• Broadcom ends availablility of the free edition ESXi Hypervisor

    From Simon Clubley@21:1/5 to All on Mon Feb 12 18:42:10 2024
    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).

    Simon.

    --
    Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
    Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris Townley@21:1/5 to Simon Clubley on Mon Feb 12 20:13:53 2024
    On 12/02/2024 18:42, 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).

    Simon.


    Surely nobody will be surprised...

    --
    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Simon Clubley@21:1/5 to Chris Townley on Tue Feb 13 13:28:50 2024
    On 2024-02-12, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
    On 12/02/2024 18:42, 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).


    Surely nobody will be surprised...


    To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
    as long as it did. :-(

    I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
    regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by
    comparison. :-)

    The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
    most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
    of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

    _If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives,
    this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
    of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

    IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
    to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

    Simon.

    --
    Simon Clubley, clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP
    Walking destinations on a map are further away than they appear.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?=@21:1/5 to All on Tue Feb 13 09:52:10 2024
    On 2/13/2024 9:49 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
    On 2/13/2024 8:28 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
    The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
    most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
    of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

    _If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are
    alternatives,
    this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next
    generation
    of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

    IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
    approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux
    came
    to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

    I find it difficult to see the point in that acquisition and
    such a strategy.

    Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
    in 2023.

    Those numbers does not work.

    And VMWare's core business are facing serious challenges.

    A lot of workload are moving to AWS/Azure/GCP that does not use
    ESXi.

    Even some of the on-prem workload is moving to k8s on bare metal
    instead of k8s on ESXi VM.

    If Broadcom had acquired VMWare years ago for peanuts (EMC
    paid 625 M$ for VMWare 20 years ago!), then a philosophy of
    "this product is dying - let us reduce all investment to zero
    increase prices like crazy and milk the last profit out of
    the market" could make sense.

    But Broadcom need to recoup 61 B$. The "starve and milk"
    approach will not get them 61 B$.

    Mostly off-topic, but another crazy acquisition involving a company
    we know are heading to the court room (again):

    https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/hpe_autonomy_damages/

    Arne

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?=@21:1/5 to Simon Clubley on Tue Feb 13 09:49:00 2024
    On 2/13/2024 8:28 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
    On 2024-02-12, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
    On 12/02/2024 18:42, 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).


    Surely nobody will be surprised...

    To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
    as long as it did. :-(

    I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
    regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by comparison. :-)

    The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
    most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
    of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

    _If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives, this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
    of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

    IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
    to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

    I find it difficult to see the point in that acquisition and
    such a strategy.

    Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
    in 2023.

    Those numbers does not work.

    And VMWare's core business are facing serious challenges.

    A lot of workload are moving to AWS/Azure/GCP that does not use
    ESXi.

    Even some of the on-prem workload is moving to k8s on bare metal
    instead of k8s on ESXi VM.

    If Broadcom had acquired VMWare years ago for peanuts (EMC
    paid 625 M$ for VMWare 20 years ago!), then a philosophy of
    "this product is dying - let us reduce all investment to zero
    increase prices like crazy and milk the last profit out of
    the market" could make sense.

    But Broadcom need to recoup 61 B$. The "starve and milk"
    approach will not get them 61 B$.

    Arne

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Dan Cross@21:1/5 to clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org- on Tue Feb 13 19:30:45 2024
    In article <uqfqqh$23o3b$1@dont-email.me>,
    Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
    On 2024-02-12, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
    On 12/02/2024 18:42, 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).


    Surely nobody will be surprised...

    To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
    as long as it did. :-(

    I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
    regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by >comparison. :-)

    It sure seems like they're trying to take a page out the IBM
    license model for the mainframe. z/VM on z/Architecture _may_
    be the greatest virtualization technology ever created, but IBM
    does not it make it easier to build developers for it.

    The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
    most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
    of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

    Yup. As a colleague put it yesterday, "buy a company with
    locked in customers and bleed the customers dry while cutting
    costs to maximize quarterly profits."

    _If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives, >this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation
    of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

    Or don't remind them and just move to those alternatives. We'll
    sell you a computer! :-D

    IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term >approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came
    to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

    Short term indeed, but pretty typical.

    - Dan C.

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  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@21:1/5 to All on Tue Feb 13 20:45:29 2024
    On Tue, 13 Feb 2024 09:49:00 -0500, Arne Vajhøj wrote:

    Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
    in 2023.

    Those numbers does not work.

    That’s true of many (most?) of these corporate mega-acquisitions.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris Townley@21:1/5 to Dan Cross on Wed Feb 14 00:18:11 2024
    On 13/02/2024 19:30, Dan Cross wrote:
    In article <uqfqqh$23o3b$1@dont-email.me>,
    Simon Clubley <clubley@remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> wrote:
    On 2024-02-12, Chris Townley <news@cct-net.co.uk> wrote:
    On 12/02/2024 18:42, 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).


    Surely nobody will be surprised...

    To be honest Chris, given their reputation, I am surprised it took them
    as long as it did. :-(

    I suspect that by the time Broadcom get through with this, people will
    regard IBM's mainframe licencing as a model of liberal licencing by
    comparison. :-)

    It sure seems like they're trying to take a page out the IBM
    license model for the mainframe. z/VM on z/Architecture _may_
    be the greatest virtualization technology ever created, but IBM
    does not it make it easier to build developers for it.

    The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
    most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
    of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

    Yup. As a colleague put it yesterday, "buy a company with
    locked in customers and bleed the customers dry while cutting
    costs to maximize quarterly profits."

    _If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are alternatives, >> this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next generation >> of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

    Or don't remind them and just move to those alternatives. We'll
    sell you a computer! :-D

    IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a short-term
    approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux came >> to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

    Short term indeed, but pretty typical.

    - Dan C.


    Also KVM works well, which of course is free software

    --
    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From Chris Townley@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 14 00:17:00 2024
    On 13/02/2024 14:52, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
    On 2/13/2024 9:49 AM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
    On 2/13/2024 8:28 AM, Simon Clubley wrote:
    The industry rumours seem to indicate that Broadcom are willing to let
    most of their customers go, provided they can hold on to the top XX%
    of highly profitable customers and squeeze them for licence fees.

    _If_ that is true, then someone should remind them there are
    alternatives,
    this is not z/OS (with its unique ecosystem), and that the next
    generation
    of people will become very familiar with those alternatives.

    IOW, _if_ the rumours are true, then this would appear to be a
    short-term
    approach, and they should be reminded exactly why (for example) Linux
    came
    to crush the commercial Unix ecosystem.

    I find it difficult to see the point in that acquisition and
    such a strategy.

    Broadcom paid 61 B$ for a VMWare that had a profit of 1.3 B$
    in 2023.

    Those numbers does not work.

    And VMWare's core business are facing serious challenges.

    A lot of workload are moving to AWS/Azure/GCP that does not use
    ESXi.

    Even some of the on-prem workload is moving to k8s on bare metal
    instead of k8s on ESXi VM.

    If Broadcom had acquired VMWare years ago for peanuts (EMC
    paid 625 M$ for VMWare 20 years ago!), then a philosophy of
    "this product is dying - let us reduce all investment to zero
    increase prices like crazy and milk the last profit out of
    the market" could make sense.

    But Broadcom need to recoup 61 B$. The "starve and milk"
    approach will not get them 61 B$.

    Mostly off-topic, but another crazy acquisition involving a company
    we know are heading to the court room (again):

    https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/hpe_autonomy_damages/

    Arne

    At least in the UK, we have a legal principle of caveat emptor, which
    implies HP should have dug deeper


    --
    Chris

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?=@21:1/5 to Chris Townley on Tue Feb 13 21:00:09 2024
    On 2/13/2024 7:17 PM, Chris Townley wrote:
    On 13/02/2024 14:52, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
    Mostly off-topic, but another crazy acquisition involving a company
    we know are heading to the court room (again):

    https://www.theregister.com/2024/02/12/hpe_autonomy_damages/

    At least in the UK, we have a legal principle of caveat emptor, which
    implies HP should have dug deeper

    I am sure some very highly paid lawyers will be involved
    in this case.

    But my understanding as a non-lawyer is that caveat emptor
    does not apply if seller has actively concealed
    information.

    Arne

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  • From Lawrence D'Oliveiro@21:1/5 to Chris Townley on Wed Feb 14 01:26:01 2024
    On Wed, 14 Feb 2024 00:18:11 +0000, Chris Townley wrote:

    Also KVM works well, which of course is free software

    KVM is the core Linux building block for virtualization. I suspect a lot
    of other products get built with KVM as their foundation.

    Sometimes, you don’t need full-on virtualization; a container-based technology can be useful for many workloads, and is lighter weight.
    Linux does not actually have the concept of a “container” as a built-in primitive: instead, these are built out of lower-level pieces, namely namespaces and cgroups. Examples of these container technologies are LXC, systemd-nspawn, and of course Docker.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?=@21:1/5 to John H. Reinhardt on Wed Feb 14 08:55:17 2024
    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.

    VMWare Player seems like a better fit. And it is still free for
    personal non-commercial use (similar to VMS community license
    program).

    Arne

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From John H. Reinhardt@21:1/5 to Simon Clubley on Wed Feb 14 07:17:13 2024
    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).

    Simon.


    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.

    --
    John H. Reinhardt

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  • From Craig A. Berry@21:1/5 to John H. Reinhardt on Wed Feb 14 07:56:48 2024
    On 2/14/24 7:17 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).

    Simon.


    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.

    I think VMWare Player/Fusion are still available for now and are not
    affected by the ESXi announcement.

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Chris Townley@21:1/5 to John H. Reinhardt on Wed Feb 14 14:07:56 2024
    On 14/02/2024 13:17, 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).

    Simon.


    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.


    I use KVM on Ubuntu, on a NUC12

    --
    Chris

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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  • From Dave Froble@21:1/5 to Craig A. Berry on Wed Feb 14 09:51:33 2024
    On 2/14/2024 8:56 AM, Craig A. Berry wrote:
    On 2/14/24 7:17 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).

    Simon.


    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.

    I think VMWare Player/Fusion are still available for now and are not
    affected by the ESXi announcement.


    I am curious, what are the restrictions on the use of the previously free edition of ESXi? Are those who already have a copy allowed to offer copies to others?

    Based upon history, does anyone think that Broadcom will actually make improvements to the product? What's there today just may be "as good as it gets".

    --
    David Froble Tel: 724-529-0450
    Dave Froble Enterprises, Inc. E-Mail: davef@tsoft-inc.com
    DFE Ultralights, Inc.
    170 Grimplin Road
    Vanderbilt, PA 15486

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  • From =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=C3=B8j?=@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 14 09:26:45 2024
    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.

    VMWare Player seems like a better fit. And it is still free for
    personal non-commercial use (similar to VMS community license
    program).

    Otherwise the release notes at:
    https://docs.vmssoftware.com/vsi-openvms-x86-64-v922-release-notes/
    list what VSI has tested.

    Arne

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  • From Hans Bachner@21:1/5 to Dave Froble on Wed Feb 14 19:27:13 2024
    Dave Froble schrieb am 14.02.2024 um 15:51:
    [snip]

    I am curious, what are the restrictions on the use of the previously
    free edition of ESXi?  Are those who already have a copy allowed to
    offer copies to others?

    Based upon history, does anyone think that Broadcom will actually make improvements to the product?  What's there today just may be "as good as
    it gets".

    A detailed discussion can be found on <https://www.nakivo.com/blog/free-vmware-esxi-restrictions-limitations/>

    TL;DR

    - No Official VMware Support
    - Max 8 vCPU per Each VM
    - Cannot Be Managed with vCenter
    - vStorage API Is Not Available

    Beyond that, this article also looks interesting: <https://borncity.com/win/2023/12/10/broadcom-plans-to-sell-vmware-end-user-computing-and-carbon-black-businesses/>

    I'm curious how long VMware Workstation/Fusion will survive...

    Hans.

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  • From John H. Reinhardt@21:1/5 to John H. Reinhardt on Wed Feb 14 19:55:07 2024
    On 2/14/2024 7:51 PM, John H. Reinhardt wrote:
    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




    And the other nice thing I forgot about ESXi is that you don't have to install a Linux distro and then make sure it's optimized for the hypervisor. It's all built in.

    --
    John H. Reinhardt

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)
  • From John H. Reinhardt@21:1/5 to All on Wed Feb 14 19:51:58 2024
    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

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)