Broadcom Terminates VMware's Free ESXi Hypervisor
The Register, Tuesday, February 13th, 2024
Certain licenses still allow tinkerers to taste the vStack. Whether they want to is another matter
Broadcom has discontinued the free version of VMware's ESXi hypervisor.
News of the change came in a Monday knowledge base article that revealed the tool was removed from VMware.com and offered the following explanation for the change:
The free cut of ESXi was only able to run on limited number of cores, addressed a modest quantity of memory, and lacked many management niceties. So while it was able to be used in production it was more suited to testing, tinkering, and hobbyists. But when used in those roles it often led to production deployments, or improved the skills of IT pros who later became champions of the vStack.