VMware to Make Server Product Free (as in beer)

yahyamf writes "CNET News.com is reporting that in the face of increasing competition in the OS virtualization market VMWare is going to give away its GSX server product for free, in the hope that customers who try it will eventually migrate to the more powerful ESX server. The company recently released a free VMWare Player which could only run but not create virtual machines. The company faces competition from rival products such as SWsoft's Virtuozzo, Mircrosoft's Virtual Server, as well as open source software like Xen"

hey don't leave out qemu

[jomas1]

If you are going to list software that will let you run an operating system from within another don't leave out qemu ahref=http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/rel=url2 html-2228 [slashdot.org]http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/>

Qemu may not run as fast as vmware does now but it's here, it's free and you can change whatever you want about it. The same is not true for vmware

Wait a second....

[Anonymous Coward]

Doesn't TFA say they are "expected" to make their product free?

expected != will

Re:Why no free VMware Workstation?

[Real_Handy]

Because GSX won't run on all of those XP machines? Server only (win2x and linux afaik).

Re:hey don't leave out qemu

[birder]

What are you talking about? VMware allows you to make the MAC address anything you want. Edit the config file and change the generatedAddress for the ethernet controller.

Re:Good Move!

[Zathrus]

q[One more positive side is that open sourcing GSX may trigger few separate public projects based on it (depends on what license GSX sources will be provided under).]q

It's provided under the "here are the binaries; you may not reverse engineer them" license.

Read the topic again -- free as in beer, not free as in speech. Just because I give you the beer for free doesn't mean I have to provide you the recipe.

Re:Intel VT

[TheRaven64]

There are two parts to virtualisation:

1. CPU virtualisation.
2. Peripheral virtualisation

The first of these is practically impossible on x86. VMWare and VirtualPC (x86 edition) manage it using some really, really, ugly hacks that kill performance (and then some more hacks to boost performance). Xen works by ignoring the problem. An operating system on Xen must be ported to not use any of the x86 instructions that don't easily allow virtualisation.

The second is not very hard conceptually. You just need to do some kind of multiplexing and then expose your devices as if they are a fairly general device of the category. While this is conceptually simple, it is practically a lot of work. Again, Xen dodges the problem here slightly be requiring that the domain 0 OS supports the hardware, and then providing generic virtualisation routines for various categories of device (consumer VMWare and VPC do the same - not sure about the server lines).

VT / Vanderpool / whatever make the first of these much easier (about as easy as it's been on RISC machines for the past decade or so and on mainframes for the past three. Yay for x86). They do very little for the second part of the puzzle. On PowerPC or SPARC, it might be possible to implement OpenFirmware drivers for hardware that are virtualisation-aware (IBM's servers do something a bit like this). I don't know if EFI has this capability; if it does then things like VMWare might become obsolete.

Oh, the final part of the puzzle is clustering. Xen and the server-grade VM systems provide clustering support which allows virtual machines to be transparently migrated between cluster nodes. This is quite useful, since you can run N VMs on M machines, and squeeze the low-activity ones onto a small number of nodes, then have then migrated to their own node when they are under high load.

Re:Speculation

[NetJunkie]

It's not speculation. I've heard it from VMware people this week.

Not GSX

[Anonymous Coward]

The free product will be called VMware Server, not GSX. I am not sure if they will continue with GSX as a separate product, but I was under the impression that they will. I had initially heard about this here [theregister.co.uk].

Re:Limitations?

[stikves]

"This is not a troll comment but can it run on a cluster?"

No it's not troll, but it's totally uniformed. Currently SMP (multiprocessor/multithreaded) VMware is only supported on ESX server as an addon [vmware.com]. As ESX runs on bare hardware (it's GSX who runs as a Linux application), there is currently no support for "virtual multiple CPUs in Linux". (Xen does this, but it's not the issue now).

Additionally OpenMOSIX (which comes with ClusterKnoppix [bofh.be] - I guess you meant this by "those Live CDs"), does not to "SMP like" processing. Instead it combines the processes in a "global system view" state. (Too much technical details here, but a multiple threads are not migrated -- see HOWTO [faqs.org]).

Moreover, it would be slow because of obvious issues -- as in network based access to disk and shared memory!

Finally multiple GSX servers managed from a single point is already possible with VMWare virtual center (google this yourselves is left for an exercise).

Sorry, but your suggestion will not work (at least under current circumstances).

You can make your own VMs for VMware player

[soboroff]

"The company recently released a free VMWare Player which could only run but not create virtual machines."

Sure you can. Take a gander at http://www.hackaday.com/entry/1234000153064739/ [hackaday.com]

What you don't get with VMware player is the nifty GUI to help you with the setup.

Re:Why no free VMware Workstation?

[paradizelost]

Workstation provides for multiple snapshots that you can switch between, GSX only allows for 1 snapshot. you can take a snapshot, then revert to that snapshot, undoing everything you've just done. w/ workstatino, you can have 30 snapshots( at time's i've been almost to that point) and switch between them as you please.

Re:Good Move!

[jbarr]

jaseuk wrote:

"GSX does all you need. So why if GSX is free would you need workstation?"

According to the Data Sheets found here:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/gsx_specs.pdf [vmware.com]
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/ws_specs.pdf [vmware.com]

GSX requires a "server" host, while Workstation does not:

GSX:

Host Operating Systems
Runs on Microsoft Windows 2000 Server and Advanced Server; Windows Server 2003, Web, Standard, Enterprise and x64 Editions, and Linux server host OSes

Workstation:

Host Operating Systems
Windows 2000 Professional and Server, Windows XP (32- and 64-bit), Windows Server 2003 (32- and 64-bit)
Popular 32-bit Linux distributions from Red Hat, SUSE, Ubuntu and Mandrake; select RHEL and SLES 64-bit

-Jim Barr
http://jimstips.com/ [jimstips.com]

Re:Good Move!

[paradizelost]

Multiple Snapshots. GSX Does not have them, workstation does. and let me tell you, It's damn nice.

Re:SECONDED

[j0217995]

I use a combination of them as well to run Linux on my windows box. If you use qemu to create the image file in vmware format you can then setup any vmplayer file to run any operating system. Currently I have the following image files, Ubuntu (Breezy), Ubuntu (Dapper), Windows 2003 Server, Debian, and BSD. All files were created first in qemu then I installed through VMPlayer. Runs as well as an official VM Player file available for download. See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/VMwarePlayerAndQemu [ubuntu.com] for more information.

Re:Good Move!

[koadic]

As the parent says, Workstation lets you keep a practically unlimited tree of snapshots, which is great for testing. Server can only take a single snapshot. (Sure, it can be copied and stashed somewhere manually, but the Workstation interface is much nicer and the incremental shapshots more efficient.)

Re:Good Move!

[andersbergh]

I've successfully used GSX in XP. It doesn't even tell you that your OS is unsupported when you install it.

vm builder

[switchfutguy]

who needs the full version if you have the player? The vmbuilder [consolevision.com] works great for me. all you need is an iso in the same directory as the vmx file. open notepad copy your code in save it as ".vmx" and you are good to go.

Re:hey don't leave out qemu

[floop]

The original statement that VMWare doens't permit arbitrary MAC addresse is true. You are restricted to the VMWare OUI. This doesn't allow for Multicast MAC [tcpipguide.com] assignemnt along with a ton of other legitimate reasons to manually set a MAC outside the OUI.

The "vast majority of people" live on 2 dollars a day and don't have computers. The vast majority of computer users don't purchase software that didn't come on their computer. The vast majority of IT depts don't purchase software without some sort of justification. A good IT person would be able to evaluate their needs and match to the appropriate solution given resources available.

Doesn't mean that VMWare doesn't rock. Just that there are considerations you and other failed to take into account when marking the parent as flamebait.

Why I switched from VMWare to Qemu

[this great guy]

I use virtualization a lot, both at work and for for personal needs. I have got about 20 disk images, and my work typically requires me to run 2 or 3 virtual machines concurrently. Three or 4 years ago, I was using VMWare because it was basically the only product that worked well at the time. However I have switched to Qemu since then, because IMHO it is technically superior. Here is why:

• Qemu copy-on-write disk image formats allows me to have as many different disk images of the same OS while using MUCH LESS disk space than VMWare. For example at work, I have N images of Windows XP, each configured with a different set of applications, parameters, etc, and all of them can be run concurrently. For me the lack of this feature in VMWare is clearly a showstopper, if I had to use VMWare I would have to create litteraly N different images, and it would use N times the disk space of Qemu (!). I cannot understand why VMWare STILL doesn't offer you such a feature after so many years.
• Qemu copy-on-write disk image formats also allows me to create a new disk image instantly (less than 1 sec). The closest existing VMWare feature ("snapshot") is slow and not as convenient.
• Qemu offers the option of being run on a machine without an X server. This is useful because my servers running Qemu don't need to be bloated with X, they are also more secure (no exported X display, etc). It is also much faster to run, create and manage virtual machines using Qemu's command line tools than using VMWare's GUI. And graphical guest OSes are usually accessed over VNC-like protocols so the lack of X doesn't matter.
• Qemu, like VMWare, uses a kernel module to implement different techniques to speed up virtualization. However Qemu kernel module is smaller (less potential security vulns) and more stable (in my experience).
• Qemu offers you the possibility of NOT using this kernel module. It can be very useful when you need to fire it up on a random machine: you don't have the obtain its kernel headers and you don't need to compile a kernel module.
• Qemu offers a CLI tool to create, convert, commit (copy-on-write) disk images; the main Qemu binary is also a CLI tool; and the monitor device can also be redirected to standard input/output. The obvious advantage of this is that the whole Qemu suite is scriptable and flexible. I have written quite a few scripts to ease my life, you can control basically everything: start, shutdown, reboot, eject CD drives, save screenshots, pause/continue emulation, etc. I know that VMWare has recently introduced a Perl API, but I don't know if it is as complete as what you can do with Qemu.
• Qemu is open-source, relies on standard kernel components and is generally better engineered. For example it uses the existing tun/tap driver and lets the users use iptables, to create virtual network interfaces and do NAT/bridging, etc. While VMWare re-implements THEIR virtual interfaces, THEIR nat code and THEIR bridging code, unnecessarily adding potential bugs and complexity to the whole system. VMWare has to do this because they have to support other technically inferior host OSes (Windows has no tun/tap driver, its firewall is not as powerful as iptables, etc).

The only feature I would like to see implemented in Qemu is the one allowing you to make real USB devices available to guest OSes. But anyway VMWare has so many disadvantages (see above) that for me it's a clear no-go. I think people praising VMWare are maybe too close-minded and don't realize its disadvantages because they have no experience with other virtualization softwares...

Re:WTF

[civilizedINTENSITY]

What the fuck does "free as in beer" mean?

It used to be that on election day the political machines would send men out to all the bars to buy everyone beer to toast their candidate. The idea was that the free beer would lead them to vote for the guy. Since there is an implied obligation to vote their way, the beer wasn't really free. This is then contrasted (in the "free as in beer or free as in speech") to freedom of speech, which is obviously a different sort of "free". Likewise, "Live Free or Die" doesn't imply life without cost, but rather the cost of living free.

Re:hey don't leave out qemu

[Tim C]

And what it makes to you that your os of choice (OS/2) have disapeared despite quite a fan base just because it was closed source ?

What makes you think OS/2 was his OS of choice? It was only one of several that he listed.

Don't you think that you should invest in non-closed source knowledge ?

He ends his post by saying "I also support OSS that does a better job than commercial alternatives. It's about choice.". Did you even read it?