Free for home use, but requires specific hardware (AHCI mode for SATA SSDs). It is a KVM-based hypervisor with a rich UI (similar to VMware vCenter).
ESXi 8 has aggressive license validation. Even if you boot the system offline, if it ever touches the internet (to download patches, drivers, or NTP time sync), it will call home. When the license fails verification, it will:
The VMware User Group (VMUG) offers an Evaluation License for members. For roughly $210 USD/year, you get 365-day licenses for vSphere Enterprise Plus (including ESXi 8), vCenter, and VSAN. This is 100% legal for home labs and non-production training.
If you have decided to go legitimate for your business, here is the 2024 workflow:
Limitation: You can only extend the evaluation mode twice (total of 180 days) before a fresh reinstall of ESXi is required to reset the clock.
Effective management of VMware ESXi 8 license keys is crucial for maintaining compliance and optimizing resource utilization:
For many years, VMware offered a free, perpetual license for ESXi (capped at 8 vCPUs per VM). However, Broadcom (the current owner of VMware) discontinued the free perpetual license in early 2024.
As of now: