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We were using ESXi on 200+ nodes primarily for PCIe passthrough about five years ago and it worked great. I believe that was years before Proxmox added it to their product, but could've also used KVM. It just didn't work as stable as ESXi back then. I'm sure it has improved over time. I still have ESXi running for some firewalls with pfSense. I guess I either keep using them or start looking some alternatives for the future.
I have been using Xen way before VMWare and I have had no reason to switch to ESX even when the company tried to push it on me.
Yes, XenServer has been a good upgrade, then Citrix tried to make it into a kind of ESXi, then XCP came, Citrix relented, but even so, XCP-ng is still going strong.
Proxmox is good, I use it all the time for hobbist projects, but when you need a really strong cluster for a cloud, I think XenServer/XCP-ng is probably still the way, especially with CloudStack.
https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/2107518?lang=en_US
Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End of General Availability).
https://blogs.vmware.com/cloud-foundation/2024/01/22/vmware-end-of-availability-of-perpetual-licensing-and-saas-services/
Lists of products that are end of life and which are part of the new subscription model or available as addons.
if they forcefully add NSX and Aria to packages, it might be insanely expensive compared to old pricing.
VVF package does not have NSX, so it might be the only reasonably priced one.
Seriously XCP-ng is very underrated
it has all the enterprise features for free , plus their command line tool xe and their API is extremely well done
the only downside of the xen world is that in terms of disk performance, size and even control they are behind but there are always ways around that
I think we are the largest xcp-ng deployment in LET if i am not mistaken
almost all our servers are based on it except very few
That is a general problem with Xen, but I get what you mean.
Compared to VMWare, I gather Xen has a 2-3% extra overhead. It might matter in the monster servers of today.
I have watched Xen running behind in terms of performance for the last decade or more, it is sad, but I guess the price is worth paying, the hardware is cheaper than the licensing and it does the same thing, just at a higher virtualization cost.
I initially hoped there would be some progress regarding the overhead, they tried things, but it didn't pan out as I expected and I am sure many other people were disappointed.
There is no perfect product and I don't expect one, I prefer choice and free over a few % of performance.
I can't seem to get one for 8.0. Only the trial, not the free ESXi that I am used to. I fully expect to lose access to the downloads after the 60 days.
No key either.
But maybe I'm just an idiot and can't figure out their website.
ESXi is/was a free product, so there shouldn't be any trials per se. I believe the key you have is for full usage on any number of servers. If you install it and don't add a key, you'll have a 'trial period' though.
That is the way it has been in the past, including my access to v7.. v8 does not appear this way.
I couldn't even access the ISO downloads until I agreed to a 60 day trial of vSphere.
It seems XCP-ng getting some media light due to demise of ESXi. I hope they won't end up being bought out.
I generally google "esxi lab keys" and Google does most of the work.
Small biz who use vmware with a few nodes will be hurting from price changes. Over the past 2-3 years I have seen many of my colo clients shift away from vmware.
What have you seen them move to the most?
HyperV mostly since most of the colo people are windows hosts
That will never be a problem with the code in the open.