VMWare ESXi released for free today.

[pete]

You have to be more careful about the hardware you choose, but a cheap test rig can be built pretty easily.

 

VMware ESXi, Hypervisor for Server Virtualization - VMware

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_35/esx_3i_e/r35/vi3_35_25_3i_server_config.pdf

Updated HCL: HCL: Systems Compatibility Guide For ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i

Examples of cheap "home lab" setups that work: ESX home lab hardware shopping list | VM /ETC

[dhicks]

VMWare ESXi released for free today.

 

How is it VMWare's system works, how do VMWare make their money? Am I right in thinking that you can install their VM system (VMWare ESX/ESXi) on as many servers as you like but you pay for the management system (Infrastructure Foundation/Structure/Enterprise)?

 

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David Hicks

[localzuk]

Looking good! I think I may upgrade from VMWare Server to this, and cram some more VM's on a server.

[pete]

How is it VMWare's system works, how do VMWare make their money? Am I right in thinking that you can install their VM system (VMWare ESX/ESXi) on as many servers as you like but you pay for the management system (Infrastructure Foundation/Structure/Enterprise)?

 

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David Hicks

 

Main thing is ESXi <> ESX, the latter comes with more management tools and HA/failover/DR options like vmotion and costs a lot, the former used to cost a lot less and is now free. I noticed it was about to be released in a thread on arstechnica:

 

VMware ESX 3i for free - Topic Powered by eve community

 

When you sign up for a licence, it asks how many (physical) cpus you're likely to install ESXi on - limit is 999/licence.

 

Their profit model is something along the lines of "wow, let's use cool free thing to make our servers easier to manage". "Now, it would be nice if we could do $foo and $free_version does work well - let's see if we can afford Virtual Infrastructure".

 

EMC (who own VMware) also recently sacked the VMware CEO on tenuous grounds and she'd been behind a lot of the good stuff coming out of VMware. Their shareprice went to crap as a result and this may be a way of boosting it back to previous levels.

[torledo]

How is it VMWare's system works, how do VMWare make their money? Am I right in thinking that you can install their VM system (VMWare ESX/ESXi) on as many servers as you like but you pay for the management system (Infrastructure Foundation/Structure/Enterprise)?

 

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David Hicks

 

That sounds about right, revenue from such a highly competitive field such as virtualization is in 'added value' offerings. So enterprise features, management add-ons, performance and monitoring tools, and the very lucrative design and consultancy revenue. That's how they can provide gsx and now esxi installable for free.

 

As competition hots up expect other features like HA to be incorporated into the base products. It's like with any sector, when a market leader has it their own way or they have features that are new and cool they can charge for these extras... once customers start looking at alternatives or those whizzbang features are being replicated by competitors concessions are made to include features that were once additional cost options. It happens ovennight, a feature that was once £2.5k list is suddenly available for free. Normally a sign that take up on those options was less than enthisiastic so they start giving it away.....but not always to do with take up, often competition and technical developemnents also force changes in pricing policies.

 

Vmware has grown phenomenally quickly, but there are signs that growth is not accelerating as fast as EMC would like. Giving stuff away is a good strategy of getting people using the product, becoming potential new customers when their requirements become a bit more complicated.

 

@pete - i think the difference is between ESXi and VI3, where those options through the VI3 enteprise feature set become available....although i'm not sure on what the upgrade path from ESXi to VI3 is. ESX itself doesn't enable the likes of vmotion and DRS without add cost feature licences.

Edited July 28, 2008 by torledo

[FN-GM]

Thanks, could be handy

[dhicks]

So ESXi is free, VMWare Server is free, but ESX and the management tools cost money. Damn companies and their confusing licensing. I won't be moving from Xen anytime soon, but VMWare looks like it might be worth a play around with at some point (and it does look as though there are more ready-made servers and migration tools available for it).

 

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David Hicks

[ChrisP]

Here's a link to a list of white boxes that will run ESXi - ESX 3.5 and 3i White boxes and working SATA controllers It may be that you have something around the office that could run this so you could do a test install and give the conversion process a test.

[localzuk]

I've converted a couple of Ubuntu images over to it now, to see how they run. Having some problems setting up vmware tools on them though, so currently neither have network access

[dhicks]

Does any VM system vendor offer a virtual machine that can be packaged with an application? I mean, say if I have a server (i.e. web) based application based on Ubuntu, that I configure with all the libraries and so forth that my application needs to run. I'd like to be able to distribute that application as a standard Windows-style all-in-one executable installer, but instead of installing a Windows application the installer would install a VM that ran my Ubuntu server. It'd also be handy if the VM system could be packaged so that when started up a port number on the Windows machine would be forwaded to a port on the virtual machine, i.e. no "bridged connection" business would be installed in the machine's network settings page to confuse the end user.

 

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David Hicks

[SYNACK]

Does any VM system vendor offer a virtual machine that can be packaged with an application?

 

VMWare have been using the term appliances for a while now and there are lots avalible that can run on the free VMWare Player platform. I am not sure how integrated this is though with regard to a single click installer.

 

Virtual Appliance Marketplace, Virtual Appliances, VMware Appliance - VMware

 

Microsoft also provides VM copies of some of its server software for evaluation like ISA server 2006 and Exchange 2007. I have not seen any third parties go down this route though.

[Midget]

free esx? good find that man i may give this a play later

[pete]

With a bit of hacking config files, this works on those cheap Proliant ML115s that a few edugeekers (including myself) bought.

 

(yes, I had a very geeky weekend)

[tom_newton]

Can ESXi do its own RAID or does it need a h/w RAID card under it?

[DMcCoy]

You will need a card. Onboard SATA controllers like the intel ICH will show individual disks.

 

I did install ESXi on my PowerEdge 700 at home with a Dell CERC 6ch sata card (which is really an adaptec 2610a)

[ng12345]

Hi i noticed you were able to get esxi installed on the poweredge 700 -- i tried loading the cd and it stated that there was unsupported hardware

 

what modifications did you have to make to the image in order to get the install process to go through?

 

alternatively -- were you able to get a live usb distribution of it working? i created a grub floppy to boot the usb (since there is no usb boot in bios), but I can't find the kernel that i need to load

[DMcCoy]

I just installed from the CD, I don't know if there are different motherboards depending on the PowerEdge 700 revisiosn, mine is a P4 3.0 with hyperthreadng, with an Intel E6300 chipset, you need the CERC 6ch SATA controller as it recognises it as something to store the VMs on. Also has the intel pro 1000MT NIC I believe.

[techyphil]

Btw, I think many servers will come with ESX/ESXi embedded when you buy from HP/DELL which I think is great!

[googlemad]

Got this working on my ML115 now, using a USB SD card reader stuck in the internal USB port.

 

May be a dumb question, but is there any way to be able to access the 'data stores' across the network?

[DMcCoy]

The VI client has limited access to the data stores (right click, browse). I'm not sure if you could get scp going after enabling ssh.

 

If you mean for sharing such as smb, then none for ESXi as far as I'm aware.

[googlemad]

The VI client has limited access to the data stores (right click, browse). I'm not sure if you could get scp going after enabling ssh.

 

If you mean for sharing such as smb, then none for ESXi as far as I'm aware.

 

Thanks - Just needed to add a few ISOs to the server to start creating some VMs and the Browse option worked great

[googlemad]

I've attached the guide I followed to put ESXi on a USB drive, I had to set the BIOS emulation for the drive to act as a hard drive to get it working.

ESXi-extract.doc