Broadcom has select
VMware Software (PC/Mac/Linux Download) for
Free for Personal Use when you log in to your account (
free to register).
Thanks to Community Member
ccsicecoke for posting this deal.
Available: - VMware Desktop Hypervisor products Fusion and Workstation are used by millions of people every day to run virtual machines on their Windows, Linux and Mac computers. They give users the ability to quickly and easily build "local virtual" environments to install other operating systems, learn about technology, build and test software, complex systems, browsers, apps, games, and more.
- Refer to the original post & forum comments for additional details & discussion.
- See VMware's blog post for additional information.
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This page has both links.
vSphere is a hypervisor. It's also not free anymore. https://blogs.vmware.co
Then, you can use the link I provided above to get to all the vmware software, locate the vmware workstation pro section there. When you click on it, it will have links to Workstation Pro downloads. There are two download links there for Windows and Linux marked "Free for Personal Use". Click on your link. It will force you to certify you are a resident of the US and that you will not export the software. Once you have done that, you can start the download.
Here is the Workstation Pro 17 blog with download links as well:
https://blogs.vmware.co
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Every business out there is trying different strategy, this is Broadcom's. And I am saying this as a VMware employee who moved to Broadcom after the recent acquisition.
VMware has been anti-customer since 2010. They've been following the EMC model, which is to charge as much as the market will bare. Only go after the high-end customers where money isn't an object.
My company used to deploy VMware ESX and ESXi to small and medium-sized businesses. In 2010, VMware decided to jumble their license costs for some reason that is still unclear, but it seemed to be only to get more money. I was mid-deployment at a client's site when this happened. We told the client our concerns and suggested they switch to a F/LOSS tool, KVM/QEMU for their needs. We looked at the new license costs and saw that annual support was going to double for them. If they needed/wanted any new licenses, those would be 50% more than what they'd already paid. Looked like a money grab as their business disappeared to me.
They had no Linux experience and didn't want to make the switch, so we finished the deployment with ESXi and vSphere.
A year later, at license renewal, they had sticker shock and called us. We migrated them to KVM/QEMU - $0 license costs, $0 maintenance costs. The client sent 2 guys in their IT department to Linux training - 1 week at a time, spread over 3 quarters. This was about the same cost of their VMware licenses the year before Now they do their own support and don't need us anymore. They've switched over 50% of their corporate servers to Linux. Also, $0, just hardware and time. The remaining MS-Windows systems are there because the software the business runs requires it. No Linux alternative for their niche industry. All file, print, VoIP, and backups are on Linux systems. Nearly everything is virtualized.
What shocked them most was that backup software was $0 too. With their VMware deployment, it was $1000 for the license and the backups took many hours. With the F/LOSS backup tools, they finished backing up all their servers in less than 1 hour nightly and were able to backup key directories on end-user's workstations too. These were all "pulled" versioned backups, so the clients don't have direct access to the backup storage, which is better for malware/cryptoware recovery.
Anyway, it's a trap. Depending on the OS you have, there are less evil options than stuff from VMware.
As much as I agree that vmware esx is nothing more than a cash grab at this point, there is nothing that comes close to reliability and support, espeically with 3rd party vendors (IE backup vendors.)
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XCP-NG is a lot closer (with Xen Orchestra) but both of those solutions require a lot more fuss than ESXi. If you're not a Linux expert, get ready for some learning.
XCP-NG is a lot closer (with Xen Orchestra) but both of those solutions require a lot more fuss than ESXi. If you're not a Linux expert, get ready for some learning.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhEE_QlI1MU [ceph.com]
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Clus...quiremen
https://docs.ceph.com/en/latest/g...-Dashboard
I'm a bit of a rook, but I'm pretty sure that clustering & HA has been built in for a while (I see clustering & HA in my web management portal) and CEPH (cluster storage fs/service) is available for paid subscribers. Again, worth tinkering with to see if it could work for you. It's getting very polished, and I don't mind that I have no vsphere client when the web interface works as well as it does.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IhEE_QlI1MU [ceph.com]
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Clus...quiremen
https://docs.ceph.com/en/latest/g...-Dashboard
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank mpetrovsky
Yes, it is free, works fine and I used to have it to run Linux on my company owned Windows laptop.
One day I installed some add-on, no problem. 6 month later Oracle came after our company and wanted 7-digits figure in backpay and fine for license violation.
Yes, somewhere on page 13 of 24 pages license agreement it says that this add-on required paid license. But who reads it?
Our community has rated this post as helpful. If you agree, why not thank mpetrovsky
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1. They are only interested in the business of the company's top 100 customers. All the rest could go to hell for all they were concerned.
2. They would refuse to do any single transaction that was under $100K. This mean small / medium and even some large businesses would not be able to transact their renewals and were left stranded without appropriate security updates.
3. They were extorting any of the large customers who were considering leaving Symantec, telling them if they were going to cancel the contract then Broadcom would also refuse to renew any other technology they relied on. Most of these largest enterprises have multiple products owned by Broadcom and it's very difficult to extract themselves from all of them simultaneously.
Needless to say, I quit as soon as possible.
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