VMware ESXi
Shares rank 14 of 16 hypervisors by recommenders
Recommended for simple, reliable virtualization and strong VM isolation. Common caveat: Broadcom licensing costs; HA and live migration need expensive licenses.
Recommended for simple, reliable virtualization and strong VM isolation. Common caveat: Broadcom licensing costs; HA and live migration need expensive licenses.
11 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 5
- criticize it
- 6
- approval share
- 45%
Recommended in 2 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: not recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: not recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 5 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 0.8 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, not met.
- Recommended in 2 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, not met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Simple to set up and run
“I had a lot of positive experiences with VMware (ESXi + vCenter). Every time I had a new project, I tried to keep it as simple as possible and it worked wonderfully.”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads” “Just boot a pretty small os, define a datastore somewhere, just grow disks, migrate them, etc.”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads” Strong isolation between VMs
“VM-level isolation combined with VLANs was much better isolation than huge consolidated servers running dozens of apps”
Comment from 13 Apr 2026 in “Stanford report highlights growing disconnect between AI insiders and everyone” Early hypervisor innovation
“The early unique IP was how to enable a hypervisor to use dynamic translation”
Comment from 8 Sep 2026 in “Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Broadcom licensing and expensive features
“switch myself and various places away from perpetual ESXi licenses as it finally starts really getting old”
Comment from 1 Apr 2026 in “From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab” “Pretty unhappy about the Broadcom acquisition as VMWare previously seemed to care about the homelab market”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Adventures in upgrading Proxmox” “features (HA/Live migration) that only came with expensive licensing”
Comment from 19 Nov 2025 in “Proxmox virtual environment 9.1 available” Weak UI, limited single-node management
“ESXi became intolerable. Though in fairness their website was alway pure hell.”
Comment from 8 Mar 2026 in “My Homelab Setup” “ESXi UI is a single node, and not even everything that a single node can do”
Comment from 5 Dec 2025 in “Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available”
Other hypervisors people recommend
The four most recommended other hypervisors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Proxmox VE | 208 | 60 | 78% | 12 | 3 yrs16 owners | Approved |
| Incus | 90 | 8 | 92% | 12 | 6 mo5 owners | Approved |
| KVM | 32 | 9 | 78% | 12 | — | Approved |
| Hyper-V | 17 | 9 | 65% | 9 | — | — |
| VMware ESXiThis page | 5 | 6 | 45% | 2 | — | — |
What people said
10 of the 12 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“I had a lot of positive experiences with VMware (ESXi + vCenter). Every time I had a new project, I tried to keep it as simple as possible and it worked wonderfully.”
“The early unique IP was how to enable a hypervisor to use dynamic translation”
“Just boot a pretty small os, define a datastore somewhere, just grow disks, migrate them, etc.”
“Most stable of the bunch does not mean 100% stable”
“VM-level isolation combined with VLANs was much better isolation than huge consolidated servers running dozens of apps”
“switch myself and various places away from perpetual ESXi licenses as it finally starts really getting old”
“ESXi became intolerable. Though in fairness their website was alway pure hell.”
“ESXi UI is a single node, and not even everything that a single node can do”
“Pretty unhappy about the Broadcom acquisition as VMWare previously seemed to care about the homelab market”
“features (HA/Live migration) that only came with expensive licensing”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.