With ESX 6.7 free, VMware has locked down the vSphere Storage APIs (formerly VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection or VADP) that allow third-party vendors to interact with the hypervisor for the purposes of backing up virtual machines.

This will also be a deal-breaker for most production environments. No Backups from Third-Party Backup SolutionsĮSXi 6.7 free limitations also include no backups from third-party backup solutions. The lack of vCenter Server capabilities for ESXi 6.7 free means that you are looking at a totally standalone ESXi server that is subject to all the disadvantages that come with running multiple workloads on a single set of hardware. This allows you to lose an entire host or multiple hosts if you have the resources, and still have the ability to provide availability to your business-critical applications. This means you have multiple hosts connected to some type of shared storage that allows any of the hosts to run any of the workloads you have running on any of the hosts. This includes:įor any type of high-availability in your vSphere environment, you will need to run a cluster of ESXi hosts. VMware vCenter Server is the VMware piece of the vSphere architecture that unlocks all of the “cool” features that you will most likely want to make use of in production environments.

This may arguably top the list of ESXi 6.7 free limitations since this rules out most if not all of the features that are considered for enterprise production use.

Vmware esxi 6.7 free download