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@ayebrian
Last active April 2, 2025 17:55
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VMware ESXi 8 / vCenter 8 / Workstation 17 license key 2024

Free VMware License Keys / ESXi ISOs

They should work. Works for all cores of your host system. Also you can download ESXi from here.

Links:

vCenter

ESXi

Workstation

Fusion

Downloads

ESXi

VMWare ESXi 8 Current logo icon
ESXi 8.0U3b (build 24280767)

ESXi 8.0U2b (build 23305546)

VMWare ESXi 7 Old logo icon
ESXi 7.0U3n (build 21930508)

Workstation

VMWare Workstation logo icon
Workstation 17.5.1 Windows (build 23298084)
Workstation 17.5.1 Linux (build 23298084)

vCenter Server

vCenter Server 8 Standard

Key Tested
4F282-0MLD2-M8869-T89G0-CF240
0F41K-0MJ4H-M88U1-0C3N0-0A214

vCenter Server 7

Key Tested
4F282-0MLD2-M8869-T89G0-CF240
0F41K-0MJ4H-M88U1-0C3N0-0A214

ESXi

ESXi 8

Key Tested
4V492-44210-48830-931GK-2PRJ4
HG00K-03H8K-48929-8K1NP-3LUJ4

ESXi 7 Enterprise Plus

Key Tested
JJ2WR-25L9P-H71A8-6J20P-C0K3F
HN2X0-0DH5M-M78Q1-780HH-CN214
JH09A-2YL84-M7EC8-FL0K2-3N2J2

ESXi 6 Enterprise Plus

Key Tested
1G4WK-4YH54-080P9-C9AZP-9GHQF

Workstation

Workstation 17

Key Tested
ZV3JH-4LXE1-M88MZ-HQXXX-XG0FD
AG5RU-6AXDL-H81FZ-KQYN9-M32E0

Workstation 16

Key Tested
4F40H-4ML1K-M89U0-0C2N4-1AKL4

Fusion

Fusion 13 Pro

Key Tested
4A4RR-813DK-M81A9-4U35H-06KND

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@mharris1984
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OMG, thank you for this!!! My home lab litterally just tanked due to my VMUG licesnese being voided and broadcom killing vmug program.. Migrating everything to xcp-ng on XOA, but its a slow process as their migration tool is not very good... But right in the middle of my migration and suddenly poof, everything dropped. I was running vcenter 8 enterprise with vsan, but not utilizting the vsan items, so no big deal, this saved me! How have they not killed this???

@mharris1984
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THANK YOU!!!!

No not yet @Bebiboux04

here ^-^

https://cios.dhitechnical.com/VM/VMware%20vSphere%208.0/ user : cios password: SuperSecretPassword

@ixiaan
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ixiaan commented Jan 8, 2025

http://ftpmirror.uk/pub/Software/vSphere/
you can download much thing from here

@TalhaSikandar
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Has anyone found a way to connect to the internet without enabling the esxi apis for their grand UPDATES and hence losing accesses?

@TruGitAdmin
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Has anybody figured out a way to get the vCenter server licenses to work? They keep coming up as invalid for me!

@mharris1984
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The license works for me. You have to make sure you are applying it to the correct version. I.e. this license will not work with vCenter with vsan, only vCenter 8 std. I applied to my 4 node homelab with with each server with 40x vcpu/396gb RAM/25gblinks with trunas running my NetApp disk shelf with zfs and came up as unlimited licenses.when installed.

Also, after you install the license you have to enable it in vCenter administration under licenses and applu the license to each host in the cluster and the vcenter appliance itself.

@TruGitAdmin
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The license works for me. You have to make sure you are applying it to the correct version. I.e. this license will not work with vCenter with vsan, only vCenter 8 std. I applied to my 4 node homelab with with each server with 40x vcpu/396gb RAM/25gblinks with trunas running my NetApp disk shelf with zfs and came up as unlimited licenses.when installed.

Also, after you install the license you have to enable it in vCenter administration under licenses and applu the license to each host in the cluster and the vcenter appliance itself.

Its not working on a 7.0.3 vCenter server. I'll try downloading and activating version 8.

@sstefanov
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Somewhere to download vCenter 5.5?

@Kindred-Spirit-UK
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Hi,
VMware ISO Software Archive

https://archive.org/details/vmware-archive

Cheers

@Kindred-Spirit-UK
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Hi,
to add, VMware vSphere 6 and 7 Licence Keys:

https://gist.github.com/CHSuworatrai/dcc0c625183202b2065aeab623356d50

Any VCenter 6 licence? 50626-4CL97-J8H92-0L1A6-9W4H0
vCloud 6 Standard : RH004-47CE3-K825Y-0EFA2-05EM1
NSX for vSphere : V148H-4D25K-58R78-04AR6-95N20

Cheers

@Kindred-Spirit-UK
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They are in the ISO links

@derasmo1976
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derasmo1976 commented Jan 26, 2025 via email

@mharris1984
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Somewhere to download vCenter 5.5?

Wow, that's like a 4-5 year old version. I would not run that unless I'm an isolated / airgapped homelab. There is going to be a lot of security vulnerabilities that are unpatched and likely discovered for exploitation in the wild! If you're going based on supported hardware I've run unsupported hardware on all the way up to 8.0 without issue. I even have an HP DL380 G6 that I tested out for grins just to see if it would work and sure enough it does with some features not enabled of course. But generic hypervisor ability is there. Right now my home lab, I'm running for HP DL380 g9s and one HP DL360p G8. And I believe both of those models were even on the unsupported hardware list for 8.0. But they operate perfectly.

@mharris1984
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I wish I came across this before I started migrating my home lab from my four node HP DL380 G9 hosts with a NetApp disk shelf running 96 TB SAS through trueness on an HP DL 360P G8 with 8 SAS sSD for ZFS to XOA. Since Xen went open source, would surprise the hell out of me, it seemed the best alternative to VMware, since they were asking the VMUG program with the 365 day licenses. I've been a VMUG member since I joined at my first VM world in 2009. And went to the subsequent 8 VMworld conferences. And on my home lab servers I run about 45 VMs, a mix of a bunch of server Windows server 2022 2019 and other various appliances. I already started the migration of two of my hosts to XOA cluster whenever I came across these unlimited licenses. So thankfully I was able to use these to at least extend my current VMware v center while I finished migrations. But one thing I do love is XOA is a lot faster than VMware was!.

@sstefanov
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sstefanov commented Jan 27, 2025

You can try Proxmox as vmware alternative. It's open source and it's excellent!

@lidoror
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lidoror commented Jan 27, 2025

anybody found nsx key?

@Joker-Jack31
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Hello, does anyone have keys for vmWare Identity-Manager?

@ScottFromSelfHosted
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Does anybody have the decryption key for the .rar vSan 8?

@devonverdonk
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Does anybody know what is going to happen with this keys if Broadcom comes up with their new license systems.
I have experience with ESXi but if this keys stop working I might try out Proxmox for my new build

@mharris1984
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Does anybody know what is going to happen with this keys if Broadcom comes up with their new license systems. I have experience with ESXi but if this keys stop working I might try out Proxmox for my new build

It works for now. But I'm migrating my home lab to XOA. The biggest part I hate is all nics on all servers have to be named the same in a cluster. I love VMware. But Broadcom has ruined it.

@derasmo1976
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derasmo1976 commented Feb 11, 2025 via email

@MrProphecy
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Thank you so much for this. It has really helped me keep the lab going to continue learning at home.

@theazlan89
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THANK YOU!!!!

No not yet @Bebiboux04

here ^-^
https://cios.dhitechnical.com/VM/VMware%20vSphere%208.0/ user : cios password: SuperSecretPassword

From these source, which file actually? I'm a bit confuse, there is file name example
VMware-ESXi-8.0U3c-24414501-depot.zip
and
VMware-VMvisor-Installer-8.0U3b-24280767.iso

so is it the iso of depot.zip that need to extract?

@Nurlan199206
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what's purpose use ESXi? Proxmox is free

@ts90325
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ts90325 commented Feb 26, 2025

Does anyone have a vSphere Hypervisor 8 free key ? not ent or std key

@blacksuitt
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Thanks for the sharing! Do you have a download for 6.7 per chance?

@anshtyagi14
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anshtyagi14 commented Mar 12, 2025

VMware-ESXi-8.0U3d (Latest ISO) (Google Drive Link)

https://bit.ly/3DCPbR2

4V492-44210-48830-931GK-2PRJ4 (Key works - no expiry)

Video for installation steps - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apC1bOLbzbY

@ayebrian
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Author

Please reply to this message with your list of VMware products(vCenter, ESXi 6.5 etc) you want me to list on my cdn.

@tbjithu
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tbjithu commented Mar 17, 2025

Hi can i get vSAN8 license for my lab purpose.

@mharris1984
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what's purpose use ESXi? Proxmox is free

ESXi used to be free "for life", but if you wanted to cluster or do anything more then just a single host, you have to pay $$$$" Then broadcom said NOPE, no more freebee's!!! Pay us 15x what you did to vmware and we'll give you the privilage of LEASING this software for another year. and invalidated all the previous lifetime licesnes that everyone owned as Vmware used a paid once model for licenses and just paid for maintenance/upgrades/updates

ProxMox is relativily new in this space and VMWare you have a TON more advanced items you can do in enterprise enviroments and even home labs. ProxMox is limited in its capabilities, but they are making it better and better. VMWare was the KING of virtualization. Broadcom has seen to it that they will die after Broadcom squeezes every last red cent out of it, like they do...

I have worked on VMWare now for over 13 years and certified on many versions/systems. It took me a bit to get used to ProxMox. XOA is what I tested out first, but they have even MUCH LESS available to do, i.e. network/vnetwork. ProxMox can do a bunch of things via Scripts/CLI/API, so that is a plus, but automating functions and lifecycles and stuff, there is no out of the box systems (like vmware 6 years ago or so, before vops and vrealize), But trying to automate in ProxMox is proving dificult for myself, but I have to migrate my 2 clusters:

Cluster 1 - Legacy Vmware:
3 HP DL380 G9s

  • 368GB ECC RAM in ea
  • 40 vCPU's in ea (2x 10 Core CPU's w/hyperthreading, so 20v cores ea, and 40 in each server)
  • 8x 1.2TB SSD SAS SFF drives in ea
  • 6x 10Gbps SFP+ ports in ea
  • about 60 VM's running (mix of Ubuntu Server, Windows Server 2019/2022, Windows 11, Windows 10, Various appliances that are Linux based (i.e. Load Balancer, Home Assistant, VCenter, PBX, Others.)

Cluster 2 - ProxMox New Cluster (will fold VMWare cluster into ProxMox after server migration is completed. (NEW CLUSTER I am building now)
3 HP DL360P G10

  • 256GB ECC Ram ea
  • 80 vCPU's in ea (2x 20 core CPU's w/hyperthreading)
  • 8x 1.2 TB SSD SAS SFF drives in ea
  • 6x 10Gbps SFP+ ports in ea
  • Only have a few VM's on it so far as this is still getting fully setup and up and running to replace the old ones.

I run TrueNas on an HP DL360 G8:

  • NetApp 4246 running 24 12TB SAS Drives
  • 8x 1.2TB SSD SAS SFF Drives on the server for the ZFS ables/data/fastcache/etc.
  • 392GB ECC RAM

Each host has 2 aggragated in active/active config, so a 20 Gbps link between each host to a dedicated massive switch for only traffice between the TrueNas to each host on their own VNLAN/Subnet, so that way all traffic for the VM disks has that 20Gbps link back to the TrueNAS. Makes the VM's run SUPER FAST!!!! Each of the other hosts has then two aggragated 10Gbps to eachother, so 4 total, going to 2x 20Gpbs links (active/acitve load balanced round robin with packets, so traffic is SUPER FAST) from the hosts to my other massive aggragation switch. and all my other network conencts to it over a 20Gbps backbone that my entire nework has running downt he back.

Oh yeah, and this is all in my home lab... I think I have an addiction... HAHAAHAHAHAHA

I miss the massive virtual networking that vmware could do... from virtual firewalls for massive networks to smaller ones. Helping isolate traffic, internal vlans and routing, setup a set of virtual switches between DC's/clusters/containers, and much more. Proxmox gives some network capabilities, so for that i'm atleast greatful more then XOA's... :(.

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