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izy
MVM
join:2000-09-21
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izy to Badger3k

MVM

to Badger3k

Re: HW Verify: ESXi at home...

said by Badger3k:

ESXi is free. It's only pay if you need clustering, HA, storage motion, vCenter, etc.

And there is a 60 day trial for the full vSphere suite.

»www.vmware.com/products/ ··· res.html
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns

Premium Member

said by izy:

said by Badger3k:

ESXi is free. It's only pay if you need clustering, HA, storage motion, vCenter, etc.

And there is a 60 day trial for the full vSphere suite.

»www.vmware.com/products/ ··· res.html

what are you going to do at the end of 60 days?
AsherN
Premium Member
join:2010-08-23
Thornhill, ON

AsherN

Premium Member

said by tomdlgns:

said by izy:

said by Badger3k:

ESXi is free. It's only pay if you need clustering, HA, storage motion, vCenter, etc.

And there is a 60 day trial for the full vSphere suite.

»www.vmware.com/products/ ··· res.html

what are you going to do at the end of 60 days?

You get the key for the free edition. If you have only one host, other thsan the backup APIs, and some hardware limitations, there's no reason to pay
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns

Premium Member

said by AsherN:

You get the key for the free edition. If you have only one host, other thsan the backup APIs, and some hardware limitations, there's no reason to pay

i was referring to the 60 day trial. it can't be free if there is a 60 day trial.
AsherN
Premium Member
join:2010-08-23
Thornhill, ON

AsherN

Premium Member

said by tomdlgns:

said by AsherN:

You get the key for the free edition. If you have only one host, other thsan the backup APIs, and some hardware limitations, there's no reason to pay

i was referring to the 60 day trial. it can't be free if there is a 60 day trial.

When you install the software, it goes in trial mode, with all of the features. At the end of the trial, you need to install a license. One of the licenses is free.

Note that the actual hypervisor is not licensed, It's the vSphere software that is. The license opens up features. If you apply the free license, it imposes a few restrictions on the hypervisor. Most notables is that the host is limited to 32GB of physical RAM, and the backup APIs are disabled.
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns

Premium Member

said by AsherN:

said by tomdlgns:

said by AsherN:

You get the key for the free edition. If you have only one host, other thsan the backup APIs, and some hardware limitations, there's no reason to pay

i was referring to the 60 day trial. it can't be free if there is a 60 day trial.

When you install the software, it goes in trial mode, with all of the features. At the end of the trial, you need to install a license. One of the licenses is free.

Note that the actual hypervisor is not licensed, It's the vSphere software that is. The license opens up features. If you apply the free license, it imposes a few restrictions on the hypervisor. Most notables is that the host is limited to 32GB of physical RAM, and the backup APIs are disabled.

ok, now i am confused.

esxi is free to use with limited features. i signed up for it and i got a license, i have yet to install it, but i plan on doing that soon. i assume that is free, limited, forever, correct?

assuming that is right, a link was posted for an additional package with a 60 day trial. that is what i was referring to (assuming i was right about esxi being free, forever).

the last thing i want to do is install esxi, with limited features, and have to figure something out at the 60 day mark.

thanks for the info, i just want to make sure i am understanding it correctly.
JoelC707
Premium Member
join:2002-07-09
Lanett, AL

JoelC707

Premium Member

At the end of those 60 days you either load in that free license you got when you signed up or you pay for one of the higher tier packages. You're free to install that free license as soon as you complete the ESXi install if you like, nothing says you have to wait the 60 days to install it unless you want to test out the full feature set.
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns

Premium Member

said by JoelC707:

At the end of those 60 days you either load in that free license you got when you signed up or you pay for one of the higher tier packages. You're free to install that free license as soon as you complete the ESXi install if you like, nothing says you have to wait the 60 days to install it unless you want to test out the full feature set.

right.

but i was quoted regarding my question about vsphere 69 day trial, not esxi (the limited version that is free with the license).
AsherN
Premium Member
join:2010-08-23
Thornhill, ON

AsherN

Premium Member

said by tomdlgns:

said by JoelC707:

At the end of those 60 days you either load in that free license you got when you signed up or you pay for one of the higher tier packages. You're free to install that free license as soon as you complete the ESXi install if you like, nothing says you have to wait the 60 days to install it unless you want to test out the full feature set.

right.

but i was quoted regarding my question about vsphere 69 day trial, not esxi (the limited version that is free with the license).

At the end of the trial, it needs to be licensed. Can be the free license.
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns

Premium Member

got it, maybe i am still missing something. there is esxi and vsphere.

esxi- 60 days full features, after 60 days, type in free license, which gives you esxi limited, forever.

vsphere- additional options, good for 60 days...after that, you would pay for it if you want to continue using it.

correct?
AsherN
Premium Member
join:2010-08-23
Thornhill, ON

AsherN

Premium Member

said by tomdlgns:

got it, maybe i am still missing something. there is esxi and vsphere.

esxi- 60 days full features, after 60 days, type in free license, which gives you esxi limited, forever.

vsphere- additional options, good for 60 days...after that, you would pay for it if you want to continue using it.

correct?

No. It's sometimes mind warping.

ESXi is the name of the hypervisor. It's what you load on the host. And from the host you can't really do anything with it.

From the host you can download a client used to control. That client is the basis for vSphere. If you don't license the client, all features are active for 60 days. Once you apply a license, the client only shows you the features enabled for that host. One of those licenses is free. It will not let you apply to a host that has more than 32GB RAM and 2 CPU.
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns

Premium Member

ok, i get what you are saying, maybe i didnt explain/type it out properly.

the last explanation makes sense.

thanks.

aa2k
join:2000-10-06
Damascus, MD

aa2k

Member

Click for full size
Web GUI
You dont need to download the client separately if you dont want, once you install ESXi (vsphere), at the end of the installation you will presented with an ip address and some other options.
With that IP address open a browser from another computer, appoint it to the IP address and get to the We GUI interface, you can download the client directly from there (it will download directly from VMWare.com, this is just a quick link to it), and some other stuff... see attached.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

Premium Member

I suggest saving the client exe to somewhere incase your internet isn't great and/or you have other computers to use to admin the host from.
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns to aa2k

Premium Member

to aa2k
said by aa2k:

You dont need to download the client separately if you dont want, once you install ESXi (vsphere), at the end of the installation you will presented with an ip address and some other options.
With that IP address open a browser from another computer, appoint it to the IP address and get to the We GUI interface, you can download the client directly from there (it will download directly from VMWare.com, this is just a quick link to it), and some other stuff... see attached.

i have worked with vmware, but it was with a licensed copy that had everything. i just wanted to make sure i was understanding the trial stuff.
tomdlgns

tomdlgns to DarkLogix

Premium Member

to DarkLogix
said by DarkLogix:

I suggest saving the client exe to somewhere incase your internet isn't great and/or you have other computers to use to admin the host from.

good advice. i always make a folder with sites, user names, part of the password, make notes if it is something i think i might forget, certain files, etc...

good to have in a jam.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

Premium Member

Ya if your internet is ever down (gasps) and you need to install the client on a new computer doing this comes in handy.

Drex
Beer...The other white meat.
Premium Member
join:2000-02-24
Not There

Drex to AsherN

Premium Member

to AsherN
Or you reinstall everything and your 60 days starts over. At least in my experience that's what has happened.

Save your VM's off to your local PC, reinstall ESXi and vSphere, import your VMs back in. Yeah it sucks to have to do it every 60 days, but licensing VMware ain't cheap.

As for my "lab", I built 2 systems from scratch:
2 x ASUS M4A78LT-M AM3 AMD 760G HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard

4 x G.SKILL Ripjaws Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 1333 (PC3 10666) Desktop Memory Model

2 x AMD Athlon II X4 620 Propus 2.6GHz Socket AM3 95W Quad-Core Processor ADX620WFGIBOX

Each system has a 500GB internal drive. I have a Synology NAS with two 500GB drives in RAID 0 that are connected via iSCSI to my ESXi hosts. For the most part it gets the job done. The CPUs are a bit outdated (about 3 years old), but processing power isn't that big a deal.

To summarize each host has a quad core AMD Athlon II X4 & 16GB's of ram. Each host also has no less than 3 Intel Gigabit NICs. I wanted the ability to play around with failover and such.
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns

Premium Member

said by Drex:

Or you reinstall everything and your 60 days starts over. At least in my experience that's what has happened.

Save your VM's off to your local PC, reinstall ESXi and vSphere, import your VMs back in. Yeah it sucks to have to do it every 60 days, but licensing VMware ain't cheap.

but if i dont care about HA and some other features, i can continue to use the free, limited system, correct?

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

Premium Member

said by tomdlgns:

said by Drex:

Or you reinstall everything and your 60 days starts over. At least in my experience that's what has happened.

Save your VM's off to your local PC, reinstall ESXi and vSphere, import your VMs back in. Yeah it sucks to have to do it every 60 days, but licensing VMware ain't cheap.

but if i dont care about HA and some other features, i can continue to use the free, limited system, correct?

Yes

I have 2 production 5.1 hosts running like this.
They're just DL380's (one G5 and one g6) you only need the paid key for the cool features.
tomdlgns
Premium Member
join:2003-03-21

tomdlgns to DarkLogix

Premium Member

to DarkLogix
said by DarkLogix:

I suggest saving the client exe to somewhere incase your internet isn't great and/or you have other computers to use to admin the host from.

yeah, another reason for this is that it appears to be a throttled download. downloading at ~200kb right now.

yup, save the exe.

DarkLogix
Texan and Proud
Premium Member
join:2008-10-23
Baytown, TX

DarkLogix

Premium Member

I much preferred the way it was done is esxi 3.5 (the client was actually on the host for download)

But now its always on vmware's site, so each time you do an update that brings a new version of the client you'll have to download it again.
Expand your moderator at work
s_becker
join:2013-04-05

s_becker to tomdlgns

Member

to tomdlgns

Re: HW Verify: ESXi at home...

/deleted