ESX3i, VMware’s best kept secret?

by pancil on December 31, 2008

So, I’m a feed reader, doing crazy amounts of information processing every day, from Cars, to Gadgets, to Cats… The thing that I read the most about of course, is Virtualization. Not just VMware, but Hyper-V and Xen too! (and VirtualIron, and Cloud Computing, and any number of other virtualization things. While right now VMware is the top enterprise competitor for organizational virtualization, it may not always be, and as I work at one of the industries leading service provider companies, we need to keep on top of these things.

Every time I read an article (like this one) about Hyper-V, the person writing the article seems to tout that Hyper-V is FREE! and that makes it better somehow? The thing that I don’t believe anyone seems to mention is that if you run a hybrid shop (Windows, Linux, etc..) or even an entirely Linux shop, you may need to buy extra windows licences to run your hypervisors. To me, that’s not FREE!

The comment below :

it's essentially a free competitor to industry big dog VMware ESX,
and it doesn't yet include an analogous tool to VMware's
indispensable VMotion tool (but will when Server 2008 R2 arrives)

Basically, Hyper-V is ‘kind of’ FREE! and VMware doesn’t give you VMotion out of the box… Sigh!

Also, many of the other applications that you require to run and manage a successful shop are not included with your Hyper-V installation (Patching, Monitoring, Management, Provisioning), and again, that’s not FREE! Sure if you have these things on site, this will give you additional features to add to your armada, and that’s great, but they’re not features that are new to the market.

VMware, being the sneaky folk that they are, released VMware ESX 3i for FREE! (really FREE this time) The only thing is, in my opinion, they’ve not done enough of a guerilla effort to undercut Microsoft Marketing (which would be hard, as in a lot of cases Microsoft puts the M in Marketing).

Sure, you don’t get VMotion, or vCenter, but really, you get something free, enterprise class, and you don’t need to worry about what’s ‘enlightened’ and what’s not. Feel free to comment away in the section provided.

Pancil

  • http://www.yellow-bricks.com Duncan

    might be worth editing the article and changing “VMWare” to “VMware”

  • http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware

    Changed those up. Good catch.

  • http://www.mikedipetrillo.com Mike DiPetrillo

    At least someone out there “gets it”. Listen, if all you want to do is create and manage VMs then there are a lot of free solutions. Microsoft has one, VMware has one, Citrix has one, Red Hat, etc, etc, etc. Of course at this point I think you can buy a toaster oven and it will run virtual machines. What you should be looking for and paying for is something that will take you beyond server consolidation. You want something that will help make your business more efficient. You want something that will plug into your existing tools. You want something that will run your existing apps and operating systems. You want something that's not going to give you a headache. That's what you should be looking for. Frankly, all of these people out there talking about free hypervisors are completely missing the boat. With a very hard 2009 coming up everyone really needs to look beyond server consolidation and figure out the best way to really run their businesses.

    Good post. I just hope we can get beyond this free discussion at some point in time.

  • http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware

    Changed those up. Good catch.

  • http://www.mikedipetrillo.com Mike DiPetrillo

    At least someone out there “gets it”. Listen, if all you want to do is create and manage VMs then there are a lot of free solutions. Microsoft has one, VMware has one, Citrix has one, Red Hat, etc, etc, etc. Of course at this point I think you can buy a toaster oven and it will run virtual machines. What you should be looking for and paying for is something that will take you beyond server consolidation. You want something that will help make your business more efficient. You want something that will plug into your existing tools. You want something that will run your existing apps and operating systems. You want something that's not going to give you a headache. That's what you should be looking for. Frankly, all of these people out there talking about free hypervisors are completely missing the boat. With a very hard 2009 coming up everyone really needs to look beyond server consolidation and figure out the best way to really run their businesses.

    Good post. I just hope we can get beyond this free discussion at some point in time.

  • Pingback: Professional VMware » Blog Archive » "Free" Virtualization Round-Up

  • http://www.cruzit.com awpoopy

    …an entirely Linux shop, you may need to buy extra windows licences to run your ESXi also. The Vi client is for Windows only. (an exe file and the exe file does not run in cross-over either)
    For right now I've just turned a 20,000 dollar server into a blackbox – unless I want to set up a windows box -which I don't. No amount of googling seems to give an appropriate answer. I guess KVM may be the route to go next.

  • http://wisenet.webs.com William

    Thanks for sharing this VMware insight in recently seeing an offers response about VCP, I hope the client knows what you made known this revelation.

    It's the same feeling gotten when asked, from the MCSA perspective searching, users still learning beyond basic computing what to or not unit buy, versus little mercy sales person, who will NOT likely ask how deep their computing will get in order to sell what they DON'T even need compared to i.e. corporate.

    Games and email, stay Nintendo and local web access; library, college, misc.

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  • http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware

    Thanks!

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  • opbzil

    have you looked at Xenserver?

    THat is closer to being free and defintelly more of a competitor to Vmware ESX By the way it DOES include an equivalent to vmotion.

  • http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware

    Actually, yes! We've not covered Xenserver here (we're a VMware blog
    afterall) but have talked PowerShell and XenServer automation over on
    http://thepowershelltalk.com

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    You want something that will help make your business more efficient. You want something that will plug into your existing tools. You want something that will run your existing apps and operating systems. You want something that's not going to give you a headache.

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    For right now I've just turned a 20,000 dollar server into a blackbox – unless I want to set up a windows box -which I don't. No amount of googling seems to give an appropriate answer. I guess KVM may be the route to go next..

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    In an effort to undercut Microsoft Marketing, one must think on their feet.

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  • http://professionalvmware.com professionalvmware

    I'm not sure what you are asking.

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    Hey I'v been reading your blog from quite some time now and I just wanted to say keep up the good work.

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