I’m thinking about using free ESXi for a home lab environment, but curious what the limitations are. I’ve found most of them via google, and since I don’t plan to do backups it’s fine.

What’s ambiguous to me is if powercli is supported.

I don’t need to learn about virtualization as a platform at home so I just need something that works. I was previously responsible for a vSphere environment with over 2500 VMs on over 50 ESX hosts so I know vSphere well.

I need a place to host a bunch of linux VMs.

I’ve never touched proxmox but don’t really have interest in that unless someone can make a case for it. I almost think I’d be better off throwing windows 10 on the machine and using hypver-v if free esxi is going to be too useless

thoughts?

  • kY2iB3yH0mN8wI2h@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    I’ve found most of them via google,

    so what did you google for? a simple “powercli esxi free” gives all the answers.

    I need a place to host a bunch of linux VMs.

    so what would you use esxi API for then??

  • trekxtrider@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    My only beef with running free ESXI in a homelab is you need a raid controller if you want to use more than one drive. Proxmox and even TrueNas Scale both support ZFS and you can still use a raid controller in IT mode if you like.

    Just running TrueNas on old consumer hardware I have retired from gaming. I only run mirrored pairs, SSDs for VMs/container and HDDs for bulk storage.

  • ThatsNASt@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    8 vcpu per VM limitation, no backups via API, no vCenter management, moving VM’s between locations is a damn pain. You should get an NFR license from work if you’re a Vmware partner or have a VCP. Vmug advantage membership is also an option for $200 year and you get access to basically everything Vmware has to offer.