There’s been a lot of coverage about VMware’s announcement that VMware ESXi would be free starting Monday, July 28, 2008. More than a couple of people asked me why I haven’t said anything about it yet, and to be honest it was because I was waiting until I could offer something more than just “Hey, ESXi will be free!”
I’m still not so sure that I have anything valuable to add beyond what has already been discussed extensively elsewhere on the Internet, but I thought I would at least weigh in on the subject.
First, I’m not surprised. Informal discussions I’d had with various VMware resources had hinted that this was on the way; besides, it’s the natural response to a major competitor who is, for all intents and purposes, releasing their product for free. So this move isn’t surprising in the least.
Second, I would be surprised if this was only Maritz’ doing. I suspect that Diane Greene had this plan in the works for months before her sudden departure. Seems like I saw mention somewhere of a confirmation of this, but I can’t find it now. If anyone knows of such a confirmation, I’d appreciate a link in the comments.
Third, you have to remember that VMware is only releasing ESXi for free. They’re not releasing VirtualCenter for free. You’ll still need VirtualCenter and VI3 Enterprise licenses in order to do stuff like VMotion, Storage VMotion, VMware DRS, VMware HA, VMware DPM, etc. Just like Microsoft, whose System Center Virtual Machine Manager and the rest of the System Center suite will be “paid-for” products, VMware will continue to charge for VirtualCenter. However, keep in mind that the APIs that VirtualCenter uses are widely available, so there’s nothing stopping anyone from writing their own free (perhaps open source?) replacement for VirtualCenter. Somehow, I can’t see that happening with SCVMM or any of the other members of the System Center suite.
This move makes ESXi the “gateway drug” (pardon the comparison) to full-blown VMware Infrastructure. Get the light stuff for free and get you hooked, then charge you for the heavy stuff. It’s a tried-and-true practice that almost every software vendor out there uses. In my opinion, the arrival of this model to the virtualization market is merely another indicator of the market’s maturity. This move will begin to shake out the virtualization wannabes who don’t have the strength or stamina to duke it out with the bigger players.
Tags: ESX, ESXi, Virtualization, VMware
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virtualization.info confirmed a few days ago that Diane Greene had free ESXi in the works before her departure. http://www.virtualization.info/2008/07/vmware-to-release-esx-3i-for-free-next.html
Jas
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Alessandro mentioned it on his blog that Diane Greene was responsible for it prior to her departure: http://www.virtualization.info/2008/07/vmware-to-release-esx-3i-for-free-next.html
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Hi Scott,
How do you see ESXi “the light stuff” and ESX “the heavy stuff”?
Isn’t the functionality between ESX and ESXi the same? I think ESXi’s approach is a much better one compared to the full blown ESX because it takes away the service console (hassle of configuring (deploying) stuff, has less patches, etc.)
I wonder what your (and anyone else’s) opinion is (are) one this?
Regards
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Henk,
That’s a fair question. You are correct in that the core functionality between ESXi and ESX is essentially the same. The difference now is that ESXi is free, and ESX won’t be. So, VMware will use ESXi (the free hypervisor by itself) to draw you in and get you liking their virtualization functionality, then entice you to buy VI3 Enterprise licenses (which include ESX) to add stuff like VMotion, Storage VMotion, DRS, VMware HA, etc.
As for which approach I prefer–ESX vs. ESXi–for now, I like ESX. Perhaps it’s just a “comfort zone” sort of thing; I don’t know. Once I’ve had a greater opportunity to work with ESXi, I’m sure that I will feel more comfortable with it.
Thanks for reading, and for commenting!
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Ok so this is nothing new with VMware. It’s a pricing strategy deployed before with GSX and VMware Player to fend off open source competitors. Predictable move i’d say, that addresses the marketing marketing that Hyper-V would have lower starting price.
The real question is who’s acquisition costs will be lower.
Forrester says it’s Hyper-V’s but from a maturity standpoint the premium VMware commands may worth the additional features.
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Thanks for your reply Scott!
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Hi,
It’s funny that esxi is free now, because i have a esx business proposal before me from recently!
heheWe are a small company that only want to leverage virtualization for a small number of vm’s. not yet on multiple physical servers..
My question is, should we buy esx std (2500 euro’s) or should we give esxi a try…
We are running a domain controller, exchange, some small internal websites and some other small application servers..
It’s not a complex environment and when looking at the differences at http://www.vmware.com/products/esxi/uses.html i ask myself if we need custom scripting, hardware monitoring agents…
The only thing that would we could use is the backup option perhaps.. we have a new shared storage device (iscsi) and backup our machines normally with backup exec and normal backup agents, are other backup methodes really that necessary…
Thnx in advance!
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Without knowing all the details and the particulars of your environment, I can’t really make a solid recommendation. It sounds like ESXi would be a good fit for you, but I’d really suggest that you find a good VMware partner and work with them to evaluate your needs and the appropriate product to meet those needs.
In most cases, it is possible to continue to use “traditional” backup methods for virtual machines, so it sounds like–based on the information provided–that you should be able to continue down the same path. Again, the best bet is to find a trusted partner to help you determine that for sure.
Good luck!
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To repeat Scott’s comments; while ESXi is essentially ESX; there’s a number of things that are just downright difficult to do in ESXi.
One such thing would be mass provisioning of systems. I’d shoot myself if I were deploying 40 servers with ESXi and had to click through to enable vmotion on 40 different vmkernel port groups.
RCLI provides some of this functionality but it’s ugly and very incomplete. You still can’t set things like NIC failover policy or enable vmotion on a vmkernel interface.
You also quite tragically; don’t have access to vmkfstools which for most users may not be a big deal but for me it’s a deal breaker.
That said; ESXi is a fantastic product and the management tools will only get better. I’ve actually got a number of clients on a shoestring budget that will now get a serious taste of virtualization.
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Hi all!
A question: if ESXi doesn’t include Service Console, how can i manage the server? (i mean, for example, setting up new virtual guest). Do i have to buy VI Client also if i manage ESX locally?
Thanks! -
Max,
I believe (I could be wrong) the VI Client is free, and you can use it to connect to an ESXi host to manage it.
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I think there are permutations that need a little more thought with the “ESXi as gateway drug” approach. Although it is entirely possible that I have missed something — and I’d be delighted to have it pointed out to me — it seems that this doesn’t go quite far enough to compete with Hyper-V.
For example, if I am a sw development shop partnered with both VMware and Microsoft, which hypervisor will give me a simple data protection implementation for the lowest cost.
I get win2k8 and Hyper-V for the cost of my ms dev license. But, hey, I get ESXi for free. Wait a minute, how do I back it up? Well, with Hyper-V I can use VSS and get something reasonably equivalent (”equivalent” is arguable, I know) to ESX service console backup as long as my backup software can talk to the Hyper-V VSS writer. At least, it looks that way on paper.
With ESXi there is no console so I have to run backup clients in each vm. Or spring for VCB (an add-on for which I still can’t find a price) and deploy shared storage and a proxy backup host.
But, if I add the full cost of a win2k8 license the ESXi solution starts to work again. Though many companies I’ve worked with already have paid for Windows licenses and just use up part of that already budgeted allotment when they deploy a server. So, the equation starts to shift back in favor of the Windows solution again.
I figure I must be missing something obvious. Can anyone please point it out to me?
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Brian,
Good questions. Have a look at this blog post by Mike D:
http://mikedatl.typepad.com/mikedvirtualization/2008/07/esx-35i-for-fre.html
He goes through some cost analyses that may help clear things up for you.
My take is that either way, you’re going to pay Microsoft. The question becomes whether you want to use a virtualization solution that is tied to Microsoft, or whether you want to use a virtualization solution that is not tied to Microsoft. Either way, Microsoft *WILL* get paid for their Windows licenses.
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Sun is doing something very similar later in the summer if I remember correctly. They are releasing xVM server (similar to Hyper-V and ESX) for free, and also releasing their management suite, X Ops Center 2.0 (similar to VC and SCVMM) for free also.
I’m particularly excited for X Ops Center, because besides virtual machine management, there are a whole slew of other features. Sun has also been reportedly working with Microsoft on compatibility issues as well, so I am waiting to see how this all plays out.
As with VMware and Microsoft, Sun plans on making money off of support contracts and hardware sales of their servers.
For anyone interested (no, I’m not a Sun Sales rep, just a student
)
X Ops Center: http://www.sun.com/software/products/xvmopscenter/index.jspxVM Server:
http://www.openxvm.org/learn.html -
There are a few simple or free solutions for ESXi backup.
You can enable ssh and use ssh to copy/backup the VM files.
Enabling ssh is “unsupported” by vmware but it works and I use this method.If you have another machine that you can use for storage as a SAN,
setup some storage with NFS. You can then backup the files natively from the NFS host.-Marty-
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That is cool do you have a step by step guide on how to setup ssh? I will do this in a heart beat if it’s available. Right now what I’ve been doing is stopping the vm, and downloading it from the VI console to my NAS.
not an elegant solution at all -
Hi Scott.
A few weeks on, and we are using ESXi at my place of work, and i thought i would make a few comments, having tried out Hyper-V, VMWare Server 2 and ESXi.
ESXi gets my vote hands down every time, its sleeker and soooo much faster than the other 2 options. We were getting horrendous performance issues with Hyper-V and Server 2, not so with ESXi. There is, to my mind, only one draw back for a small company - the back up solutions. If someone could solve this (as in Marty’s post) to make it easy to backup the whole VM as you can do in Hyper-V and Server 2, then ESXi would rule the “free entry” market place in my humble opinion. And then, as the business grows or you eed to do more with your VM’s, upgrade. That is what we are planning to do.
if you are new to virtualisation technologies (as many people are), there is a whole mine field to be carefully explored, my advice?
Get ESXi and dip your toe. It does exactly what it says on the tin, its free, and if you can solve/live with the backup issues, then what a truly great bargain.
I wonder if many agree?
Great blog though my friend
Simon
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HI,
Can someone create the Nice HOW TO’s for Backup
Thanks
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From a quick scan of the comments, it doesn’t look like anyone has mentioned this. ESXi is ‘free’. For all intents and purposes ESX3.5 is just as free.
After a trial, you can only do read operations on your ESXi instance. No creation of VMs no starting/stopping. That will require a license of VMWare Infrastructure (~$1500). This is the same license required for ESX3.5.
This is basically just a ploy to trick people into relying on their product, after the trial the rug is pulled out. Kind of shady.
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MattK,
That behavior doesn’t sound normal. You should be able to get a non-expiring free license, not a trial license, that allows you to use almost all of the functionality of ESXi (not including VirtualCenter, of course). It sounds to me like you’re only using the trial license, which would behave just as you have described.
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MattK,
When you sign up on VMware’s website for ESXi and you get the link to download there should have been a license key at the top of the page. You need to put this into the ESXi console under configuration > Licensed Features > License Source. It should allow you to enter that serial number. From then on there will be no more “evaluation” mode.
Jason
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