Final recommendation: Download 6.7 only to upgrade it to 7.0 or 8.0, or to support a legacy environment that cannot change. For a new homelab, grab ESXi 8.0 Free Edition instead.
Downloading vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 6.7 has changed significantly following Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware. Since ESXi 6.7 reached its End of General Support on October 15, 2022 download vmware vsphere hypervisor -esxi- 6.7
, obtaining the software now requires navigating the new Broadcom Support Portal rather than the legacy VMware site. VMware Blogs Where to Download ESXi 6.7 Final recommendation: Download 6
Before clicking the download button, it is important to understand why you would choose 6.7 over newer versions. Before clicking the download button, it is important
Once the 350MB+ ISO file is downloaded, the user must write it to installation media. Unlike an operating system designed for daily use, ESXi is installed bare-metal (directly on the hardware). The ISO is typically "burned" to a USB drive using tools like Rufus or balenaEtcher. Alternatively, in a data center environment, the ISO can be mounted via a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) like iDRAC (Dell) or iLO (HPE) for remote installation.