ESXI on external Hard Disk

[avkulkar]

I have few questions,

• Do we have the free licenses for personal use
• When i say personal use, i want to install ESXI on my external hard disk, Is that possible ?
• What IP i should assign if i can install ESXI on Hard Disk
• If i can install ESXI and on HD and i create few VM, Can i access those VM's by its IP address ?  If yes How ?

Thanks,

Avadhoot

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Moved to the vSphere Hypervisor Forum.

• Do we have the free licenses for personal use

There is a free version of vSphere that has some limitations. Check out: Free VMware vSphere Hypervisor, Free Virtualization (ESXi) | United States

• When i say personal use, i want to install ESXI on my external hard disk, Is that possible ?

Yes and no. ESXi is an Operating System as such it would normally replace an OS unless you are looking at using VMware Workstation or VMware Fusion as well.

• What IP i should assign if i can install ESXI on Hard Disk

Any that is in your network.

• If i can install ESXI and on HD and i create few VM, Can i access those VM's by its IP address ?  If yes How ?

Please check out one of the resources on ESXi from the Virtualization Bookshelf. In this case it is far better to read about ESXi than to not. At least go through the installation guide from VMware.

Best regards,
Edward L. Haletky
VMware Communities User Moderator, VMware vExpert 2009-2015

Author of the books 'VMWare ESX and ESXi in the Enterprise: Planning Deployment Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2011 Pearson Education. 'VMware vSphere and Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing the Virtual Environment', Copyright 2009 Pearson Education.

Virtualization and Cloud Security Analyst: The Virtualization Practice, LLC -- vSphere Upgrade Saga -- Virtualization Security Round Table Podcast

[cyberfed2727]

ESXi can be used for personal use at home for free.

You can install ESXi to any disk you like including USB drives and even SD cards, however your computer's BIOS must be able to be configured to boot from these external devices. Assuming your BIOS allows this use the ESXi installer ISO/DVD to install ESXi to your external disk. Then after the install is complete you can set your machine to boot from that drive and ESXi should fire up. Please check VMware's HCL to ensure your hardware is supported.

Assuming that all goes well you will assign an IP address to the ESXi host with an IP that your home network resides on, perhaps 192.168.1.X (example)

Once ESXi is running you can create a virtual switch that is connected to your computer's network card thus granting your virtual machine's access to your network. Assign your virtual machines an IP on the same subnet as the rest of your machines and you will be able to access them from your home network.

It should be noted that loading ESXi on desktop hardware is probably not the best idea. You would be better off with VMware workstation in that scenario.