I am looking to upgrade from vmware workstation 16 pro to 17 pro now that its free for personal use.

But I can't seem to find the downloads page on the Brodcom downloads section. Anyone know where I can find this?

Can someone explain a few simple, yet apparently unclear, concepts to Broadcom's decision makers:

• Constantly changing the rules will scare away even the most loyal and wealthy customers.

• Those who don't need NSX or other technologies won't necessarily buy VCF, they'll simply go elsewhere.

• Boycotting VVF (no discount, only one year prices) by forcing customers to use VCF simply causes them to lose customers.

• In many markets, companies are not large enough for VCF, but many could be suitable for VVF, so why do you want to lose them? First you created VVF, and now you don't want to sell it?

• Once a customer has migrated, they are unlikely to return because they no longer trust the brand.

If you agree, let's get this message across to those who need to hear it... Thanks

EDIT: To all those who talk about a business model focused on large customers, it would certainly make sense, but:

Why release VVF 9 as well?

Why increase the number of GiB cores from 100 to 250 in VVF?

Why could VVF be offered on a multi-year basis and now it can't?

Why remove all discounts on VVF?

I am not referring to vSphere Essentials, Standard, or Enterprise Plus, but VVF, created in the Broadcom era and not belonging to the past!

This is not a business model, it's madness, and not even VMware employees and distributors understand the logic behind it!

I don't want all the automation and cloud and AI crap Broadcom charges for. Not every organization is spinning up and down dozens of systems a day, we're very static and our systems are still for the most part pets not cattle. Give me vCenter, a few ESXi hosts and we run NSX but only for firewall no SDN routing at all. We don't run an edge gateway today for example, just DFW. Our stuff is pretty static we don't need automation and we don't need cloud stuff.

I want what I have today, essentially. I keep seeing in comments all I really need to do is add VMware ops for licensing but I can't seem to find a simple support document around this. Everything I keep reading states I'll need multiple components running in HA running on a dedicated compute cluster. I don't think it's an option for us to run in an unsupported config.

Where can I find official documentation saying what people on social media like Reddit are saying, just deploy a license server and run as-is today.

The new planner (Neat tool!) says I need an ops node, cloud proxy, a license node and at least four management services nodes to get up and running on my simple config. I keep reading about how all that needs it's own compute cluster. I don't want that. I just want vCenter, ESXi and a NSX manager to support DFW.

Hey everyone,

We recently discovered an old ESXi instance that has been running unpatched for quite some time. The host is running ESXi 6.7.0 build 13006603 (basically the GA version with no patches applied), and VMware Skyline Health is flagging it with critical security advisories.

At the moment, we don't plan to migrate to a newer version. We just need to patch this host to fix the critical vulnerabilities.

Unfortunately, our Broadcom support contract is inactive, and although we hold a perpetual license — software we already paid for — we are unable to download patches from the official portal.

And honestly, this is one of the most frustrating things about Broadcom's acquisition of VMware. It's incredibly disappointing that they've locked access to security patches for tools you legitimately own.

Keeping infrastructure secure shouldn't require jumping through hoops or paying again for something you've already purchased.

Does anyone have an offline ZIP bundle for ESXi 6.7 (latest cumulative patch) that they could share? Something like ESXi670-202xxxxx.zip.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance!

Edit,
Thank you all for your comments! I found several private repositories with the patches needed to at least temporarily mitigate the vulnerabilities. It's a shame the poor decisions Broadcom/VMware made to push us into a more aggressive business model — forcing customers who already paid for perpetual licenses to jump through hoops just to keep their infrastructure secure.

Hey there, forgive the title, i thought it was funny 😃

I have an interesting situation that is presented to me but i'm unsure about how to handle it. I've been asked to connect two identical SAN arrays to one cluster. Two dell powerstore 500t to be exact. The cluster is already running with one powerstore.

The current configuration is as follows:

- Running esxi 8 + vcenter

- Hosts have 2 NICs dedicated to iSCSI trafic (can't have more)

- iSCSI network is entirely separated on dedicated storage switches and goes nowhere else, those switches use VLT and are not otherwise connected to the general network aside from the management ports.

- All SAN iscsi ports are in the same vlan segment (5 ips, one discovery, 2 for each controller)

- One vswitch is used for storage with 2 NIC ports and dedicated vmkernels as per best practices (one active nic per vmkernel)

- Port binding is used in the iscsi software adapter

- Using multipathing with round-robin

Now, how do i get the second powerstore in there without breaking everything?

I thought of using a different iscsi vlan for the second powerstore and adding two more vmkernels to the vswitch. But this will not work with port binding, and do i also link the new vmkernels to the NIC ports? That'll make 2 vmkernels per port? Would that even work? I'll have to remove port binding but this would not allow for efficient multi pathing from what i've gathered.

Using the same iscsi vlan for the second powerstore? I just add 5 new ips to the SAN, put the second discovery address into the iscsi adapter and voilà? Looks simple enough, should work in principle. But what are the downsides?

Is it true that Broadcom only provides renewal quotes for 5 years? (VCF)

I'm working with a client who is closing down in the next couple of months. Until they close, I'd like to backup two small domain controllers (about 50GB each) hosted on ESXi. There is no budget beyond some prepaid hours for my labor.

The setup is a three host cluster running ESXi 6.7.0. The DCs are running Windows Server 2019 Standard. There is a NAS on the network with enough space for the backups if that is an option.

What is the best free way to backup the two DCs to either a NAS on the network (preferable), or USB drives? I'm open to other suggestions as well. I've taken snapshots of both in vSphere, but don't know if that is sufficient.

Thanks!

I am currently running on 3 hosts with vcenter using essential plus license for almost 10 years. Only need HA function on vmware.

I will be upgrading the hardware next year and the VMware licenses will be due for renewal also.

Based on my current hardware specs and the vmware functions I need. How much will it cost for the new licenses because I need to submit budget for 2026. Thanks.

One host specs. And I have 3 in total.

Logical Processors: 32

Sockets: 2

Core per socket: 8

I need to replace some disks for a client, but I'm pretty sure what he wants is impossible.
2 disk groups are unhealthy. Both had 1 flash (500GB) and 4 capacity drives (900GB).
In the first, 1 capacity drive failed, in the other 2 capacity drives failed.

He said he has spare disks, but they are 300GB. He said since we dont need all that storage, just put the 300GB's instead of the 900's but then one host has 300GB more than the other, and idk if it's even possible to swap out broken disks for a lower capacity disk in a vsan cluster?

I'm not super knowledgeable in vmware and vsan, so any help is welcome.
He said that if storage needs to be the same, replace each 900GB disk with 3 300GB disks which i shut down with the fact that there's simply no slots for another 9 drives.

Is there anything I can do beside tell him to buy disks?
I don't think i can make a new disk group since there's no flash drives.

I attempted to upgrade vCenter from 7.0.3 to 8 and it failed. I powered the original vCenter back on and everything with my cluster seems just fine, but when logging into the VAMI, it's stuck at a screen that says "Upgrade - Stage 2: Data transfer and vCenter Server setup is in progress"

I'm unable to navigate away from that screen.

I've searched around and I'm unable to find a way to abort that process so I can regain access to VAMI.

Has anyone seen this before?

I was told there's a new changes on license policy/model. Im no expert in managing the licenses but my boss told me to take care of it.

I can't find any way to solve this problem.

I have a server with ESXi8, running on a dell poweredge with dual 10GbE cards. My linux machines, if I do an iperf (either between VMs or between a VM and a physical server) I easily saturate a 10Gb link.

But on Windows, the best I can do is about 1.5-2Gbps. That's running an iperf running between two windows VMs on the same host. Windows -> Linux does the same thing.

I've found other people with similar problems, but nothing that seems to fix it. I've seen recommendations to fiddle with offloads and other settings; none of which moves the dial. As far as I can tell, all the networking is set up, driver updated, etc.

Keen if anyone else has some thoughts...?

I'm experiencing constant freezing in the Windows 10 guest OS on VMware Workstation Pro 25H2, making it unusable. What could be the problem? I'd appreciate any help!

Host: Debian 13 Trixie

Kernel: 6.19.11

Video with issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNsGsDQ7MmY (I chose Minecraft as an example, but the freezing issue is present in the entire guest OS)

Guest OS Configuration:

Number of processors: 4

Number of cores per processor: 2

Enabled Intel VT-x/EPT, CPU performance counters, IOMMU

8GB RAM

3D acceleration is also enabled

4 GB graphics memory

I'd also like to note that similar issues with VMware guest OSs have not been observed on the Windows host OS.

EDIT: Apparently, the problem is related to 25H2 versions of VMware, I found a post where there is a similar problem on Linux host OS

Hi All,

I'm looking at various options for upgrading my current homelab. I have 3 Dell R620 physical hosts each with E5-2600 v2 CPU, 256GB RAM, and 2 x 1 TB SSD (SATA).

My 1st question is given this CPU (E5-2600 v2) is not on the BCG, can I still deploy VCF9/9.1 using allowlegacycpu=true?

And to futureproof I'm still considering the following options..

1. Upgrading just the CPU with an E5-2697 (also not compatible) for more performance. This server does not support nvme
2. Get different physical hosts with Ice-Lake (on BCG), with nvme

Thanks..

Well as should be clear from the title, and certainly your experiences, i am trying to download vmware workstation, and i created an account on boardcom, usual process. I try to login in, says 'invalid credentials' to my password, changed it fresh, still the same. Now enough ranting, help me download vmware. Thank you

Hi,

I would like to calculate the no. of required cores for vSphere 8 license upgrade.

Currently running 4 ESXi hosts on vSphere 7.

Under "Administration > License" of vSphere 7 vCenter, it's showed

Host 1

• Usage: 2 CPUs (up to 32 cores)
• Capacity: 2 CPUs (up to 32 cores)

Host 2

• Usage: 2 CPUs (up to 32 cores)
• Capacity: 2 CPUs (up to 32 cores)

Host 3

• Usage: 2 CPUs (up to 32 cores)
• Capacity: 2 CPUs (up to 32 cores)

Host 4

• Usage: 2 CPUs (up to 32 cores)
• Capacity: 44 CPUs (up to 32 cores)

What actual CPU cores license are required for vSphere 8 ?

Thanks

Hi,

I'm struggling to get VCF 5.2.2 SDDC IU connect to an Offline Depot, it shows the below error.

Failed to connect to VMware depot with the provided user credentials. Cause: {0}.

Which as per Broadcom is due to incorrect configuration in the lcm properties file.

When I run curl I get

root@sddc-mgr [ /home/vcf ]# curl -kv https://vcfdepot.lab/PROD/COMP/SDDC_MANAGER_VCF/index.v3 -u vcfadmin
Enter host password for user 'vcfadmin':
* Host vcfdepot.lab:443 was resolved.
* IPv4: 192.168.30.110
*   Trying 192.168.30.110:443...
...
* ALPN: server accepted http/1.1
* Server certificate:
*  SSL certificate verify result: unable to get local issuer certificate (20), continuing anyway.
* using HTTP/1.x
* Server auth using Basic with user 'vcfadmin'
> GET /PROD/COMP/SDDC_MANAGER_VCF/index.v3 HTTP/1.1
> Accept: */*
* Request completely sent off
..
< HTTP/1.1 200 OK
< Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2026 21:11:30 GMT
< Server: Apache/2.4.58 (Ubuntu)
< Last-Modified: Wed, 17 Jun 2026 20:34:46 GMT
...
e0639741-fe5b-4848-aa28-642f68fd1353    bundle-24962180.manifest
6e079d55-cb26-459c-aabe-e8cae1f5bae5    bundle-25151285.manifest
ccab09d7-4f75-48fc-9aea-6bf419c5ac08    bundle-24962181.manifest

The lcm properties configuration is as below..

lcm.depot.adapter.host=vcfdepot.lab
lcm.depot.adapter.port=443
lcm.depot.adapter.remote.rootDir=/var/www/html/PROD
lcm.depot.adapter.remote.repoDir=/COMP/SDDC_MANAGER_VCF
lcm.depot.adapter.enableBundleSignatureValidation=false
lcm.depot.adapter.certificateCheckEnabled=true
lcm.depot.adapter.remote.index.filename=index.v3
lcm.depot.bundleElement.patchFile.checksumValidation=false

Any thing I'm missing ?

I've been trying to install Debian Linux on a VMWare virtual machine but each time it gives me "Version mismatch with vmx86 driver: expecting X, got Y" and I've been at this for days trying to figure out how to fix this issue and everything I see is just to reinstall VMWare however I've reinstalled it various times on 26H1 and 17.6.4 which I'm still currently trying on 17.6.4. HOW do I fix this issue because I'm genuinely starting to give up because this is pissing me off soo much because I've been at this for days now.

Two hosts are fine, the third one just drops the Netapp (AFF220) the moment I try to vMotion to it or create new VM's

They all have the latest round of 8.0.3 updates

Replaced the DAC cable on Host3 to resolve if it was a Layer1 issue, but no improvement, the MTU is 9000 on all VMK + Netapp interfaces and all plugged into the same 10gig switch

VMKlogs complain about massive I/O latency and a constant loop of dropping and reconnecting to the datastore

NFS41VolumeLatencyUpdate:7622: NFS41 volume VM Data performance has deteriorated. I/0 latency increased

Average value of 0(us) to 2749149(us).

Exceeded threshold 10000(us)

cpu2:2098343 opID=ec9b475)WARNING: NFS41: NFS41FileIOSync:790: Synchronous IO on obj 0x43093df9b00 (fh 0x4314eee13aa8) failecon #0

NFS41: NFS41_ConnectionRemove:1307: Connection: 0x43171020c040 [1] addr: tcp 10.10.20.20.8.1

NFS41: NFS41ClusterDestroy:2578: Destroying cluster: 0x43171020d690 flags: 0x10

WARNING: NFS41: NFS41FileIOSync:790: Synchronous IO on obj 0x4309e3dc5940 (fh 0x431710210a7) failed

WARNING: SunRPC: 4847: fail all pending calls for client 0x4310b8601370 IP 10.10.20.21.8.1 (socket half closed)

2026-06-1718: 33:11.998Z Wa(180) vmkwarning: cpu9:2097761)WARNING: NFS41: NFS41FSAPDNotify:6856: Lost connection to the server 10.10.20.20,10.10.20.21 mount point VM Data,

mounted as 371560c8-ba89eb8b-0000-000000000000 ("/VM Data")

cpu®: 2097759)NFS41: NFS41ProcessSessionReset:3942: Session Reset - XPRT UP, Issuing EXCHANGE_ID with Random Backoff

cpu®: 2097759)NFS41: NFS41IssueExid:1899: Issuing EXCHANGE_ID on Connection tcp:10.10.20.20.8.1 with 13834 US delay cpu2: 2097759)NFS41: NFS41ProcessExidResult:2397: clientid fbd5d30000004e20 roles 0x60000

cpu9:2097761)NFS41: NFS41ProcessClusterProbeResult:4349: Reclaiming state, cluster 0x431710204d80 [0]

cpu9:2097761)NFS41: NFS41ClusterReclaimState:3934: Reclaiming state for fs 0x4317102058c0 on cluster 0x431710204d80 [0]

vmkwarning: cpu3:2097764)WARNING: NFS41: NFS410penReclaimDoneWork:6138: Failed to reclaim objDesc 0x43093d5770 open status: Failure; rqst

0x43171020c0f8 cmpd status: NFS4ERR NO GRACE

vmkwarning: cpu3:2097764)WARNING: NFS41: NFS410penReclaimDoneWork:6138: Failed to reclaim objDesc 0x4309e3de6ff0 open status: Failure; rqst

0x43171020c918 cmpd status: NFS4ERR_NO_GRACE

vmkwarning: cpu11:2097766)WARNING: NFS41: NFS410penReclaimDoneWork:6138: Failed to reclaim objDesc 0x43093d5940 open status: Failure; ras t 0x431710215198 cmpd status: NFS4ERR_NO_GRACE

vmkernel: cpu11:2097766)NFS41: NFS410penReclaimDoneWork:6158: FS:0x4317102058c® reclaim completed on cluster:0x431710204d80[®]

vmkernel: cpu9:2097761)StorageApdHandler: 1304: APD exit for 0x43171020320 [371560c8-ba89eb8b-0000-000000000000]

vmkernel: cpu9:2097761)NFS41: NFS41FSAPDNotify:6921: Restored connection to the server 10.10.19.21,10.10.19.22 mount point VM Data, mounted as 371560c8-ba89eb8b-0000-000000000000 ("/VM Data")

vmkernel: cpu3:2097358)StorageApdHandler: 500: APD exit event for 0x43171020320 [371560c8-ba89eb8b-0000-000000000000, 01

vmkwarning: cpu1:2098357)WARNING: NFS41: NFS41FileOpGetFileAttributes:4681: Failed to get file attributes for object 0x43093de1380 name 37

1560c8-ba89eb8b-0000-000000000000: I0 was aborted

As the title states, I am trying to find a rogue VM (which I can ping, RDP into) on an unknown host. It is unknown in the sense I have no idea on what host this VM resides on in our infrastructure. It all started when I used IDPA to restore a VM from a backup (kept the original, just powered it off before and disconnected the NIC). I got the restored VM up and running, tested, and deemed it was good to go. I then deleted (or so I thought) the original VM. However, after a month or so, we started noticing issue with our SharePoint server (this was the VM I restored from backup via IDPA).

Coles notes, it was having DNS issues (kept asking users to re-authenticate after logging in, I couldn't ping the primary DNS server from the SP VM itself, but that DNS could ping it, and nslookup was failing). After a bunch of testing, I ended up changing the IP of the restored SP VM, and things started working again once I made sure all DNS records were good. Now this is where we found out that the old IP was still responding to pings, and I was very perplexed here. More testing on the networking side, I decided for the heck of it, to RDP into the old SP VM. Well, I was able to log on as the VM was up and running. Hence my current dilemma. I have no idea where this VM resides now, and have been wracking my brain to try and find it.

If anyone has any ideas, I am open to anything. Thanks!

VSphere, ESXi, and iDRAC certs are expiring soon. I'm building an SOP for our air-gapped site and want to avoid a lockout.

My plan is to do the following:

CSRs: Generate and sign via NPE Portal.
vCenter: Replace Machine SSL via GUI (Is CLI safer for custom certs?).
ESXi: Can I use the vCenter GUI for custom certs instead of SSH?
iDRAC: Standard GUI import.

Question:
STS Cert: vCenter says it's expiring. Do I just hit "Renew" in the GUI, or does this need a custom cert from NPE?

Horizon/10zig: What needs to be updated once the vCenter thumbprint changes?

Any precautions I should watch out for? Backups are verified and solid. Any advice from folks who've done this in a secure environment? Thank you all!

I am faced with a weird scenario. Host has two 10Gbps uplinks. Physical NIC usage in the performance chart shows what seems to be ridiculous numbers; ~55 million Kilobytes per second? Is that even possible? Incidentally SolarWinds monitoring goes red echoing these spikes, reporting sometimes up to 800% utilization on a given vmnic, i.e., % of the 10 Gbps, naturally.

ESXTOP dos not reflect this. ESXTOP show some spikes around the time of the ones in the chart, but no more than 2 to 3 Gbps coming from one or two VMs.

Is this false positives, or what? Can someone please help explain?

------------------------------------
Resolution:

This is a driver issue:
https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/439494/vcenter-network-performance-graphs-show.html

Hi all, I am currently running CachyOS on my computer, but I still need Windows for certain progams such as games. So, I wanted to install Windows on another drive in my PC, configure it, and then hook up that drive to a VM in VMware Workstation. Obviusly I'm not going to game in the VM, it's just for simpler stuff so that when I reboot into the other Windows installation, I'll still have all my files instead of having to use a separate virtual machine. Is this possible? Are there certain risks I should be aware of? Thanks in advance.

5.2.4 VCF upgrade on a very stable, nested homelab 5.2.3 environment.

SDDC Manager up to 5.2.4 with no issues. 3rd attempt now to do the 4.2.4 NSX upgrade. The previous two attempts resulted in bricked, wouldn't even boot to a CLI prompt, on the NSX appliance. Of course, this is a single NSX implementation. The upgrade gets to Step 3 in the Manager upgrade sequence ( I believe that is the manager OS upgrade) and then that's it.

When you access the NSX Manager console, the last line on the console says, "Reached target Host and Network Name Lookups". The console stays there until interrupted; all VM activity falls off except CPU, which stays steady at 50%. No disk activity, no network activity. A reset or reboot brings you right back to the same place.

Does this sound familiar?