Since VMware was absorbed by Broadcom, it's no longer possible to obtain VMware vSphere images.
Real-world use case
You can no longer download official VMware images since the Broadcom acquisition: here's how to extend the lifespan of your ESXi 8 hosts.
The mandatory migration
If you purchased a perpetual VMware ESXi 8 license but don't have a VMware ID, then this article might be the start of a solution. Since VMware was absorbed by Broadcom, the vendor states that it's now necessary to migrate your VMware ID to the new portal. This portal notably provides access to the ISO images needed to install updates and upgrades for the hypervisor: https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/142873/using-your-broadcom-site-ids-for-full-su.html
Reaching out
As a result, I contacted Broadcom's phone support. It's no longer possible to obtain VMware vSphere images with a free account on the Broadcom website. The only option is to accept the new subscription model at the public rate of €800 per year (for 16 CPU cores), and to do so before April 2025.
The situation
If, like me, your business is a small company, then using VMware ESXi/vCenter may have been the most reliable and simplest solution. It's now important to understand that financially, continuing to maintain the VMware solution is going to cost more and more.
For my part, it's mainly used for resources dedicated to workload security, their backups, and their restores. I don't use vCenter, since I don't need it. Officially, the end of life for ESXi 8 is announced for October 11, 2027. Given that, the idea of acquiring a VMware vSphere Standard license via subscription, even spread over several years, would be too big an expense relative to our use cases. Also, will our HPE MicroServer Gen10 Plus V2 server be compatible with the next major version? That isn't guaranteed by HPE.
The bottom line is that we don't want to move to a subscription-based license. However, we still want to keep VMware ESXi 8, at least until the product's end of life, without compromising on security. So how can we maximize the lifespan of the VMware hypervisor on a Gen10 MicroServer?
Updating VMware ESXi 8 without a Broadcom account
Method 1
In our case, we use a VMware ESXi image customized by HPE. The goal is to obtain this image while making sure it really is the official image.
You can find the release notes for HPE VMware products here:
You can read Broadcom's release notes here:
A more concise overview is available here:
- https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/316595/build-numbers-and-versions-of-vmware-esx.html
The problem is that we don't have the ability to obtain the hashes for HPE's customized ISO images. There's a third-party website that publicly shares customized VMware ESXi images: https://vmpatch.com/
That said, it's important to understand that any image obtained outside of the official site carries risks. VMpatch shares the hashes of the ISO files it distributes, but I still need to compare them against the information provided by Broadcom, as indicated here:
For example, if you download the latest customized HPE image from VMpatch, here's how to extract the file's hash; you'll need to make sure the hash matches Broadcom's release note:
shasum -a 256 VMware-ESXi-8.0.3-24414501-HPE-803.0.0.11.9.0.7-Feb2025.iso
82666643e913fa90a324d799de869d179b3e67451ab99728efc15f6bbfb93182 VMware-ESXi-8.0.3-24414501-HPE-803.0.0.11.9.0.7-Feb2025.iso
On my end, I wasn't able to find the hashes for the HPE images, but it's possible to get them on Reddit by asking the community, though that's no guarantee of security. Be careful.
Method 2
You already have your HPE VMware ESXi 8 image, the one you got from the manufacturer's website before the Broadcom migration. That one is guaranteed to be intact and secure. It should normally be the one currently running on your server.
Now, get the necessary patches to keep your hypervisor up to date from the following site: https://esxi-patches.v-front.de/ESXi-8.0.0.html Download the .zip file containing the useful patch that will update your hypervisor.
To do this, drop the files directly on your hypervisor via SSH, and apply them following the recommendations provided by ESXi-Patches. Rest assured, this won't modify the drivers of the customized HPE image but will simply update the ESXi packages to keep it current.
Conclusion
Going forward, I think I'll part ways with VMware ESXi, since the product no longer fits my budget or my needs. It's quite likely that I'll migrate to Proxmox within a few years, as I mentioned here recently: