I hope by now you’ve heard the news — VMware ESXi is available free for the downloading. Download ESXi right now.
If you’re still a little fuzzy on what that all this implies or how to get going check out this webinar: VMware ESXi: The Easiest Way to Get Started with Virtualization. It starts in about 12 hours, Tuesday 9am PDT, but it will be available as a recording afterwards if I haven’t caught you in time.
We’ll also be talking about ESXi at our weekly VMware Communities Roundtable podcast on Wednesday, so keep an eye out for that if you’re of the podcast persuasion.
More ESXi links for you:
- Free ESXi resources (VMware Communities)
- For $50, we offer some self-guided ESXi training. (via NTPRO.NL)
- The folks at Slashdot like ESXi (Not much new here if you’re already a VI user, but looking at the comments, I predict it will now become easier to educate people about the differences between a hosted virtualization platform like VMware Player/Server/Fusion and ESX/ESXi now that we have products in both camps that are free as in beer.)
- Jason Perlow at ZDNet had to get the right local storage to get ESXi running, but if you check out Dave Mishchenko’s ESX 3.5 and 3i White boxes and working SATA controllers, you’ll find you shouldn’t have to shell out for a RAID controller to get a white box going, and it’ll get easier over time as the HCL widens. (I also question Jason’s closing off-hand comment about performance, because ESXi is the real-deal virtualization engine that is in the full VI3 suite.)
- Looks like Dugie will be walking us through step by step.
- David Davis: How do you install ESX Server 3i (ESXi)
- ESXi forum @ VMware Communities
Hmm, I think I saw a nice ESXi installation tutorial the other day with lots of screenshots, but can’t seem to locate it at the moment — well, don’t worry, because it’s actually really simple, but everybody is welcome to add any other useful ESXi links in the comments to this post.
