[German]The shakeout of VMware products continues. It was already expected, but on February 12, 2024, VMware by Broadcom announced that the free ESXi Free hypervisor in versions 7.x and 8.x would no longer be available. This is the logical consequence of the discontinuation of all products with purchase licenses that could not be converted to annual subscriptions. This means that the ESXi Server Free can no longer be used for virtualization test environments.
Tabula Rasa after the Broadcom takeover
It was to be expected, as the management of the general store Broadcom has started to clean up VMware's product portfolio. Broadcom wants to sell the VMware end-user division (see Broadcom plans to sell VMware end-user computing and carbon black businesses). Broadcom management sees the future of VMware in the cloud (VMware Cloud Foundation, VCF).
In this context, most VMware products for on-premises virtualization have been discontinued and the rest have been converted to subscriptions. I had already addressed this in the blog post Broadcom ends perpetual licenses for VMware products – End of the free ESXi server? There I had already written that this was the end of the free ESXi server for small test installations.
Blog readers have pointed out in comments that the end of the free ESXI Server Free has come. In the above tweet, there is a reference to the VMware support article End Of General Availability of the free vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi 7.x and 8.x) (2107518) from February 12, 2024, which states that VMware vSphere Hypervisor (free edition) is no longer available on the VMware website.
BThe reason given for this is the end of perpetual licensing for VMware vSphere ESXi. Broadcom has therefore also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor and label it as EOGA (End of General Availability). No replacement product is currently available. Further details on the affected products and this change can be found in the blog poste VMware End Of Availability of Perpetual Licensing and SaaS Services.
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omg, bad decision :(
I hope that will bee exist some cheap basic licence for SMB.
A lot to worry about.
The fact that there have been no Patches for ESXi in almost 4 months will not improve confidence either – this is just unprofessional.
Broadcom seems to make a huge mess in the Company.
When I first started using VMware it was understood that this ground braking software would be available free forever and it was a fantastic addition to testing setup for developers. This decision to cull the whole thing doesn't make any sense whatsoever. I understand that those big businesses only think about the bottom line but, this makes no difference to them. Was it not possible to just leave it alone at the state is currently and make it available for use? No obviously not. If they weren't going to get some money for it, kill it off and ditch it. This is the kind of software that would lend itself to open source. So, why not. Com-on guys.