Just adding my anecdata. I started using ESXi around 2016 for homelab purposes. This paid off nicely as my $CORP also uses VMWare products, so it was easy and n

Just adding my anecdata. I started using ESXi around 2016 for homelab purposes. This paid off nicely as my $CORP also uses VMWare products, so it was easy and natural to get into VMs and fix them up as needed. Pretty unhappy about the Broadcom acquisition as VMWare previously seemed to care about the homelab market and recognized the value created by letting hobby admins learn their tools. That's going away now and Broadcom hopes the locked in market will provide enough income to suit their short term goals. Anyway, I switched to Proxmox 9 in my lab this year and couldn't be happier. It's so much more powerful, flexible, and intuitive after one spends a few days in the UI. I ported all my VMs over and things are rock solid and better than ever under Proxmox. My local systems team at $CORP knows of Proxmox but acknowledges nothing will be changing soon with our environment. But time will tell I suppose.