VMTN

sh0ck-wave wrote:

 

If VMware released v10 support for the free product, why would you buy it ?

The 'latest' of anything is reserved for the paying customers.

The 'free' users have access to tech from a couple version back.

Many companies use this.

Sure VMware may have been scant in their divulgence of information regarding this, but I can see that .. in the end .. we're using something for free so there's a bit of 'suck it and see' involved.

The migrating from Workstation to Free locking it down to v10 is anoying though, and this should have been documented.

I see things quite contrary: 'latest' of anything is reserved for people who are willing to test bleeding edge stuff, give feedback, report problems, write patches etc. Wise companies value this kind of feedback more than cash.

Considering cash ("paying customers") to be more valuable than user feedback drives away potential problem reporters and patch writers first. As a consequence, product for which "paying customers" are willing to give money deteriorates. Ultimately, "paying customers" jump the ship as well (if there is a better one).

I don't see my usage of free ESXi hypervisor comparable to "lucky me, I get all this great stuff and I don't have to give anything back". I am happy to upgrade one of the hypervisors I care for to the new version, see how it goes, give feedback, and receive solutions to any reported problems. Unfortunately, for 5.5, I see some problems which are not solved for quite some time now. Hope it gets better in the future.

cupacm wrote:

 

sh0ck-wave wrote:

 

If VMware released v10 support for the free product, why would you buy it ?

The 'latest' of anything is reserved for the paying customers.

The 'free' users have access to tech from a couple version back.

Many companies use this.

Sure VMware may have been scant in their divulgence of information regarding this, but I can see that .. in the end .. we're using something for free so there's a bit of 'suck it and see' involved.

The migrating from Workstation to Free locking it down to v10 is anoying though, and this should have been documented.

I see things quite contrary: 'latest' of anything is reserved for people who are willing to test bleeding edge stuff, give feedback, report problems, write patches etc. Wise companies value this kind of feedback more than cash.

 

Considering cash ("paying customers") to be more valuable than user feedback drives away potential problem reporters and patch writers first. As a consequence, product for which "paying customers" are willing to give money deteriorates. Ultimately, "paying customers" jump the ship as well (if there is a better one).

 

I don't see my usage of free ESXi hypervisor comparable to "lucky me, I get all this great stuff and I don't have to give anything back". I am happy to upgrade one of the hypervisors I care for to the new version, see how it goes, give feedback, and receive solutions to any reported problems. Unfortunately, for 5.5, I see some problems which are not solved for quite some time now. Hope it gets better in the future.

Testing the latest and the greatest of features naturally happened within Open Source projects, eg. Redhat and Fedora, RHEV(Paying customers) and Ovirt(FOSS users).  I have received invitations in the past of beta version of VMWare workstation, but don't have the courage to test it because I need production-ready, it maybe handy for testing and being a hobbyist, but aside from that, is there any other purpose? That's the beauty that FOSS projects bring into the table. FOSS can be used in production servers.  In VMware beta products, I only see one value beyond 'testing' and being a hobbyist, in any case, you must correct me.  Being a free VMware product user, the only _value_ I can give to VMware is to use their beta products and provide feedback.  Aside from that, there is nothing else.

So, if you use free VMware products like the hypervisor, in return, I think we will use their beta products and provide feedback.  That's our payment to VMware, and in that respect, VMWare must provide also a better way of managing their Free products w/o giving those advance features.

cupacm wrote:

 

sh0ck-wave wrote:

 

If VMware released v10 support for the free product, why would you buy it ?

The 'latest' of anything is reserved for the paying customers.

The 'free' users have access to tech from a couple version back.

Many companies use this.

Sure VMware may have been scant in their divulgence of information regarding this, but I can see that .. in the end .. we're using something for free so there's a bit of 'suck it and see' involved.

The migrating from Workstation to Free locking it down to v10 is anoying though, and this should have been documented.

I see things quite contrary: 'latest' of anything is reserved for people who are willing to test bleeding edge stuff, give feedback, report problems, write patches etc. Wise companies value this kind of feedback more than cash.

 

Considering cash ("paying customers") to be more valuable than user feedback drives away potential problem reporters and patch writers first. As a consequence, product for which "paying customers" are willing to give money deteriorates. Ultimately, "paying customers" jump the ship as well (if there is a better one).

 

I don't see my usage of free ESXi hypervisor comparable to "lucky me, I get all this great stuff and I don't have to give anything back". I am happy to upgrade one of the hypervisors I care for to the new version, see how it goes, give feedback, and receive solutions to any reported problems. Unfortunately, for 5.5, I see some problems which are not solved for quite some time now. Hope it gets better in the future.

Testing the latest and the greatest of features naturally happened within Open Source projects, eg. Redhat and Fedora, RHEV(Paying customers) and Ovirt(FOSS users).  I have received invitations in the past of beta version of VMWare workstation, but don't have the courage to test it because I need production-ready, it maybe handy for testing and being a hobbyist, but aside from that, is there any other purpose? That's the beauty that FOSS projects bring into the table. FOSS can be used in production servers.  In VMware beta products, I only see one value beyond 'testing' and being a hobbyist, in any case, you must correct me.  Being a free VMware product user, the only _value_ I can give to VMware is to use their beta products and provide feedback.  Aside from that, there is nothing else.

So, if you use free VMware products like the hypervisor, in return, I think we will use their beta products and provide feedback.  That's our payment to VMware, and in that respect, VMWare must provide also a better way of managing their Free products w/o giving those advance features.

Hello

there is a simple way, stop the VM and create a new VM (version 8) pointing to the old .vmdk and it will solve your issues.

Regards

António

Thats actually really clever. Never thought of that. Much faster than using Converter. Nice!

Another way is as stated earlier in this post:

  1) Download the VMX file of the machine

  2) Open it in an editor

  3) Modify the virtualHW.version line to look like the following: virtualHW.version = "8"

  4) If the machine already exists on your ESXi host, remove it from inventory

  5) Re-add the machine to inventory

Your machine should boot up normally now.

I believe this topic is dealt with in KB article:

Editing virtual machine settings fails with the error: You cannot use the vSphere client to edit the settings of virtual machines of version 10 or higher (2061336)

This may be the "correct" answer, but it isn't even remotely acceptable.

It used to be possible to manage ESXi using the built in client.  If the built in client cannot handle the new features, then the new features should be *disabled by default*, and should not be accessible at all.

What VMWare has done is effectively somewhere between bait-and-switch and extortion, because they're giving people a "free" product that they know full well is almost unusable unless you drop several grand on one of their paid products.  The only alternative is to dance on eggshells to avoid any new functionality, and go through hell to restore your environment if you made the mistake of upgrading, naively assuming that VMWare was providing a simple and logical upgrade.

This behaviour is nothing less than malicious.

We're currently in the process of evaluating our current IT infrastructure, and VMWare has just made a precipitous drop on our list.  We have no interest in working with vendors who dick people around in order to squeeze them for money.

I think I'm confused because this KB seemed to address the main thrust which was that the free version could be used to put the vm into a state in which the thick client could no longer be used to manage the vm (i.e. upgrading the vm to version 10 hardware). This seems to have returned to users of the free version the ability to run and manage their vms with the thick client at the same level they could with lower hardware versions. Apologies if I missed something.

The article specifically talks about a failure with the VCenter VSphere management console.  The console that comes with ESXi is still effectively useless with 5.5 unless you go through contortions just to have a working VM that you can manage.

VMWare has effectively made their "free" ESXi practically unusable to anyone who isn't a paying customer.

I believe the "VMware vSphere Client" is the same for both the free and paid versions, but someone else here will have to check me on that. That would mean the KB article would apply to both the paid and free versions. The free version I'm running on my test lab bills itself as the "VMware vSphere Client". Furthermore, I just checked my personal licenses and I can download "VMware vSphere Client 5.5 Update 2" from the website as part of my free "VMware vSphere Hypervisor 5 License" which is not a paid license. I assume I would also have to upgrade my hypervisor to 5.5 update 2 (also available with my free license) for a complete fix, but that's to be expected as well. So with the fix in 5.5 update 2, I can put my vms in hardware version 10 so they get access to the latest tech there, and still manage them from the client. What functionality is still missing that was available in previous free versions?

It's not about missing functionality per se.  It's about having your existing system sabotaged because if you make one mistake (which you probably had no idea at the time that it was even a mistake), suddenly you can't manage your VMs anymore.

I didn't even know there was an update 2 until the other day.  Their ESXi product page certainly doesn't mention it ( https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/info?slug=datacenter_cloud_infrastructure/vmware_vsphere_hypervisor_esxi/5_5) ), I never got notification via email that there was one, and all I could find when researching around the net was the ridiculous problems and workarounds people had to go through just to restore functionality to what had previously been a perfectly working platform.  The overwhelming conclusion everywhere was, "Whatever you do, do NOT update to 5.5!"

Even though there's a supposed fix (I haven't tried it yet, so I'm reserving judgement...), it took VMWare over a year to fix a problem that should have been glaringly obvious right from day one.   As a potential customer, I am certainly having second thoughts before I fork over 10s of thousands of dollars in licensing fees to a company that is more than happy to jerk customers around for over a year. 

Combine that with their sales staff forwarding my contact info to an apparently no-longer-existing integration partner, it's really starting to look like VMWare has gotten too comfortable with their position in the market, and no longer care about putting out a decent product or competent service.

any one tried this ?

http://www.vladan.fr/esxi-free-web-client-interface/

ESXi Embedded Host Client – VMware Labs

Yes, it works fine except few glitches. For example:

• I did not find a way how to manage users.
• VMware Remote Console (VMRC) is available only for Windows and Mac. Currently I am using VMware Workstation as a remote console on Linux. VMRC: https://my.vmware.com/group/vmware/details?downloadGroup=VMRC70&productId=353

Just upgrade your ESXi to the current build of 6.0, enable SSH and install the vib file using the first command on the Instructions tab here:

https://labs.vmware.com/flings/esxi-embedded-host-client

One of those "Nice in Theory" ideas, but the whole point is to get a web ui for the Hypervisor by itself, and the first item under known issues is:

On ESXi hosts which are assigned a VMware vSphere Hypervisor license, all modification operations will fail silently. We are working on a solution to this issue.

Once I figured that out I switched back to the evaluation license for the Virtual ESXi 6 server (on my 5.0 server), and the webui did most things fine.

If they fix that issue I can see upgrading my lab servers.  It would be really nice not to always need the Windows front end (Having said that I do a lot of things

from the command line, but creating/editing VMs isn't easy from the CLI).