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EMC To Acquire VMware
kma writes "According to The Register, virtual machine software maker (and my employer) VMware Inc. will be acquired by storage giant EMC, pending the usual approval process." The article explains: "VMware makes the industry's premier set of partitioning tools for running both Windows and Linux on a single server and running multiple applications on a single system. EMC plans to grab the privately held VMware for $635 million in cash."
You're confusing emulation with virtualization. Storage virtualization is a really big deal these days. Check out the book "Virtual Storage Redefined: Technologies and applications for storage virtualization" by Paul Massiglia (of Veritas).
Isolation, and performance guarintees on shared systems are often more important than raw performance in something like a datacenter environment.
Adam
Would you do it for some scoobie crack?
VMware had filed its intention to go public in July of this year, and every indication was that process was proceeding normally. Analysts expected them to make their public markets debut soon. I suppose EMC, which has been on a buying spree with billion-dollar buyouts of both content management technology provider Documentum and storage management provider Legato Systems earlier this year, made an offer VMware just could not refuse. It had to be good, because they were expected to make several hundred million from an IPO. :)
Cheers,
Doug
Doug Mehus http://doug.mehus.info/
Virtual PC can run most x86 operating systems
a lu ation/overview2004.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/ev
They're not going to support it, it doesn't mean that Virtual PC 2004 won't run Linux as a guest OS. In fact, I know people that are doing so right now.
Don't confuse vendor support for an option with product support for that option. They are two entirely different types of "support".
It allows supreme flexibility. If you currently have an assortment of servers doing different tasks (and with Windows 2000 Server, you eventually learn it's better to spread out the service responsibilities), sometimes it's difficult to plan 3-4 years in advance for your resource use.
With VMWare, you can run several virtual servers on a big (quad cpu) server, attach essentially unlimited amounts of fast disk, and shuffle resource allocation around as you see fit.
If absolute uptime is required, you have two such server in different locations, one of which is failover.
If you can afford 2-8 hours of downtime, you just make sure the one server has as much redundancy as possible, and then you plan to call Dell/HP/IBM if the mobo or raid controller card fails.
It's an old idea made new, but it's a good idea.
.sigs are for post^Hers.
One Word: Bollocks
1) VMware is a virtualization program
2) Bochs is an emulator
The difference is that Bochs interprets foreign machine code, while VMware lets code run natively, with "traps" to catch it when it tries to do things with the virtual hardware. As a result, Bochs is slow but can run x86 code on any architecture (a PowerPC box) for example, while VMware is fast but only runs on x86.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
Mainframes (at least IBM big iron) don't need this -- they have the original product that VMware was modeled on, zVM (VM/CMS, VM/370, VM/XA, VM/ESA, historically).
zVM is what allows many (thousands on high-end machines) of virtual Linux images to run on a single large mainframe, in combination with other virtual operating systems.
Mainframes are, on the high end, quite capable of supporting 10s of thousands of users, with massive I/O subsystems (litterally thousands of disk drives, all running nearly saturated, continuously). You can use machines with large CPUs for processor-intensive monolithic tasks, or many small CPUs for high-concurrency processes.
You can dedicate resources (CPUs, memory, I/O) to specific virtual systems for high performance or share and/or cap the resource utilization on them. Configurations can be changed on-the fly as demand or needs of the business dictate. A virtual system can even be identified as a V=R (virtual=real) preferred guest, which can take control of the real system dynamically in the event of a VM operating system failure.
Mainframe can be extremely cost effective, in the right circumstances.
Now you know why mainframes still exist.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.
Well, depending on what you need VMWare for, just consider Win4Lin [win4lin.com].
You're forgetting that VMWare has more than just one product. It's obvious from the article that VMWare Workstation is not the product they were after.
This deal is all about getting their hands on the ESX and GSX server products.
That said, ALL of VMWare's products are much more flexible than Win4Lin, which is really just a niche product, even moreso than VirtualPC. Those two are designed for people who just need to run the occasional Windows app on a foreign OS.
The real beauty of VMWare's products, even the Workstation version to a small extent, is that you can actually run production servers within the VM's. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it with Workstation, but I have gotten away with it for brief periods in the past.
Now, with GSX server, you CAN run production servers inside a VM with confidence. And with the VMWare Remote Console, you can access those individual servers from across the network as if you were in front of them physically. Mail server is running out of memory, but the file server has way more than it needs? No problem, just access a web interface and move some memory from one to the other. Beats the hell out of swapping DIMMs around.
Plus you can allocate resources at a much finer resolution than with physical hardware.
Not to mention that my server room now only needs two boxes, and two UPSs, instead of dozens.
Personally, I wouldn't even place Win4Lin in the same product category as VMWare's offerings. And they DEFINITELY have different target markets and intended uses.
Speaking as a VMware employee (not speaking for the company, yada, etc.), I'm feeling rather more "stoked" than "burned in the ass." In fact, I'm turning freaking cartwheels in the streets over this deal. The whole idea with pre-IPO companies is that you take the risk of working somewhere unstable in exchange for a larger than average stake in the company. Remember that whole "getting paid in options" thing? That's still how startups work.
So, it's not just three people walking away with 9 digit checks, as you are imagining. It's hundreds of employees whose stakes are now worth 6 digits. The terms of our purchase are quite likely better for me than an IPO would have been. From the inside, it looks as though the board actually gave a lot of thought to how this would impact employees.