Best Free Hypervisors in 2024

As we deal with the death of the VMware ESXi free edition, in this video we look at the best free hypervisor solutions now that VMware ESXi free edition is dead.
Check out the written write up of this video here:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...
Check out the VHT forums to get your questions answered: www.virtualizationhowto.com/c...
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Introduction - 0:00
Nutanix Community Edition - 1:27
Nutanix Move Utility - 2:03
Why have an enterprise solution on the list? 3:14
Proxmox VE - 3:51
Proxmox Backup Server - 5:42
XCP-ng - 6:00
Xen Orchestra - 6:38
Xen Orchestra built-in migration from VMware - 7:26
Xen Orchstra built-in backups - 8:00
KubeVirt - 8:15
Rancher Harvester - 8:25
Possible challenges with KubeVirt - 8:58
Vanilla KVM - 9:47
Wrapping up thoughts - 11:16
Configuring Proxmox SDN step-by-step:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...
Setting up GitLab, Runner, and Container Registry in the Home Lab:
www.virtualizationhowto.com/2...

[@LampJustin]

5:00 no you don't have to do all these steps to migrate from VMware to Proxmox. You only need to have access to the vmdks directly and you can then import them. The conversion will be done automatically for you in that process. Another great option if you use zfs is exporting the storage via NFS and doing a storage live migration to it. Then the cutover will be quick as you only have to import the disk. Be sure to save the MAC address of the network interfaces tho

[@ali0ghanem]

A year ago, I made the decision to avoid using products developed by companies like VMware, Ubuntu, or Red Hat in my production environment. Instead, I opted for community-driven software solutions. Currently, I rely on Debian for my main servers infrastructure and use KVM along with the Cockpit project for virtual machine management. Although Cockpit was initially developed by Red Hat, it primarily serves as a management interface and isn't essential to my operations.

[@InterFelix]

That's definitely a noble thing to do. However, for most people, it's not an option, as enterprise-grade support is worth the price you pay for these products. Of course, if the vendor decides to jack up the prices so much it's not worth it anymore, that calculation falls apart. But the beautiful thing is: There's always alternatives. Don't like RedHat anymore? They killed CentOS, so now there's the openELA with distributions like RockyLinux, AlmaLinux, Oracle Linux and SUSE Liberty Linux. For a product as big as RHEL or Ubuntu, I can't imagine a situation where you're actually stuck paying their new big asks or doing a big migration to a completely different distribution. Due to the open source nature of these things, there will always be community projects springing up if they decide to fuck their customers over, ready to take over once your old license term expires.

[@sathanas65]

I also use Debian, KVM w/ Virt-Manager and Cockpit. Great Hypervisor. Been using it for a year.

[@NetBandit70]

All these companies keep doing rug pulls... Makes me think that KVM is the only trustworthy solution.

[@AndersHellquist]

KVM as in Nutanix AHV or KVM as in Proxmox or KVM as libvirt host or KVM as in Cloudstack or KVM as in Openstack ?

[@emmettkeyser1110]

lol why would anyone expect these companies to not rug pull. Only got yourself to blame.

[@JasonsLabVideos]

OHHH. watching.. !! Thanks for this too BTW!

[@trungnguyen6708]

Rancher-Harvester is modern hyperconverged infrastructure solution for both VM + Container

[@davidgrishko1893]

Are the time stamps for another video? Doesn't seem to match up.

[@bsl2501]

excellent video, thanks for the overview and the specific insights.

[@okoeroo]

Kvm with virt manager still works

[@gogasos]

you're just surfing on-top of the algo bro, keep it up.

[@brigasm]

I still need to build a lab. I focus on EUC side with horizon but really need to dig into vsphere alternatives.

[@Thierry.g38]

Thanks for this video I jus have one (maybe stupid) question for an enthousiaste home user. For you, what is the « best » solution between the two following: - using an hyperviser on which are running several OS (AD server, Data server, Media server, Linux distribution …) - having an AD server on which are running the other OS in containers I currently have an old server which currently ensures all these functions (without using hyperviser or containers) and I plan to upgrade it.

[@RonnieRedd]

I could comment on just about everything on this video being a really early homelab and production virtual environment. Suffice it to say, virtualization came out of open source. My first try was Xenand KVM. Didn't go that route right away because windows machines didn't work. ESX (without the i) did support windows vms. It was running on RedHat. I kept with ESX then VMware GSX and so for work at the same time kept my home lab also up to speed on Linux KVM. Finally abandoned windows and VMware. So glad I did. I'm about to clear a server for xcp-ng. It appears more scalable than proxmox. KVM is really, really nice. The only reason I'm considering moving is KVM is mostly maintained by RedHat, and I'm not fully confident in what they shown to be after IBM purchased them.

[@noth606]

Hmm, I believe your first sentence is missing something, probably 'user' before the period. I doubt you mean that you are a homelab etc environment, or everything in this video being a homelab and production environment, or that you want to comment on everything being a really early homelab etc environment because they patently aren't, and it would make no sense. Anyway, I was a vmware ESX user many years ago, then brought it to the company I worked for around when they went +i roughly, then moved completely on to greener pastures (software development) and was fairly happy with all that jazz being someone elses problem except when it in some way touched my corner more directly (don't virtualize and move my f'ing test server off the hardware I ordered for it tyvm IT kahuna - it's MY test server, if I need you to touch it, I'll send an email specifically asking you to, with God on CC, lol). Now, years later, I'm "medically retired" and live in a home where screaming racks of servers wouldn't be appreciated, but I also have time on my hands to muck around with whatever I want again, so since VmWare went the way of the Dodo for home users, I'm going to give xcp-ng a try, it seems to best fit my usecase, but I just have to try the windows server DCE virtualization thing first if I can without it costing an arm, leg, kidney, eyeball and lung. I need windows anyway, I've been a .NET dev for aeons, I don't feel the need to learn a new way to walk when I know how to do it one way.

[@subcan]

I like Harvester a lot but wow is it a big learning curve... I am leaning towards xcp-ng for production work loads and smallest learning curve

[@stevegrimes5105]

Thanks for the video, this is very timely.

[@ryanseleski21]

This was a great video, thank you and keep up tolhe great work

[@SwissPGO]

Would Nutanix Move be helpful to migrate ESXi to proxmox in a 2 step process?

[@andrewjackson2317]

Proxmox 8 has an VMware import feature so moving VMs from ESXi to Proxmox is pretty easy. It's integrated into the storage section and part of the web UI, so even it's slicker than a separate tool.

[@KevinTKerrigan]

OpenStack? free and open source able to run on a single host via Kubernetes mgmt or KVM based with optional commercial support?

[@sergeyklassen9696]

Hello, from my experience using Nutanix CE I am unable to run UEFI VMs on there due to the Foundation/AOS version. I currently have Foundation v5.4.2 (February 20 2024 release) and AOS 2020.09.16. Also recently started getting emails that my license is set to expire 2024-04-17. Not sure what that is about since Nutanix CE is suppose to be free.

[@TheEnimabandit]

I use Hyper-V works well for us we run 10 VMs on two machines and never had issues with it!

[@oldsurehand9563]

Hyper-V is also not free anymore. The last free Hyper-V is 2019. The current Windows Server is 2022.

[@alienJIZ1990]

Bro I loved you in The Crow In all seriousness though, great overview of the hypervisor landscape. Built-in backup function is an absolute must for me. It's kind of astonishing VMware never gave a way to back up for DR and you have to involve solutions like Veeam or treat the VMs as physical

[@InterFelix]

No hypervisor platform has a true backup and recovery solution built in. Sure, basic VM backup and restore works fine on Proxmox and XCP. But what about Guest file restore? What about Application Item Restore for enterprise applications like Active Directory, Exchange, different SQL servers? These integrated backup servers are never a replacement for a modern backup solution like Veeam for example.

[@alienJIZ1990]

@@InterFelix I hear you, a dedicated and trusted backup solution is always a must for a business, especially with database apps you mentioned like AD, SQL, Exchange etc., you're gonna need crash/app consistency support with to quiesce the guest's file system (if supported) and etc., but it really depends on the business, their RTO/RPOs, and if they really even need that. Small offices whose data stays relatively static can even get away with just right-clicking "Export" in Hyper-V every so often on their 2 or 3 VMs, copying for redundancy, testing the exported VMs fire up, and they just have a secondary host for HA in case the host dies. It's not what I would do, but at least there are ways to make things work with Hyper-V for small businesses to get by if they had to, even if you did need app consistency and granularity (i.e. scheduled PowerShell scripts), but with VMware, you're just kinda stuck interacting with their proprietary APIs and using VMFS, their VM export is trash, and their recovery tools are garbage, meaning you automatically need a fancy backup solution just by the using ESXi lol

[@aragaorj]

Poderia falar sobre o Harvest?

[@oscarcharliezulu]

I worry about using any free version of a paid product. I find eventually it stops being free - always after the company is bought by another. If we stick to open source, even if it’s limited, our support adds to its success and it will get more attention and funding and support which is to benefit to us all.

[@christianchan328]

Hi, do you know if vmug is impacted in price with this new situation ? Thank you

[@segersta]

In first place VMUG have went up to $210 from $200, so not a big jump in the price. But i wonder if VMUG will be alive in some year or not.

[@iggysfriend4431]

Broadcom removing the free version of VMWare is moronic. How is an aspiring IT engineer supposed to setup a VMWare lab. So, they essentially killing the new crop of engineers coming through the supply chain. This is great for me as it means with fewer engineers businesses will have to pay more for engineers with VMWare and ESXi skills. On the downside, companies will start moving away from VMWare. For VMWare it's a lose, lose situation. Imagine if Microsoft discontinued eval versions of Windows server, this would slowly kill support skill.

[@Wahinies]

They dont care about anything but their established whale clients, they are juicing vmware which makes sense moneywise but it makes me sad bevause i cut my teeth on esxi 5.2

[@rainmant5724]

What about Xen?

[@copper4eva]

I think the timestamps in the description are wrong btw.

[@VirtualizationHowto]

Thank you @copper4eva! They should be fixed now.

[@MikeDeVincentis]

Why choose just one? Do like I did, set up one of each and figure out which one you like the best.

[@ErikBussink]

if some is running 100 VMs in a lab, then getting the VMUG advantage for ~$200 might be interesting. That is cheaper than the old Microsoft TechNet bundle from years ago.

[@VirtualizationHowto]

@ErikBussink great shout on VMUG. I have been an advocate of VMUG advantage...I think it is the best deal in home labs across the board. I am wondering what shakeup we may see with pricing on VMUG. So far I haven't seen anything official. Guessing it is still staying around $200 for now?

[@user-rb1tz7mv2x]

@@VirtualizationHowtoI am also a vmug subscriber. I am not sure I will renew come next year since I don’t know if I want to reward Broadcom. Plus from a professional standpoint I don’t know how much I will be working with esxi in the future.

[@tadmikowsky7520]

Which of these support vgpus and live migration of VMs w/vgpus? 🤔

[@wilbed1082]

Proxmox supports GPU passthrough, so you can give your vm access to the graphics card. If that it what you are referring too.

[@bulcub]

other than proxmox, can these other hypervisors support pci passthrough? and support cisco phones? also I have vmware 7/8 free software that I have not setup, If I try to activate will they work? Thanks

[@mlprd]

Kvm itself supports PCI passthru. Try to get a motherboard with good iommu support.

[@javiergt]

Yes it will work. If you generated your free keys before vmware removed the esxi free they will work. If you only have the software and no keys you will have all features for 60 days only. If by Cisco phones you mean installing call manager I had no success installing it but in vmware. CUCM makes internal verification during installation, and verifies the vmware version you’re using: at least 6.5 for 12.5, 6.7 for 14 and 7 for the latest 15

[@carsonjamesiv2512]

GOOD VIDEO.🎉

[@ytbone9430]

The lights in your glasses.. kind of hard to watch, maybe you can put the lights a little different next time? Everything is in dark mode here, so the reflections really stand out. Just my 2 cents of course.. o) Thank you.

[@MrRaihanaz]

how about ovirt

[@user-cm9kf5pl8r]

I found that XCP-NG was very close to VMware

[@aaroncorbin4641]

I really like XCP. Only draw back is the limitation on getting VM tools working on certain distros. Still not widely adopted in the main package maintainers and can be massive faff to install, if installable at all

[@Wahinies]

2TB vdisk limit is a potential showstopper. I have just found a bunch of annoyances with xcp as well such as defaulting to the realtek nic.

[@murgero1]

And how was Hyper-V not a part of the discussion.

[@jackt6112]

No kidding! That's as laughable as comparing desktop environments without including #1 Windows, and #2 Mac, followed by tinker towns. #1 VMware, #2 Hyper-V, followed by tinker towns.

[@LedufInfraLeDufiNFrA]

Proxmox power ❤

[@benardmensah7688]

Ovirt is another kvm based hypervisor I came across but it’s backed by red hat.

[@xPakrikx]

K8s isnt very good for "virtualization" its mainly for microservices and scaling. You can run K8s on bare-metal but its not very common. For lab or self-hosted, docker + portainer, is good enough. But if you want you can run K3s.

[@squalazzo]

timestamps in dida are wrong... and why you didn't even mention microsoft hyper-v? it's bare metal (yes, you can avoid windows and install it on any x86 hw), completely free, very good, has tons of enterprise features... ok, for clustering you need active directory, but it's an other option...

[@ErikBussink]

Because Hyper-V was free while it was Windows Server 2019.

[@squalazzo]

@@ErikBussink oh... thanks, didn't know they dropped the free edition, now there's just a 60 days trial of the new azure hci solution...

[@VirtualizationHowto]

@squalazzo thanks for the call out on the timestamps...fixed them! Hyper-V I think will be a good option for those who have an enterprise agreement. I didn't include in this list as I wanted to truly cover those solutions that were free.

[@Albertkallal]

​@VirtualizationHowto The free hyper-v version of windows server is going away. Hyper-v is still free if you're running a windows server.

[@bobt-kn2fs]

your info is outdated. theres a source pull from esxi built right into the storage option in the datacenter storage menu.

[@VirtualizationHowto]

@bobt-kn2fs just a few days after I put out the video they dropped the new feature...imagine that! However I have already covered in another video kzbin.info/www/bejne/fmLXZ5uueNSckNksi=O6qxqWnn9I-KsS7h cheers!

[@in2thecloud769]

Why not speaking about hyperV i used it on My Win 11 64 Gb Ram and Radeon CPU. Its working perfectly and except the price of my win the cost nothing.

[@janpichrt]

Are you aware, that Hyper-V is free? :)

[@ErikBussink]

@@janpichrtThe 2019 edition ? That has been a while. Better keep using Hypervisor 8 from 2023 in your homelab.

[@gencwiz2]

That’s a type 2 hypervisor not type 1 and hyper v 2019 is the last type 1 hypervisor that is EOL in 2029

[@MrPir84free]

@@gencwiz2 You may want to check your assumptions before you post.

[@gencwiz2]

@@MrPir84free please correct me cause you couldn’t be any more wrong

[@gabrieledelgiovine6045]

Microsoft Hyper-V is a simple and viable alternative. Migrations of Vmware VM disks are possible using free tools like Starwind Converter.

[@syscruncher]

Can we please get past the thumbnail trend of having someone point at something? I accidentally clicked on this one because I looked at the title first. I have sworn off anything with virtual backgrounds or pointing at shit that isn’t there.

[@danield.7359]

I don't even need to watch this to know it's KVM/QEMU.

[@unisonrul1171]

How about hyperV?

[@GoWokeGoBroke2023]

Just use a vmware keygen..

[@bertnijhof5413]

The best hypervisor is still Virtualbox. I use it since 2009 and my oldest still used VM is Windows XP from March 2010. It survived 2 VBox owners; 3 desktops and 4 CPUs. As retired Home User I only have a server and because I'm lazy, my server is a minimal install of Ubuntu on OpenZFS with Virtualbox. All my desktop Apps run in more or less specialized VMs, so I have VMs for communication and social media; banking (encrypted); multi media creation and maintenance; experiments & app try-outs; jukebox for WoW and TrueBass effects (Windows XP) and in case I need it (Windows 11 Pro). All runs on the 2nd slowest Ryzen CPU ever, the Ryzen 3 2200G; 16GB; 512GB NVME (3400/2300MB/s); 2 TB HDD (192MB/s) with an SSD cache (L2ARC) of 128GB (520MB/s and NO head movements). I'm happy with the installation e.g. the Xubuntu VM boots in

[@kharmastreams8319]

Virtualbox is garbage...

[@kingneutron1]

Try getting 2.5Gbit and 10Gbit network speeds in Virtualbox - you can't. Proxmox can. Don't get me wrong, virtualbox works OK on Linux, Intel OSX and Windows but it's not exactly high performance

[@NoEgg4u]

I use VirtualBox because I did not understand over half of what our host explained. I would need to attend a class to have all of the features explained to me. It is like watching a video review of audio gear, and hearing about jitter and transports and pulse code modulation and over-sampling and overhang and zenith angles and diffusers and compression, etc, when you never before heard of those items. With VirtualBox, I was up and running in no time. I am clearly missing out on many features that other hypervisors have. But since I have no idea what those features do, or how to use them, or under what conditions I would have a use for them, I will not blindly jump in to them. It would be like a Windows GUI-only user being seated in front of a Linux bash shell for the first time, and told to read the "man" pages to configure its network. I watched videos for other hypervisors. They all seem to be narrated for people that do not need help; that already understand the myriad of acronyms and features and nuances of the packages. I have found no hypervisor videos for beginners. I would love to learn Proxmox. From watching videos, I can see that it is a great hypervisor. I can also see that the cockpit of an F 22 Raptor is highly advanced. That does not mean that I can plant myself in there and have a clue what to do.

[@Albertkallal]

@@NoEgg4u VBox is great for developers. I don't think it recommend for production servers, and VBox is a type 2 hyper visor. That means the hypervisor runs on top of the OS. A type-1 hypervisor loads and runs BEFORE your OS loads and runs - hence the term bare metal. So, this like most things comes down to the right horse for the right course. VBox is fantastic for running some VM's and testing stuff. And with such great (fast) hardware these days, a server probably could be run with VBox. However, any version of windows comes Hyper-V for free (any version beyond home edition), and it is a type-1 hypervisor (bare metal). I used VBox for years, but since windows has free Hyper-V, then I now use that. The advantage of using Hyper-V is that is the same system on your windows desktop, and it is the same version used on server editions of windows. So, you get to learn a server system, one that has transferable market skill value. I have more then once spent a week setting up a VM (windows server + asp.net web server). So, I spent about 1 week setting up that server, installing software, and setting up the asp.net production code, and configuring the web server). I then handed off that VM to the IT department, and they spooled up that VM on their main production server, and it worked without any issues. So, learning Hyper-V is great, since that's what a lot of windows centric companies are using these days. No company going to run VBox for their production servers, since it not a type-1 bare metal server. (which means if the host OS has a issue, then all of the vm's running will and can also have a issue....). It also means those VM's tend to be dependent on the drivers installed on the host OS - and again for production servers, you don't want that. (you need and want the ability to move and spool up the VM's on any computer running Hyper-v).

[@MarcosMendezQuintero]

Common really? What type of sysadmin that you never heard about dd!!! Really Export Utility WTF? Put the balls on the table and do the math or do we expect to have a proprietary disk image? Just boot a virtual pen-drive and dd to it a disk image oh the base system and emulate the hardware however you want. That simple.

[@MrTolcher]

Watch out everyone, we’ve got a tough guy in the comments!!

[@user-qm4up7pb2k]

who cares?

[@alexandersucker]

What Do you think about Ubuntu LXD?