Esxi versions free#

Well, you will not get a rich set of hypervisor features in the free version, of course. The good thing is that VMware is very loyal to ESXi licensing. With all that said, it becomes clear why you are buying from VMware at some point, even though you are potentially eligible to go with one of those free licenses. On the other hand, the latter has no time limits but lacks the very cool features of a hypervisor. The first has a time limit of 60 days but provides all the features of the ESXi. The thing is that both have several limitations that make them unsuitable for production use. There are two free versions of ESXi: Evaluation and Free. VMware ESXi is a bare-metal hypervisor providing a virtualization layer that abstracts essential hardware resources (CPU, network, memory, and storage) and distributes them to resource consumers (Virtual Machines). So, let me introduce you to VMware ESXi and how it is free.

Esxi versions code#

Developed by Christophe Fillot and Mike Hommey and available as source code download at the vmfs-tools page or the Debian vmfs-tools and Ubuntu vmfs-tools packages.If we only answer this question with вЂњyesвЂќ, we havenвЂ™t done anything.

Vmfs-tools supports more VMFS features and read only VMFS mounts through the standard Linux VFS and the FUSE framework. It allows features like offloaded backups of virtual machines hosted on VMware ESXi hosts up to VMFSv3.

Esxi versions driver#

Open source implementations fluidOps Command Line Tool ДЄ Java open source VMFS driver enables read-only access to files and folders on partitions formatted with the Virtual Machine File System (VMFS) is developed and maintained by fluid Operations AG. This has been raised to 130,690 files (using GPT) on VMFS5

There is also a limit of approx 30,720 files (using MBR) on a single VMFS3 datastore.

VMFS5 uses 1 MB blocks throughout (with block suballocation for small files), and has a file size limit of 62 TB, though the VMDK size is restricted to 2 TB - 512 B in ESXi versions earlier than 5.5 due to a limitation in the version of SCSI emulated.

VMFS3 limits files to 262,144 (2 18) blocks, which translates to 256 GB for 1 MB block sizes (the default) up to 2 TB for 8 MB block sizes.

In vSphere 5.1, this limit is increased to 32 with the introduction of a new locking mechanism. This affects the scalability of linked clones sharing the same base image.

In VMFS3 and VMFS5 prior to vSphere 5.1, the maximum number of hosts which can share a read-only file is 8.

Maximum LUN size of 2 TB as of VMFS3 and 64 TB as of VMFS5.

Maximum filesystem size is 50 TB as of VMFS3, and 62 TB as of VMFS5.

Can be shared with up to 64 ESXi Servers.

While present in previous versions automatic unmap was added to VMFS 6 allowing for automatic space reclamation requests which previously were manually actioned.

Recover virtual machines faster and more reliably in the event of server failure with Distributed Journaling.

Optimize virtual machine I/O with adjustable volume, disk, file and block sizes.

With ESX/ESXi4, VMFS volumes can also be expanded using LUN expansion.

Add or delete an ESXi server from a VMware VMFS volume without disrupting other ESXi servers.

file name change, file size change, etc.) SCSI reservations are only implemented when logical unit number (LUN) metadata is updated (e.g.

Allows access by multiple ESXi servers at the same time by implementing per-file locking.

Optimization include aggressive caching with for the DAS use case, a stripped lock down lock manager and faster formats. Leaf level VSAN objects reside directly on VMFS-L volumes that are composed from server side direct attached storage (DAS).

VMFS-L is the underlying file system for VSAN-1.0.

It supports 512 emulation (512e) mode drives. Notably, it raises the extent limit to 64 TB and the file size limit to 62 TB, though vSphere versions earlier than 5.5 are limited to VMDKs smaller than 2 TB. Notably, it introduces directory structure in the filesystem.

VMFS3 is used by ESX Server v3.x and vSphere 4.x.

VMFS2 is a flat filesystem with no directory structure.

VMFS2 is used by ESX Server v2.x and (in a limited capacity) v3.x.

VMFS1 is a flat filesystem with no directory structure. It did not feature the cluster filesystem properties and was used only by a single server at a time.

VMFS0 can be reported by ESX Server v6.5 as a VMFS version when a datastore is unmounted from a cluster/host.

There are six (plus one for vSAN) versions of VMFS, corresponding with ESX/ESXi Server product releases.