VMware finally made the move that everybody predicted and was awaited for a long time: releasing its hypervisor for free.
During the Q2 2008 earnings call the company announced that before the end of July it will release the Update 2 for VMware Infrastructure 3.5 and that will give away the lightweight edition of the product, ESX 3i, for free.
Story continued at source:
One good thing to note is that you're entitled to a rebate if you bought ESXi from VMware's online store.
Theres a quick little blurb about it if you sign into the VMWare Partner page. It states that the new pricing will start the week of July 28th.
This seems like a smart move on VMWare's part to cut off Microsoft. Although it would be nice if they reduced prices across the board, this is a good start.
Kevin
This is great news! Our company works in the SMB space, and this will be a real deal changer for us...
Does anyone know of a comprehensive comparison of the latest shipping versions of the following?
ESX 3.5
ESX 3i Update 2 (not 1)
VMware Server 2.x
Hyper-V
Citrix Zen
Sun xVM (assuming their server is shipping- having trouble nailing this down)
This is something we could use for sales planning and in competitive situations, particularly with Win2008 + Hyper-V. Additionally, I am looking for feature comparisons which track what works on what processor families, particularly when the virt. microcode extensions are required. A lot of SMB customers are still one generation back on servers, so not everything they have is running the latest processors.
Finally-- anybody want to hazard a guess on what this will do for the VMware stock price in 2009?
Thanks!
How can I gearebate if I made an order in the online store ?
Hello Ilia, I am not sure at this point how you would go about getting a rebate. However, I am sure that once July 28th rolls around all the information required for a rebate will be made available.
Cheers
Kevin
I have some questions about the benefits of this for home use where all of the feattures of the full blown ESX suite are not needed.
1. If I can install ESX on a particular white box, does the same hold true for ESX 3i?
2. Making the assumption that I could install this on a white box, how would I administer ESX 3i? Don't I need virtual infrastructure client (VIC) to remotely administer ESX 3i? Or could I do it the hard way and do it through the command line logged in to the server itself? If I need VIC to administer the server then it is no longer really "free". I am guessing that I get a command line on the server itself (although there seems to be some sort of wizard for creating VMs) and that I can SSH to the same command line remotely?
3. I assume that I can port VMWare Appliances to ESX 3i?
4. Can ESX 3i be installed to SATA with the workarounds that exist for ESX?
5. Can i "easily" back up VMs to a NAS for example without having a VMFS partition - ie can I export the VMs from ESX 3i
I am just trying to get a handle on the potential pitfalls of trying to get this running at home, so any pointers / advice will be very much apprecaited!
Mike
1. If I can install ESX on a particular white box, does the same hold true for ESX 3i?
For the most part yes. Here's a list of whiteboxes and a number have tested OK for ESX and ESXi. http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3.5/Whiteboxes_SATA_Controllers_for_ESX_3.5_3i.htm. The challenge would be for storage controllers that result in the "mounting root failed" error on ESX 3.5. You have to work around that in a different way on ESXi by creating a customer oem.tgz file.
how would I administer ESX 3i? Don't I need virtual infrastructure client (VIC) to remotely administer ESX 3i?
Yes, you would still need a Windows PC to run the VI client on. You can also enable SSH on ESXi, but it is not supported as it is on ESX - http://www.vm-help.com/esx/esx3i/ESXi_enable_SSH.php
3. I assume that I can port VMWare Appliances to ESX 3i?
Yes
4. Can ESX 3i be installed to SATA with the workarounds that exist for ESX?
A lot of SATA devices will work without changes, but for those that don't see by comment above.
5. Can i "easily" back up VMs to a NAS for example without having a VMFS partition - ie can I export the VMs from ESX 3i
You wouldn't be able to mount a share as you do with the ESX service console, but you can manually copy files, script something with the RCLI / powershell and hopefully esXpress will support ESXi soon as they do provide a free version of their backup software.