Hey niter3!

On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 20:56:00 -0500, you wrote:

Really, all the same free features as before?

As far as I can tell, yes.. I think the announcement was something in the lines of "as of ESXi 8.0 update 3s" or something, and they're now on "update 3w").

I moved to proxmox a while back, been running fine since. Seems like
more effort then anything to go back?

I would agree with you there. If I were ever to snag up some new hardware, I'd most likely switch also. But the fact that I'm already running ESXi 6.5 update 1, I figured I'd try an easy upgrade to the shiny new stuff without having to migrate my VMs or anything. I was severely disappointed, though.

I have no issues with ESXi 6.5 except some quirky shit I can get around (as easy as refreshing the page) in the web GUI, so I'll stick with it for the remainder of this server's lifespan, which could be awhile yet unless I come across something for the right price. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Hey All!

I'm sure I read it somewhere before that they made ESXi free again, but probably didn't really let it soak in or believe it.

Anyhow, yesterday I went to the Broadcom site, and sure shit, as of 8.0 Update 3s or something, it is free again to download after you setup an account on the site. I got excited.

I downloaded it, burned it to a USB stick with Rufus, shut down all my VMs and rebooted into the installer. Once I got to the point where I pick the drive to install the new medium on (it is supposed to look for an already installed ESXi), it saw my drives, but didn't show ESXi installed on any of them.

Much further digging, and the latest versions of ESXi don't support my old ass hardware any more (Proliant ML310e Gen8). I think the latest I could go is either 6.7 or 7.0 Update 3 with some kind of a customized build for pre-Gen9 HPE hardware. I'm currently at 6.5, so don't really care to bother with it any more. I was more excited to try out the new and shiny, but that didn't work out too well for me. ;)

Eh well, that was a waste of a few hours. lol

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Hey All!

I'm sure I read it somewhere before that they made ESXi free again, but probably didn't really let it soak in or believe it.

Really, all the same free features as before?

I moved to proxmox a while back, been running fine since. Seems like more effort then anything to go back?

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Clutch BBS * telnet://clutchbbs.com (21:1/199)

paulie420 wrote to Accession <=-

OMG. So they made it free again, but made it so you had to be on
CORPORATE prod hardware??? Great... at this point, just install PVE and PBS and move on - Proxmox is the shyyyyttttt!

Veeam has been making inroads regarding support for PVE, if they can get support working by the time my support contract is due I'll be looking
hard at PVE.



--- MultiMail/Win v0.52
* Origin: realitycheckBBS.org -- information is power. (21:4/122)

Hey poindexter!

On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 20:58:50 -0800, you wrote:

That's what attracted me to Proxmox - I've run it on the cheapest, EOL
crap and it just runs. I'm seriously tempted to move my production
servers at work to it; I'm mostly running utility and dev workloads on
them now.

Most definitely. That'll be my next go-to, but I don't feel the need to do it on this current hardware. VMWare has been really good to me in that aspect. May as well leave it alone until I decide to get something different.

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

Hey paulie420!

On Tue, 04 Nov 2025 20:56:14 -0800, you wrote:

OMG. So they made it free again, but made it so you had to be on
CORPORATE prod hardware??? Great... at this point, just install PVE and
PBS and move on - Proxmox is the shyyyyttttt!

I don't think they "made it" that way, it has always dropped support for older hardware at certain versions. I just didn't know about that until now because I installed ESXi 6.5 some 12+ years ago now, and never felt the need to upgrade until I saw an announcement that it was free again. :)

Either way, I agree. I have Proxmox running in a Virtualbox VM just to mess around with for now so I'm not a deer in headlights when I get some new hardware and actually put it to work. I will be making the switch, I just don't know when. There's no need to change anything on my current server as by now it's old and fragile. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

I have no issues with ESXi 6.5 except some quirky shit I can get around (as easy as refreshing the page) in the web GUI, so I'll stick with it
for the remainder of this server's lifespan, which could be awhile yet unless I come across something for the right price. ;)

If I recall you're running an HP desktop server... I'm running a Lenovo ST50.

I've been on the fence about switching to a mini pc for my needs in the future. Small form factor machine with my NAS. Should really be all that I need.

The only disadvantage, it won't be server hardware grade. No ECC ram and no Xeons...

Does it matter? As long as I can get the same type of uptime, I'd be happy and save money, and space, and maybe cut a few dollars on my hydro bill.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Clutch BBS * telnet://clutchbbs.com (21:1/199)

Hey niter3!

On Thu, 06 Nov 2025 06:07:46 -0500, you wrote:

If I recall you're running an HP desktop server... I'm running a Lenovo ST50.

Yeah, HP Proliant ML310e Gen8, to be specific.

I've been on the fence about switching to a mini pc for my needs in the future. Small form factor machine with my NAS. Should really be all that
I need.

I've looked at a few, but it seems these are newer, and more expensive than the server hardware I've been looking at.

The only disadvantage, it won't be server hardware grade. No ECC ram and
no Xeons...

The machine I have I bought used back in like 2012. No idea how long it was used before me, but I replaced the HDDs with new ones, and it has ran like a champ for 13+ years non-stop. That would be my only argument for preference of server grade hardware, though.

Does it matter? As long as I can get the same type of uptime, I'd be
happy and save money, and space, and maybe cut a few dollars on my hydro bill.

Ultimately, it's your setup, you do what you want with it!

How are you thinking you'll save money? Are you comparing new vs new? I've been looking at some server hardware on Ebay and Amazon for like $400-$700 range, whereas most of those mini pcs are upwards of $1000..?

Or are you only needing like a 4 core with 16gb ram?

I'm looking at anywhere from 16-40 cores, and like 64-256g of ram. Something that will last a long while and I won't run out of things to do with it (as many VMs as I'll ever need, etc). My current server is only 4 cores with 4 threads, and I have 4 VMs using 2 cores each, so I'm already bottlenecked. :)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

You mention 'server' here. Are you using an old server (with server hardware) to play games? I'm not sure the low ghz and multi cores are built to do that kind of thing..

Yes, the server is 12 years old... I think it's also suffering from over heating issues because he complains it just turns off.

He definitely has pushed the limits ont his one. We'll have to figure something out for him.

BTW, I looked a little deeper into those mini PCs you were talking
about. It's crazy how they can cram that much stuff into like a 6" x 6"
x 3" box. They also boast great cooling, which I find quite hard to do with what they're working with. Up to 3 or 4 displays even.. Crazy!
This is almost exactly what I was looking at above. The space saving and initial specs are pretty awesome! Currently, though.. I'm not sure I
could use it as a server as it seems like you would be wasting the thing just for the cores and ram, but the price is definitely on point when these things are new vs some used refurbished/renewed server hardware. Damn man, now you have me looking into this more. :)

The K12 is probably the cheapest out of the GMKTec family ($550), but seems to have the best expansion (up to 24tb ssd and 128gb ram). Oddly enough, this price point is better than finding old server hardware with enough ram/hdd space. Now I have to start looking into this more.

LOOK AT WHAT YOU DID (and I'll probably thank you for it later). :D

HA! :) Right... I'm using this mini pc for my daily driver and gaming on it... Running this under Ubuntu at the moment under XFCE. Nice and fast!

Just dealing with your typical Anti Cheat messages and proton settings.

That's up to you. I gave up on consoles after I bought a brand new PS4
(at the time) with the whole VR setup. The kids used it for a few months and completely forgot about it. At least if my son forgot about his PC I could use it for something else. Never again will I go the console route.

That seems how it goes. I had this vision my kids all playing on this arcade build, and everyone from parties using it. :) It's gaining dust.

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A49 2023/04/30 (Linux/64)
* Origin: Clutch BBS * telnet://clutchbbs.com (21:1/199)

Hey niter3!

On Fri, 07 Nov 2025 14:08:56 -0500, you wrote:

Amount of cores and ram found on the AMD chips, and the simple fact it
will save a few bucks on hydro. Also like the idea of condensing down my rack and eventually putting something on the wall that's small and
clean.

That's where I'm not quite sold yet. I don't have a rack (yet). My current server is a 4U tower. I'm debating another one as it takes up less space than a rack, but the price point on these rack mount servers is way better than a "newer than what I have now" tower. Then if you wanted a 2x CPU tower? now you're talking thousands, when you can get multiple CPU rack mount with plenty of ram for a lot less.

Speaking of which. I just looked up those AMD EPYC processors, and yikes are they expensive. lol

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm: because beating people up is illegal.
--- GoldED+/LNX 1.1.5-b20250409
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/200)

On 10 Nov 2025, Accession said the following...

overheating it, and if it's server hardware, those fans gotta be
SCREAMING while he's playing. ;)

yeah.. the people who design servers don't think the same way as everyone else lol. if a user thinks the machine is too loud, they made a mistake buying it or something ;) a place i worked had a server rack filled with stuff, but when a big order came in the one main server would drown out absolutely everything in that area out, AND several large format printers and other things in the next room

it was basically intended to render thousands of images as fast as possible like it was an emergency or something. i swear their design spec was probably "well, if you can't use the server because the mouse is jumpy while it's rendering, you probably shouldn't have installed other stuff on there"

--- Mystic BBS v1.12 A47 2021/12/25 (Windows/32)
* Origin: cold fusion - cfbbs.net - grand rapids, mi (21:1/616)

Hey Niter3!

On Sun, Nov 09 2025 20:13:18 -0600, you wrote:

Yes, the server is 12 years old... I think it's also suffering from
over heating issues because he complains it just turns off.

I think servers, in general, aren't really meant to play games, unless their specs are outrageous and you have some kind of RTX video card (or something similar from AMD) in it. It could just be that the games are overheating it, and if it's server hardware, those fans gotta be SCREAMING while he's playing. ;)

HA! :) Right... I'm using this mini pc for my daily driver and
gaming on it... Running this under Ubuntu at the moment under XFCE.
Nice and fast!

Welp, after looking into what it would take to get the storage and ram where I'd want it, we're probably talking almost 2 grand. The price of ram has skyrocketed, and the newer m.2 drives haven't come down in price yet, especially for bigger (4-8tb) ones.

Just dealing with your typical Anti Cheat messages and proton
settings.

May I ask, what are you playing? And have you ran into any games that /don't/ work with Proton? I would love to ditch Windows completely, but I need all my games to work properly.

That seems how it goes. I had this vision my kids all playing on
this arcade build, and everyone from parties using it. :) It's
gaining dust.

Swiping tiktok videos and gaming on your phone is the new craze these days. Microtransactions and all! :/

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
--- SBBSecho 3.31-Linux
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/700)

Hey Tiny!

On Tue, Nov 11 2025 05:33:56 -0600, you wrote:

I've not found anything that doesn't run under proton/wine now.
I've installed old games from my GOG library, newish ones like
Cyberpunk, avatar etc.

Well, that's getting to be better news, at least!

I do not play online games though, and I believe that is where the
issue lies with anti cheat stuff.

I do, and am definitely interested in the state of things nowadays.

I can't imagine the newer stuff like Battlefield 6 that required a change in BIOS to work at the moment, but older stuff like "Easy Anticheat" would be nice to have confirmation that it works before finding out for myself when it's too late. ;)

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
--- SBBSecho 3.31-Linux
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/700)

Hey Niter3!

On Tue, Nov 11 2025 06:56:16 -0600, you wrote:

I'm still testing, but so far the only game giving me trouble and I
still haven't gotten to work is RDR2.

Do any of those games use Easy anticheat?

If you get a chance, and maybe even want to pick up what I would imagine is probably cheap by now, The Division 2. If you like looter/shooters, this is by far my current favorite.

Regards,
Nick

... Sarcasm, because beating people up is illegal.
--- SBBSecho 3.31-Linux
* Origin: _thePharcyde telnet://bbs.pharcyde.org (Wisconsin) (21:1/700)