Downloading and licensed use of for free is no longer officially supported by Broadcom, which acquired VMware . ESXi 6.5 reached its End of General Support on October 15, 2022, and its End of Technical Guidance on November 15, 2023. Current Availability and Licensing
Now the magic happens. ESXi 6.5 has two UIs:
In the fast-paced world of enterprise IT, version 6.5 of VMware’s hypervisor might seem like "legacy software." However, for thousands of home lab enthusiasts, small businesses with older hardware, and students learning virtualization, .
However, the free version lacks features like vMotion, High Availability (HA), and centralized backup scheduling. It is ideal for single-host environments, testing, or homelabs.
→ Under "All Products" , search for "vSphere" .
If the Broadcom portal is difficult to navigate, searching "ESXi 6.5 ISO VMware Customer Connect" sometimes yields legacy direct links, but always verify the checksum (SHA256) matches VMware’s official value.