ESXi's Demise: The End of an Era for VMware's Free Hypervisor
This was a surprise to me and something that will affect countless folks who have a home lab.
ESXi was a staple in home labs, often times the first touchpoint for people getting a taste of VMware virtualization. In addition to the hypervisor, folks would have NAS, or SAN in their homes to complete the system. That may be good as retired as well.
The Stack Blog
In our latest edition of “VMware by Broadcom” kills off things you love, it has decided to discontinue the free ESXi hypervisor for running virtual machines and a linchpin of home labs globally for years. RIP Free Esxi.
There are many viable alternatives out there, but one in particular can build out your home lab with a smaller footprint and introduce modern data centre technologies that can help boost your career. Think Nutanix community edition: it's their free commercial product limited to 3 nodes that is ideal for home labs and for folks wanting a build on top of a modern data centre stack.
If you are interested in getting started, you can learn more about it here.
Don't be shy, if you have any questions, you can ping me on Twitter, I'd be more that happy to help.