VMware

VMware offers its VMware Server, a free entry-level hosted virtualization product for Linux and Windows servers. The product is available for download at “Virtualization and VMware have become mainstream in the past year, and many customers have deployed thousands of VMware server environments across their enterprises. With VMware Server, we are ensuring that every company interested in,considering or evaluating server virtualization for the first time has access to the industryleading virtualization technology,” said Diane Greene, VMware president. “VMware Servermakes it easy and compelling for companies new to virtualization to take the first step toward enterprise- wide virtual infrastructure.”

Features VMware Server, the successor to VMware GSX Server, enables users to quickly provision new server capacity by partitioning a physical server into multiple virtual machines, bringing the powerful benefits of virtualization to every server. VMware Server is feature-packed with the following market- leading capabilities: Support for any standard x86 hardware Support for a wide variety of Linux and Windows host operating systems, including 64-bit operating systems

Support for Virtual SMP, enabling a single virtual machine to span multiple physical processors Quick and easy, wizard-driven installation similar to any desktop software Quick and easy virtual machine creation with a virtual machine wizard Virtual machine monitoring and management with an intuitive, user-friendly remote console

VMware Server supports 64-bit virtual machines and Intel Virtualization Technology, a set of Intel hardware platform enhancements specifically designed to enhance virtualization solutions. “Central Transport has saved hundreds of thousands of dollars with VMware virtual infrastructure,” said Craig Liess, server administrator for Central Transport. “Introducing a new server virtualization product including Virtual SMP and support for 64-bit operating systems and Intel Virtualization Technology is a natural progression for VMware, furthering the company’s leadership in the market. Offering VMware Server for free will bring VMware’s proven virtualization technology to a wider audience, allowing companies to achieve the benefits of virtualization, such as cost reductions and flexible server provisioning.”

VMware Server is a good starting point for users seeking to familiarize themselves with the concept of virtualization before progressing to the enterprise-class suite of Vmware virtual infrastructure products that includes ESX Server with Virtual SMP and VirtualCenter with VMotion technology for large- scale production server consolidation, business continuity, and enterprise-hosted desktop solutions.

Teaming Up with Intel Intel and VMware are launching a global marketing campaign to educate users on the value of virtualization on Intel platforms and to drive broader adoption of virtualization. “VMware Server on Intel-based systems will allow customers from big IT to SMB to experiment with virtualization, understand its benefits and realize the value of Intel technologies such as Multi Core and Intel Virtualization Technology,” said Diane Bryant,vice president and general manager, Intel Server Platforms Group.

VMware’s leading OEM hardware partners welcome the introduction of VMware Server. “Virtualization is a key enabling technology for our customers as they use scale out architectures for data center deployments,” said Paul Gottsegen, vice president, Dell product group. “VMware Server is a great opportunity for our customer base to easily evaluate how the benefits of virtualization can help improve their server utilization rates.”

VMware Infrastructure

VMware is the biggest name in virtualization, and they offer VMware Infrastructure,which includes the latest version of VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5. Vmware Infrastructure will allow VMware customers to streamline the management of IT environments through greater levels of automation, increase overall infrastructure availability, and boost performance for mission-critical workloads. The new release will also include updated packaging and pricing, including new offerings specifically targeted at midsize and smaller IT environments.

VMware Infrastructure is VMware’s third-generation, production-ready virtualization suite. According to a study of VMware customers, 90 percent of companies surveyed use VMware Infrastructure in production environments. With more than 120 industry and technology awards, VMware provides a much-anticipated complete solution that meets customer demand for a next-generation firmware hypervisor, enhanced virtual infrastructure capabilities, and advanced management and automation solutions.

Features Virtualization platform enhancements help deliver new levels of performance, scalability, and compatibility for running the most demanding workloads in virtual machines: Expanded storage and networking choices such as support for SATA local storage and 10 Gig Ethernet as well as enablement of Infiniband devices expand storage and networking choices for virtual infrastructure. Support for TCP Segment Offload and Jumbo frames reduces the CPU overhead associated with processing network I/O. Support for hardware-nested page tables such as in-processor assists for memory virtualization.

Support for paravirtualized Linux guest operating systems enables higher levels of performance through virtualization- aware operating systems. Support for virtual machines with 64GB of RAM and physical machines with up to 128GB of memory

Virtual infrastructure capabilities help deliver increased infrastructure availability and resilience: VMware Storage VMotion enables live migration of virtual machine disks from one data storage system to another with no disruption or downtime. VMware VMotion has become an indispensable tool for many infrastructure administrators to dynamically balance their server workloads and eliminate planned downtime for server maintenance. Storage VMotion extends VMotion to storage resources of a virtual machine, namely virtual disks. Using Storage VMotion, administrators can dynamically balance the storage workload and address performance bottlenecks by migrating virtual machine disks to the best available storage resource.

VMware Update Manager automates patch and update management for Vmware ESX Server hosts and virtual machines. Update Manager addresses one of the most significant pain points for every IT department: tracking patch levels and manually applying the latest security/bug fixes. Patching of offline virtual machines enforces higher levels of patch standards compliance than physical environments. Integration with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) enables zero-downtime VMware ESX Server host patching capabilities.

VMware Distributed Power Management is an experimental feature that reduces power consumption in the datacenter through intelligent workload balancing. Working in conjunction with VMware DRS, Distributed Power Management is designed to automatically power off servers not currently needed in order to meet service levels, and automatically power on servers as demand for compute resources increases.

Products Vmware Editions: VMware ESX Server 3i providing single-server partitioning, is delivered embedded as firmware in server systems or as a stand-alone. VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation (previously called “Starter”) includes Vmware ESX Server, VMware ESX Server 3i, VMware Consolidated Backup, and the new VMware Update Manager. VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard is designed to bring higher levels of resiliency to IT environments at greater value.

VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise contains the entire array of virtual infrastructure capabilities for resource management, workload mobility, and high availability. VMware VMotion, Storage VMotion, and DRS with DPM are available for standalone purchase with VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation and Standard.