VMWare ESXi is FREE!

[Lazybones]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/07/28/vmware_esxi_free/

It is just the bare bones, but performance wise it should be MUCH better than running VMware Server on top of windows or linux.

Nice to see VMWare being so aggressive with new Microsoft and Open source options coming to market.

All I can say is that our VmWare cluster at work has been amazing, it is both easy to use and reliable.

[Melbosa]

It may be free but the catch is the supported hardware.  In this version most of us don't have the hardware accessible.  But I hear they may release a version with IHC9 support which would greatly open up the support hardware list.

[Tom]

Lazy, is it possible to get ESXi to work without buying a SCSI, SAN or SAS storage controller? zdnet seems to suggest buying one.

[Lazybones]

Here is a guide to put it on a bootable USB key http://www.lamnet.nl/wordpress/?p=35

It supports most SATA controllers for local storage as well.

The early beta releases we received came on USB sticks and we ran it on a dell laptop with a SATA hard drive.

[Melbosa]

Hmmm that surprises me.... the supported hardware listing was very limited in their documentation when it came to SATA controllers.

[Lazybones]

Hmmm that surprises me.... the supported hardware listing was very limited in their documentation when it came to SATA controllers.

Ok, maybe most is the wrong word... but we did have it running on a dell laptop. I guess this isn't as useful for personal use as I thought, however as a whole it is nice that they made it free.

[Mr. Analog]

I was surprised by this news earlier this week as well.

Good stuff!

[Melbosa]

It is free to compete with Microsoft's Hypervisor and to introduce companies to ESX easily and cheaply.  Home use; I hope this becomes more viable.