To help find the right path forward for your environment, please let me know:
The silence on the line was thunderous. “Six thousand dollars? For a piece of paper with numbers on it?”
Launch the desktop application and log in to your standalone ESXi 5.5 host or vCenter Server. Select the specific ESXi host in the left inventory tree. Click on the Configuration tab in the main window.
Modern server hardware (Intel Xeon Scalable processors, AMD EPYC, and updated RAID controllers) will not boot or install ESXi 5.5 due to a lack of legacy driver support in the underlying VMkernel.
Connect directly to the IP address of your ESXi 5.5 host. license key vmware esxi 5.5
There are several reasons why obtaining a license key for ESXi 5.5 is crucial:
In the pop-up dialog box, select the radio button for .
Designed for small to mid-sized businesses requiring basic high availability.
60 consecutive days from the moment of installation. To help find the right path forward for
Your options for obtaining a license key depend entirely on your existing VMware entitlements and whether you need advanced features.
All premium features of vSphere Enterprise Plus are unlocked (vMotion, High Availability, Distributed Virtual Switch, etc.).
Are you trying to or license a new install ? Is this for a home lab or a business environment ?
While VMware ESXi 5.5 reached its End of General Support on September 19, 2018, it remains a common legacy hypervisor for older hardware and specialized laboratory environments. Managing its license keys effectively is critical to unlocking the full performance of your physical hardware and maintaining service continuity. Core Licensing Editions for ESXi 5.5 Select the specific ESXi host in the left inventory tree
VMware offers several types of license keys for ESXi 5.5, including:
Finding a legitimate license key for VMware ESXi 5.5 is difficult today because VMware (now Broadcom) has officially discontinued the "Free" version of vSphere Hypervisor and no longer provides keys for older versions like 5.5. 💡 Official Ways to License
The Free license switches the VMware vSphere API into a Read-Only state. Third-party backup utilities that rely on Changed Block Tracking (CBT) or automated snapshot APIs (such as Veeam Backup & Replication) will fail to back up workloads on a free host.