Are you open to trying like Proxmox?
: A controversial change requires a minimum purchase of 72 licensed CPU cores per product, significantly increasing baseline costs for smaller deployments. Announcing VMware vSphere Foundation 9.0 - VMware Blogs
The VMUG Advantage program provides an excellent, low-cost alternative for homelabbers and professionals looking to test.
You must register for a Broadcom account to access the ISO image. 2. GitHub Repositories (Community Collections)
Engineers, developers, and hobbyists looking to learn or test VMware products without commercial budgets have several legitimate avenues available:
The good news: You don't have to risk piracy. There are legitimate ways to use ESXi for free or at very low cost—depending on your needs.
Scripts or "key generators" hosted in these repositories often contain malware or backdoors.
While a "free license key" is not available, you can still use VMware ESXi 9 for free legally through several channels: 1. VMware Evaluation Period
