ESXi redistribution rights?

[tbragin]

My company has a VMWare ESX/ESXi virtual appliance that we distribute to our customers for free. Some of our customers have asked that we distribute that product as a physical appliance. We'd like to find out if it's possible to distribute the physical appliance with ESXi already installed and the virtual appliance running on top of it. We haven't yet decided if the physical appliance will be a paid product or will remain free.

Question for the community: Is it possible to apply for a re-distribution agreement for ESXi? If so, is there an option to charge for a product running on top of re-distributed ESXi?

It looks like VMPlayer can be re-distributed after requesting a written agreement from VMWare, but I've seen no evidence of re-distribution options being available for ESXi.

Note: In 5.0 VMWare ESXi is becoming the only hypervisor (ESX is going away), so perhaps the answer may be different depending on if we're talking about ESXi 4 vs 5.

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - I do not think you would be able to redistribute ESXi - VMPlayer is already a free application - while ESXi still requires registration - these are my thoughts the final authority will have to be VMware themselves -

[sergeadam]

I have a feeling that what your customers are asking for is not for you to supply a piece of hardware with a hypervisor and the appliance. It sounds more like they are asking for the appliance top be supplied baremetal on a server.