Home Labs and bare bones test rigs matter and Broadcom’s back in the game

VMware has resumed offering a free hypervisor.

News of the offering emerged in throwaway line in the Release Notes for version 8.0 Update 3e of the Broadcom business unit’s ESXi hypervisor.

Just below the “What’s New” section of that document is the statement “Broadcom makes available the VMware vSphere Hypervisor version 8, an entry-level hypervisor. You can download it free of charge from the Broadcom Support portal.”

We’ve asked VMware for details about the new release and its capabilities, but no further information was available at the time of writing.

VMware offered a free version of ESXi for years, and it was beloved by home lab operators and vAdmins who needed something to tinker with. But in February 2024 VMware discontinued it on grounds that it was dropping perpetual licenses and moving to subscriptions.

If you want to try the hypervisor, you’ll need to be ...