On 2017-10-13 01:06 PM, Giles Orr wrote: > On 13 October 2017 at 12:36, Digimer <[email protected] > <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > On 2017-10-13 12:33 PM, Giles Orr via talk wrote: > > I'm having some trouble figuring out the licensing on VMware's ESXi. > > It's proprietary - I've got that and I don't love it. But Packt's > > "DevOps Automation Cookbook" (2015) is essentially saying it's free to > > use, and implying - I don't think they ever stated it outright - that > > it's permanently free. But on VMware's site ( > > > https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7AFCC64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html > > <https://docs.vmware.com/en/VMware-vSphere/6.0/com.vmware.vsphere.vcenterhost.doc/GUID-7AFCC64B-7D94-48A0-86CF-8E7EF55DF68F.html> > > ) it reads as if it's a 60 day evaluation, period. > > > > Which brings up a few questions: > > - is ESXi technically good enough that I should be pursuing this at > > all? (I'm currently using Proxmox. It works, I'm not entirely happy > > with it, but I'll probably stick with it because of the licensing which > > is more open source friendly) > > - is ESXi permanently free? and can you get security updates if you're > > on the free licensing? > > - is there anything appalling in their license? eg. Facebook's recent > > license clauses "using our products means you can't ever sue us for > > anything" (point applies even though they fixed it) > > > > Thanks. > > What are your design priorities? > > > That's a very broad question and I'm not entirely sure what you're > asking for details on, but I'll explain what I'm using it for and hope > that covers it.
Availability, performance or maximum resource utilization efficiency. > A lot of my work (the employment type, not the personal type) involves > remote VMs. I have a i5 NUC at home with 16G of RAM that I've used > Proxmox on to turn it into a miniature VM farm. This is useful both to > learn about how VMs are handled, and for me to make better use of the > NUC by splitting it into multiple experimental machines that aren't all > on at the same time. > > So - home use. The Virtual Machine Manager (virt-manager) is a great front-end for KVM/qemu VMs, and it is a totally open source platform. The performance of KVM/qemu is great, and windows guests have signed drivers for the virtio network and storage drivers (making them very performant). > And part of the reason that ESXi sounded interesting is that it seems to > be more scriptable from the command line for managing VMs - although I > freely admit I haven't investigated that worth a damn on Proxmox. I'd > probably be pissed to lose Proxmox's graphical interface: I know ESXi > has vSphere, but I probably wouldn't install that. The 'virsh' command line tool is extremely powerful for managing KVM/qemu guests. Our Anvil! platform is basically a customized front-end for virsh and there hasn't been an issue before we couldn't resolve. I think both proxmox and VMWare are overkill and not really aimed at what it sounds like you're after. -- Digimer Papers and Projects: https://alteeve.com/w/ "I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops." - Stephen Jay Gould --- Talk Mailing List [email protected] https://gtalug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
