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Free ESXi limitations?

R

Red Squirrel

[H]F Junkie
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Nov 29, 2009
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Does the free ESXi have any limitations other than the lack of vmotion? Like does it limit how many VMs you can run, or anything of that sort?

I've been planing for a while now what I want my next environment to run on, and I'm thinking of either Linux KVM, or ESXi. ESXi has probably been more proven, while KVM does sound like it has more features for being free such as "vmotion".

Also with ESXi, can I still use a SAN and run the same VM on multiple servers? Like say I turn off the VM, can I just go on another server and turn it on? For my environment, that's good enough for me. I can afford a 5ish minute downtime to move a vm to another server.
 
Most of the limitations are in the license itself, not within the software. Be sure you read the license before deciding if it's right for you. If you host any clients or you charge people for resources on your server, you may need to license.
 
Ahh ok, but if I use it for at home for my own production stuff then I should be ok. Though it's something to keep in mind as I may possibly get into hosting at some point in time.
 
CEpeep said:
Most of the limitations are in the license itself, not within the software. Be sure you read the license before deciding if it's right for you. If you host any clients or you charge people for resources on your server, you may need to license.
Click to expand...

Iirc you can use free ESXi licence even if you use it for production. Paid licences only add nice features to esxi.
 
There are tons of limitations on the license. You can switch ESXi from free to any of the licensed versions with a key change.

A few limitations off the top of my head:

You cannot add the 'free' one to vCenter
Without vCenter there is no way to install and configure HA, so in turn that doesn't work
No vCenter = no vMotion, DRS... etc
The vast majority of APIs are read only, that prevents some other items from working (like jumbo frames)
Data Recovery (so backups are much harder), etc
 
I think there is also a limit on the number of CPU cores as well, and like a 32gb ram limit
 
6 physical cores/socket and 256gb total ram. 4 virtual cpus and iirc 256gb ram for vms.

You can use ghettovcb for daily vmdk backups and snapshots.
 
defuseme2k said:
There are tons of limitations on the license. You can switch ESXi from free to any of the licensed versions with a key change.

A few limitations off the top of my head:

You cannot add the 'free' one to vCenter
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you can add them into vCenter, you just can't do much of the cool stuff with them in there. I recently got some new VMware online & could have sworn I had one or 2 of the servers in vCenter on the free or trial licensing before I got things sorted out all the way.
 
Trial licensing, which lasts 60 days is completely unrestricted. The free license won't let the vCenter Agent install.
 
defuseme2k said:
Maybe you found a loophole. If you actually have the ESXi free key in place but successfully joined it to vCenter... MAYBE that is possible while using vCenter in eval mode. I've never tried that. Perhaps my understanding isn't correct, perhaps vCenter would be the blocking vehicle rather than ESXi itself. Actually, that makes sense.

http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/mi...nguage=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=1018275
Click to expand...

This is what I have always done.

I am building another ESXi host this week and going to have to use everything in eval mode to get full features. I will just have to reinstall every 60 days which is what I already do with vCenter Server.
 
The only limitation that might be an issue is the 8 GB RAM limitation for the free ESXi 5.0 version. There was some (or still is) quite commotion on the VMware forums.

My understanding from what I've read on the forum is that the 8 GB is for total hardware RAM. Others I've read are saying vRAM, or virtual RAM. It might be a problem if you are intending to run something like a ZFS server or similar.
 
Seriously hope it's 8GB vRAM, otherwise 5.0 will be in the crapper as far as I am concerned for SMB's or side projects.
 
There's no limit on the total amount of hardware RAM. The limitation is simply that the total amount of vRAM allocated across all running VMs cannot exceed 8GB per CPU socket.
 
1 cpu= 8gb vram
2 cpu= 16gb vram
and so on...

Major fail, this makes it so I can not deploy 5.0 in my new environment and will be sticking with 4.1.
 
Free version of ESXi CAN be added to a fully licensed or eval Vcenter, with no additional features added to the server, IIRC. I'll double check.
 
lopoetve said:
Free version of ESXi CAN be added to a fully licensed or eval Vcenter, with no additional features added to the server, IIRC. I'll double check.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd like to know that... I'd be surprised. The free version doesn't have the vCenter Agent license.
 
defuseme2k said:
Yeah I'd like to know that... I'd be surprised. The free version doesn't have the vCenter Agent license.
Click to expand...

No, but your VC license may (in some of the older ones, as I'm doing some digging) include the agent license. I don't think the most recent licensing schemes let you do it, but then how would eval mode of VC work with free hosts.

Blech. Lemme keep looking.
 
Hmm i think i am using the older version of ESXi 4.1 on my host. Not the update to it.
 
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