He held his breath. The status light spun for three agonizing seconds.

: Click Edit in the top right corner and choose Assign a new license key to this host .

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

If you need a step‑by‑step installation guide for ESXi 5.5 (e.g., evaluation mode), let me know and I can provide that separately.

While the RAM limit vanished, the ESXi 5.5 free license maintained several key constraints to encourage enterprise upgrades: