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"

Mircrosoft

[raffe]

I bet this is more because og Mircrosoft than Xen. When Mircrosoft is moving into a field competitors usally shiver....

Re:Intel VT

[rfinnvik]

VMWare's real "killer app" in my opinion is VirtualCenter/VMotion. The management tool is better than anything else I've seen for managing virtual infrastructure - and the ability to move live VMs between hardware nodes is just impressive :)

Why Not Use Patents?

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

To play devils advocate here, why isn't VMWare resorting to patents to muscle out the competition? Why compete when a government monopoly can take care of competition for you?

Are all their patents pending?

Re:Good Move!

[greyspk]

I haven't compared them 1 to 1, but I would expect that GSX has higher requirements for your server, both memory and CPU wise. If that is not the case, you're absolutely right - GSX is all I'm going to need. 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).

Re:Why no free VMware Workstation?

[JustASlashDotGuy]

Workstation is probably more widely used the GSX server. They are
different Animals. Even tho GSX server may end up being free, we may
install it to a single production server. However, we will also
continue buying Workstation for testing. There are several people with
Workstation installed to the laptops so they can create/run various
VM's. On my laptop alone, I hav about 8 VM's that I use for testing
(various OS, VPN softwares, script design, etc). I would never install
GSX to my laptop.

Virtualiazation isn't going to be . . .

[base3]

. . . of much commercial value for long, given that the model of computing is headed for a TCPA/Palladium/Remote attestation/Client assurance/DRM lockdown. Emulating "trusted" computing would defeat the whole purpose of the "content" and computing industries' march towards that model. That, and they'll buy laws making even attempting such emulation punishable by just short of death.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Limitations?

[hal2814]

I'm not so sure that shoehorning an app (and an OS for that matter) that thinks it's running on a signle node into a cluster is such a good idea. The benefits of a cluster are typically only realized when the underlying software has some idea of what's going on and can organize data sufficiently accross the nodes. At best case, I'm guessing there will be an awfully chatty system in place that may get marginally better performance or may even get worse performance than running the app on a single node.

Re:hey don't leave out qemu

[kbnielsen]

No, vmware lets you assign a MAC address inside the range 00:50:56:XX:YY:ZZ, which is quite reasonable, since this block is assigned to VMWare, and thereby they avoid to conflict with other MAC's on the ether... They also avoid a whole host of problems with people faking mac addresses and such, so I think it's quite reasonable to have this practice...

Re:What about existing customers?

[meringuoid]

I'd certainly be pissed off if I'd just paid $1400 for GSX only to be told this week it's free.

Why? If you thought $1400 was too much for the product, you wouldn't have bought it. Since you bought the product, clearly you thought that what you were getting was worth more than what you were paying for it. So you were happy with the deal you made with VMware. Surely you are not petty enough to begrudge others the better deal that they are now getting?

Though I'm certainly not the religious sort, I'm reminded of the Christian parable of the workers in the vineyard. You made your own deal with VMware, and you were happy with it. What business is it of yours if, since then, they have changed their plans and now offer better deals to others?

Re:hey don't leave out qemu

[Professor_UNIX]

Why do proprietary fanatics think they need to be apologists for commercial software? Because VMWare produces some fantastic products. I couldn't care less if software is commercial or not as long as it fits my needs and my budget. There is simply no open source alternative to VMWare right now that even comes close to what it does at the speeds it does it. Quit being a blind open source fanatic and look around the world sometime. The vast majority of people have no problem paying for software if it fits their needs.

Re:Mircrosoft

[oni]

I can't speak for anyone else, but I have absolutely zero interest in Microsoft's VM products.

Yeah, but the way the world works is that people who wouldn't normally even think about VMs will think about them for no other reason than the fact that it came for free with their OS. Microsoft will have a button somewhere labeled, "click here to make this a VM" and people who don't even know what a VM is will click it.

Don't believe me? Take a look at the form that comes up after you install Win2k3 advanced server. The form is labeled "Configure this Server" and it has a checkbox labeled, "make this a DNS server" and the word DNS is underlined. When you click it, if gives you the definition of DNS. Isn't that great? If you don't already know what DNS is, then you don't have any business setting one up. But that's the microsoft way. That's their target audience.

How hard is it to sell a DNS server to these people? "Do we need DNS? Wait, don't we already have that in windows?" VMWare is understandably worried that their product will soon be viewed in exactly the same way. "A VM? Do we need that? Wait, we already have it right here, just click that button"

Re:Intel VT

[cruelfood]

You're a bit misinformed about device virtualization, at least the way VMware does it.

Devices aren't merely multiplexed. They're virtualized (or emulated, if you prefer that term.)

What's the difference? For disks, the virtual machine doesn't see the actual disk controller or disk. It sees an emulated IDE or SCSI controller, and the virtual machine's disk storage is backed by a file in the host operating system. Reads and writes to the disk file go through normal Windows or Linux file APIs on the host. (Raw disk passthrough is possible, but it's still more complicated than multiplexing.)

For network devices, the virtual machine sees an emulated NIC. (AMD PCNet32, Intel E1000, or VMware vmxnet device, depending on the VM.) Packets are sent on the physical network via the Windows or Linux networking layers. To receive incoming packets, the host's network card is put in promiscuous mode, and packets destined for the virtual machine's MAC are filtered to it.

Other types of devices are fully emulated. Video? The VM has a VMware SVGA card. Updates to video are emulated, and the contents of the virtual frame buffer can be displayed via VNC, the VMware remote console, or drawn via X or Windows GDI calls via the local UI. Other types of devices in the virtual machine, like interrupt controllers, the chipset, and so on, are fully implemented in software. No "multiplexing" is done with these devices.

I also disagree that the processor emulation is a "hack" that "kills performance." While x86 is not trap-and-emulate style virtualizable, binary translation is hardly a "hack". And it hardly kills performance. Projects like Dynamo have been improving performance of compiled code by dynamically translating it. And Intel announced plans to kill off x86 emulation in IA-64 hardware, because their software solution was good enough.

Re:hey don't leave out qemu

[deltatype0]

You speak truth sir

Fact is, while I'm young (22) compared to probably the majority of the tech industry, I like many others in my generation, grew up on DOS, Windows, OS/2 (yes, we had a old Pentium 100 running dual boot OS/2 Warp and Win 3.1 in our house) and other non open-source software. I didn't know Linux exsisted until sometime around 1999-2000 when my dad started looking into it more for his job. Today I still use Windows because it fits my needs. Sure I could use Linux, and I do for webserver related stuff, but Windows works for me in a workstation enviroment. I have no problem paying for software if it works. I also support OSS that does a better job than commercial alternatives. It's about choice.

Re:What about existing customers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Insightful?!? Who is moderating here?

If I think something is worth $1,400, I would still like to pay much less than what it's "worth"... Everybody wants to get a deal, noone wants to waste money. This situation touches on both ends -- I could have saved myself a large amount of money, and I missed out on a great deal.

And, your "Christian parable" is silly. If I negotiate a good compensation package, then find my co-workers doing the same job are getting much higher salaries or stock option packages, it's human nature to be pissed.