B&R Free Edition and Free ESXi

[mbell98]

Will it work on the free version of ESXi (without vCenter)?

[Vitaliy S.]

Hi Mark,

If you're asking whether you can deploy Veeam B&R free edition on the free ESX(i) host, then yes of course you can do that.

Thanks!

[Gostev]

I would guess he is asking if B&R Free Edition can process VMs running on free ESXi hosts, as of course free ESXi has no differences from paid editions as far as ability to run the VMs and any applications within those VMs.

Mark - basically, it is important to understand that "free ESXi" and "without vCenter" are two different things. For example, you can have paid ESXi without vCenter (if you don't care to have vCenter), and we have always supported that (using direct connection to the host).

Now, regarding "free ESXi" support, this is where it gets a bit confusing. It is NOT supposed to work because of limitation VMware has put in place in previous vSphere version, however it currently WORKS for free ESXi 5.0, more details here > Veeam with vSphere 5 Hypervisor (e.g. free ESXi) works. If you have further questions regarding this part, please post in the above-linked topic, since this is not specific to free edition.

[Ratcha]

[merged]

I can't imagine it does due to VMware restrictions, but thought I'd ask anyway.

I initially figured nobody would be running licensed ESXi without backing it up with a full featured and supported product, and this led me to think B&R free might actually work with the unlicensed version as who would rely on this manual backup tool for a licensed ESXi install.

[jlingg]

[merged]

Can you use the free version to create a backup of the vm that has the free version installed on it?
thanks