If you didn't happen to catch the article titled "VMware's GSX Server not fit for prime time. Says who?" from SearchWinIT.com (read it here), you might be as surprised as I was to find such bold statements as:
At a recent VMware whistle-stop road show, Kirk Niska, a VMware software engineer, told IT managers that GSX -- which until recently sold for roughly $3,750 for a two-CPU server -- was never intended for use in production. The company is recommending that customers use its flagship product, ESX Server, a data-center-class virtual server, in business-critical environments.
Personally, I found the statement somewhat confusing and disturbing. I have personally architected and implemented a number of solutions for customers using VMware GSX. While I would agree that earlier versions of GSX Server left a lot to be desired (specifically, 1.0 and 2.0) - I believe VMware had a wonderful product with 3.0. In fact, I found GSX Server 3.2 to be quite sufficient for many virtualization implementations. To say it was never intended for use in production surely has to be a misstatement.
After all, GSX Server certainly had its place in the server virtualization market. Was it as robust as ESX Server? Of course not. Did it have all of the resource allocation and resource management that ESX Server provided? No. But it was a stable platform. It did allow you to install it on any hardware you might have already had on hand, and it worked on top of Microsoft Windows, which for many IT shops is a must. In fact, I would go so far as to say that GSX Server is the true competing product with Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. Both equally ready for prime time production use - but neither as stable and robust as VMware ESX Server.
In fact, I would argue that VMware Server may be all that many companies will need to provide virtualization capabilities in their production environments. And this time, unlike GSX Server, you can't beat the price!