[Info-vax] Broadcom ends availablility of the free edition ESXi Hypervisor

[John H. Reinhardt]

On 2/14/2024 8:26 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 2/14/2024 8:55 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
>> On 2/14/2024 8:17 AM, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
>>> On 2/12/2024 12:42 PM, Simon Clubley wrote:
>>>> 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).
>>>
>>> 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.

>> 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.

> Otherwise the release notes at:
>    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