Bold Move
News is starting to leak out that VMWare’s successor to GSX Server will be free. This is a significant and bold move from VMWare that will put more than a few noses out of joint. I’ve always been a big fan of VMWare Workstation, and it would seem that the release of their free Player was a precursor for this. Hopefully like their current offering – and Workstation and Player – it will support Linux.
Mike Gunderloy (a person whose opinion I – and many, many others – value) thinks this is a very good thing:
GSX to simultaneously run a Subversion server, a Cruise Control .NET server, a Windows Software Update Services server, a Data Protection Manager Server, and several more servers – without the hassles of worrying about whether any of that software will conflict or fight over ports.This is, frankly, a market-changing move, and one that I expect a lot of people will take advantage of. Server virtualization is a wonderful technology; with it you can take a single physical server and partition it into multiple virtual servers that don’t step on each other. For example, I’ve taken a single Dell 1850 dual-processor server and used VMware
I’ve no doubt there will be an “Advanced Server” version that you do have to pay for, but I can imagine a lot of people trying – and sticking with – the free one.