VMware ESXi 3.5 is now free
I was surprised to see VMware release ESX for free. Last night I read a short post about it on my Windows Mobile device.
What is VMware ESXi 3.5?
VMware ESXi 3.5 is the industry’s first, thin hypervisor integrated into server hardware. With its next-generation architecture embedded in hardware, VMware ESXi enables a plug-and-play data center with greater security, reliability and manageability. Requiring no installation and minimal configuration, VMware ESXi accelerates server deployment—IT organizations can take servers from boot-up to running production applications in virtual
machines in minutes.
Features I like
The feature list is impressive, and these features are now free. See the full feature list. These are the ones I like:
- Bare-metal architecture
- A small footprint of only 32MB
- Storage virtualization and iSCSI support
- VLAN tagging support
- Wake-on LAN
- 64-bit support
These are the features I missed in VMware Server, and I can now get them for free with ESXi.
Why is VMware making ESXi free?
VMware is making its standalone ESXi hypervisor available at no cost in order to help companies of all sizes experience the benefits of virtualization. Customers have shown tremendous interest in ESXi due to its innovative architecture, simple setup, and high performance. Allowing IT administrators to obtain VMware ESXi for free enables everyone to gain access to VMware's datacenter technology and prove its value in their own companies.
Read the VMware ESXi data sheet for more information, or get a free copy of VMware ESXi and try it yourself. I am running a couple of production hosts with VMware Server and will upgrade them very soon.