ESXi Update 4 Problems with Monitor?

[sixth]

I just installed ESXi Update 4 to a couple hosts, and I noticed I can no longer use the console screen to connect to the machines. Is this a bug with U4?

[Gostev]

Well, not really a bug per se... I am guessing that you are trying to connect to a VM running on free ESXi? The issue is that with Update 4, VMware had intentionally put a lot of new restrictions around free (unlicensed) ESXi to prevent management tools like Veeam Monitor from working with it. So, this issue should not be observed on licensed ESXi. As for free ESXi, we will investigate this and see if this can be fixed from our side.

Thanks for letting us know since we were not aware about this one.

[sixth]

Damn Vmware....always trying to make money. Really annoying. And yes, that is correct I am using ESXi the free version. I hope you guys can find a way around the change they made, I loved this feature you guys offered too. I have read of some of the changes they have made to Update 4, and I am not liking it. (backend changes). If this is anything of a hint of how vSphere is going to be I am not going to be happy.

[Gostev]

Personally I also don't understand the idea behind adding new restrictions to free ESXi at the same time when Citrix is making Xen Enterprise Edition free, because functionality-wise it beats free ESXi hands down.

But, knowing from inside how those big corporations work, I am hoping that this all happened because they had these changes planned long before they found out about Xen Enterprise becoming free, and just did not get enough time to react - so simply decided to proceed with the update 4 release no matter what (too late to change). Important decisions typically always take long in big corporations... I am guessing it will probably take another few months before they will have an answer to Citrix. I am pretty sure that this will all clear up with the vSphere release. Just my personal opinion.

[sixth]

I hear you on that. You are correct, Xen has a lot of other benefits than ESXi has and it free. I heard rumors that the pricing is going UP for vSphere. I am hoping that the vSphere update is going to be a solid release, and hopefully the upgrade won't be to bad either going from 3.5 to 4.0.