After I got my new computer I turned my old desktop into a host for virtual machines. At first I tried KVM under Ubuntu, but I didn’t get it to run smoothly. I then found out that VMware has a free version of their ESXi hypervisor platform.

The hypervisor seems to be free, but the software to manage it is sort of free. I haven’t been able to put in the serial key yet, but I must say the way it runs now is impressive. I’ve got three virtual ubuntu servers running on my old 2.4 GHz core 2 duo with 4GB of ram. It all runs smoothly. I do see some slowdowns, but it’s ok. The graphical client software (Windows only unfortunately) is very elaborate and offers a lot of functionality.

I’m still trying to find out though if I can stick to ESXi once the 60 day trial period runs out or if it just becomes unmanageable. So far I’m not sure. Anybody got any idea what I’ll miss then?