Free as in ...?

Vmware drives me crazy. Today I got aware of a ‘new’ Hypervisor, the ESXi 5.5 which should be the new and shiny stuff from vmware, dropping the 32 GB wRAM limit. But the first unpleasant surprise awaits us at the new vSphere client, presented at the login screen:

In short: no new features, the vSphere client is abandomned. This wouldn’t be bad at all, if we’d have a proper replacement. And that’s where the problem starts:

The new client is a web interface, which is…

• only available using the vCenter...
• isn't free then...
• the only way to use the new features...

Now what to do in a home lab? 60 Day trials? Sure…

By now I’m a litte pissed by vmware, about to use a famous quote of Linus Torvalds versus vmware…