Wow!  The news that stunned a virtual community. VMware is offering a server class virtualization product... for free???

Quoting from The Register:

As anticipated, VMware has created a free version of its server partitioning software in the hopes of drawing new customers to its technology. In addition, the move counters open source rival XenSource, which gives away core server virtualization technology known as a hypervisor.

The free product will be called VMware Server and will join the Workstation, GSX Server and ESX Server products. VMware Server relates most closely to the midrange GSX Server product often used by VMware customers to test and and develop software packages. The high-end ESX Server is used for production applications and actually slots in below operating systems such as Windows and Linux, whereas GSX Server and the upcoming VMware Server run on top of the OS.

Read the rest here.


What with Microsoft practically giving away their Virtual Server 2005 R2 product and Xen's free hypervisor for Linux systems starting to take root, what other choice did VMware have?  Whatever their other options, I for one am glad they took this route.  It will be interesting to see what VMware has in store for us.  Their website currently has "Find Out What's Coming Soon from VMware, Monday, February 6th"... I guess we'll see in a matter of days.