![vmware esxi 5 free license limitations vmware esxi 5 free license limitations](http://www.virtualizationadmin.com/img/upl/image0021316028772222.gif)
I’ve been a passionate advocate of VMware, I’m VCP4 certified, and I teach courses that involve virtualization.
#Vmware esxi 5 free license limitations for free
If this is true it’s a huge blow the VMware community, and given that the vRAM allocation for the lowest paid license is 24 GB, the 8 GB limit for free seems about right. I too have fantasies of swimming through a vault of gold like Scrouge McDuck. Look, VMware, I know you’re in it to make a buck. I’d even accept the current core limit (or maybe bump it up to no more than 8?) But 8 GB? That’s a useless home lab. I’d accept a lot lower than that for a limit, I think even 32 GB would be reasonable (although it wouldn’t be reasonable for more than a few years).
![vmware esxi 5 free license limitations vmware esxi 5 free license limitations](https://pario.no/wp-content/uploads/2013/05/vmware-esxi-5-license-has-expired.png)
My current ESXi 4.1 free license: 256 GB limit and no more than 6 cores per CPU I get up to 6 cores on one CPU (I have a quad-core Intel Core i7) and up to 256 GB of RAM (my host has 18 GB). Below is a screenshot of my current ESXi license. The same went with the free version of EXSi.
![vmware esxi 5 free license limitations vmware esxi 5 free license limitations](https://www.vladan.fr/wp-content/uploads/images/ESXi-Free-License2.png)
We used to be able to increase RAM on our licensed ESX/ESXi hosts free to increase utilization. The licensing change for the paid version was bad enough. I’ll say that again: You can only use total of 8 GB of RAM for all your VMs on a host, no matter how much RAM it has. (Hint: you could build a cheap home system for about $1,000 that had 24 GB of RAM and 4 cores.)īut now, there are reports that VMware has made the free version of vSphere 5 Hypervisor (essentially it’s ESXi 5.0 renamed) absolutely useless by limiting the total amount of RAM to 8 GB per host.
#Vmware esxi 5 free license limitations how to
I was about to publish an article called “So You Want To Build an ESXi System?” on how to build a cheap home system. It’s fine for a lab environment, and perfect for a home lab where I need to test a lot of systems. The free license runs full blown ESXi with some limits, such as no vmotion, no HA, no vCenter integration, etc. Many techies such as myself have been running ESXi 4.1 in our home labs. Update 8/4/11: Woohoo! They’ve up’d it to 32 GB of vRAM allocation (and max 32 GB of physical RAM too). Update 9/8/11: Check out my guide for building/buying an inexpensive ESXi host