VMware to offer low-footprint ESX hypervisor free
VMware Tuesday said it will offer the small-footprint version of its ESX virtualization software free, responding to pressure from Microsoft and other companies that are threatening VMware's lead in the virtualization market.
The next version of ESXi, which will come in about two weeks, will be available at no cost, said VMware CEO Paul Maritz on a conference call Tuesday to discuss the company's second-quarter earnings. ESXi is a basic hypervisor, which is technology that separates the OS from server hardware so multiple OSes can run virtually on one physical server.
[ Related reading: VMware Q2 revenue up 54 percent, but slightly misses Street ]
Maritz said the move to make the already low-cost product free is part of VMware's plan to make its virtualization and network infrastructure products "as freely available to everyone in the industry" as possible as it diversifies its products beyond merely enabling virtualization. A former Microsoft executive, Maritz replaced VMware cofounder and former CEO Diane Greene, who was ousted in a sudden move two weeks ago.
Bogomil Balkansky, VMware senior director of product marketing, said ESXi has all the capabilities of VMware's older ESX product, including support for advanced VMware Infrastructure features like Vmotion, which allows a workload to be moved to another physical server while it is still being used.
[ Related reading: VMware replaces CEO, shares plummet ]
"Functionally the two products are equivalent; ESXi does anything and everything ESX does," Balkansky said.
The reason VMware is making ESXi free and not ESX is because ESXi has the more modern architecture and is the product VMware wants customers to use moving forward, he said. ESXi uses an agentless model for management, which is why its footprint is so much smaller (at 32M bytes) than that of ESX, he said.
Sign up for ITworld's Daily newsletter
Follow ITworld on Twitter @IT_world
On Twitter now
VMware
Powered by Twitter
jfruh
Apple syncing patent can't come soon enough
pasmith
New Twitter features borrow from 3rd party clients
Esther Schindler
Open Source Changes the Software Acquisition Process
mikelgan
How to set up continuous podcast play on the new iTunes
David Strom
Five important Windows 7 mobility features
sjvn
Guard your Wi-Fi for your own sake
Sandra Henry-Stocker
Grepping on Whole Words
Sidekick: The Good News & the Bad News
Either way you look at it Microsoft Data Center management did not follow standards or best practices in this failure. In which case it makes me wonder more about the outsourcing of corporate data much less personal data.
- mburton325
Join the conversation here
Quick, practical advice for IT pros. Made fresh daily.
Want to cash in on your IT savvy? Send your tip to tips@itworld.com. If we post it, we'll send you a $25 Amazon e-gift card.
