I'm seriously tempted to move my production
servers at work to it; I'm mostly running utility and dev workloads on
them now.

Most definitely. That'll be my next go-to, but I don't feel the need to do it on this current hardware. VMWare has been really good to me in that aspect. May as well leave it alone until I decide to get something different.

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Hey paulie420!

On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 20:56:14 -0800, you wrote:

OMG. So they made it free again, but made it so you had to be on
CORPORATE prod hardware??? Great... at this point, just install PVE and
PBS and move on - Proxmox is the shyyyyttttt!

I don't think they "made it" that way, it has always dropped support for older hardware at certain versions. I just didn't know about that until now because I installed ESXi 6.5 some 12+ years ago now, and never felt the need to upgrade until I saw an announcement that it was free again. :)

Either way, I agree. I have Proxmox running in a Virtualbox VM just to mess around with for now so I'm not a deer in headlights when I get some new hardware and actually put it to work. I will be making the switch, I just don't know when. There's no need to change anything on my current server as by now it's old and fragile. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

I have no issues with ESXi 6.5 except some quirky shit I can get around (as easy as refreshing the page) in the web GUI, so I'll stick with it
for the remainder of this server's lifespan, which could be awhile yet unless I come across something for the right price. ;)

If I recall you're running an HP desktop server... I'm running a Lenovo ST50.

I've been on the fence about switching to a mini pc for my needs in the future. Small form factor machine with my NAS. Should really be all that I need.

The only disadvantage, it won't be server hardware grade. No ECC ram and no Xeons...

Does it matter? As long as I can get the same type of uptime, I'd be happy and save money, and space, and maybe cut a few dollars on my hydro bill.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Clutch BBS * telnet://clutchbbs.com (21:1/199)