Free ESXi 6.5 - How to Download and get License Keys Posted by fgrehl on November 16, 2016 Leave a comment (18) Go to comments vSphere 6.5 has been released and as known from previous versions, VMware provides a free version of their Hypervisor ESXi for everyone again.
Confused on how to use ESXi...
I'm really new to these tools. I've been using Virtualbox to tinker with virtualization on my laptop for a while, but now I want to set up a 'legit' hypervisor to keep learning more.
Ultimately I'm only planning on running ~5 guests on a single CPU (quad core) system with 16GB RAM. This is really just for personal tinkering, so I'm not looking for anything crazy performance-wise. I'm exploring ESXi 6 as an option, but I have some questions before I dive in.
1) Is ESXi 6 the right choice for me? I see other alternatives (e.g. Citrix, MS Hyper-V), but it looks like the community around ESXi is more robust, which will be important to me as a new learner. I've looked at feature comparisons, but so far it looks like the major differentiators are beyond what I'll be playing with as a new learner (e.g. I'm not going to be using direct device mapping, live running-VM migrations or anything weird like that; just hosting some pretty standard machines).
License Key Generator Online
2) If ESXi is a good choice, is there any reason not to use the latest (v6 I think)? Any reason to stay back with v5 for now? (Maybe better support? Maybe v6 has kinks they haven't worked out yet?)
Vcenter 6.5 License Key Generator Reviews
3) From what I have read, I can do this for free if I'm just tinkering at home and not doing anything 'fancy'. The hypervisor itself looks straightforward (link), I just need to install 'vSphere Hypervisor', right?
4) Where I'm really confused is in the management piece. I understand that the hypervisor just RUNS the guests, but not much configuration can be done on the hypervisor itself. You apparently need some other 'piece' to do the management (setting up guests and managing their resources). I think this piece is 'vSphere' (link), but I'm not sure. When I visit that page, I only see 'Try it for free' types of links, and no 'free' version. But what I've read online has said that you can mange a few servers with limited numbers of CPUs/RAM for free. Is there a 'free' or 'lite' version of vSphere I should be looking for? Do I just install the free trial 'Demo' and keep using it beyond the 60 day trial? If so, I assume some functionality shuts off at 60 days - what do I lose at that point?
Thanks!
EDIT: Wow, downvotes. :- Anything I could do to make this post more appropriate for this subreddit? I've been doing my research - just asking for some help from the experts.