If not, you can go through the download steps again and the license key should be on one of the pages.įor me, if I go to hit Download, login with my free VMWare account, then on the page with all of the download links, at the top of the list is my ESXi License. VMWare should have emailed you a license key when you signed up on their website to download ESXi. If you are set to evaluation mode, that is what you are getting the license warning from. Login to your ESXi box with vSphere Client and go to Configuration -> Licensed Features -> Edit. I think where you may be getting the license message from is although ESXi is free, you still need to request a free license key from VMWare. You have to pay for vSphere with its various modules and extra features but not to use the vSphere Client to connect to a free ESXi. Does anyone out there know the answer (even better if you can point me to a clear explanation on VMWare's website.) I have not found a straightforward explanation of this on VMWare's web site. My question is this: Is there a completely free management tool for ESXi hosts that enables one to:įailing that, without licensing something from VMWare, is there any tool that will let you manage your hosts after the 60 day evaluation period of vSphere ends? When you install it you are continuously reminded that you have only 60 days to evaluate vSphere. OK, but vSphere is, as best I can tell, not free. If you install the free ESXi on a host and connect to it via a web browser, you are prompted to download vSphere to manage the host. By 'manage' I mean, start, stop, install, reboot and backup vms. Much is made of the fact that VMWare's ESXi hypervisor is 'free'Īs best I can tell, you can install the hypervisor on a host for 'free'.īecause ESXi does not have a built in management console, you need a program, of some sort, to connect to the ESXi hosts to 'manage' them.

Vsphere client downloads