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VMware Opens Up API to Partners
mstansberry writes "This week VMware opens up its source code to its x86 partners, calling it the best mix of open-source and proprietary. While the general public won't get a look at the source code, the likes of IBM, HP, Red Hat and others will. Releasing an API is a way for a company to bring more people into the fold and to get more applications integrated within the platform. But from the looks of last quarter's financial reports, VMware doesn't need much help getting people on board."
Good, I hope one of these companies has an interest in modifying VMware's BIOS so it can boot an OS from a USB device (USB-FDD/USB-HDD/USB-ZIP). That is one missing feature that really irks me.
How does VMWare fit into EMC's strategic interests? I'm surprised that Apple didn't buy VMWare when they had the chance because with the move to x86 hardware, having VMWare part of OS/X would be killer.
I think that VMWare is finding itself in potential trouble because it is not going to be easy to sustain their financial success with the Open Source projects such as QEMU and Xen gaining ground.
I personally think that hypervisors are overhyped (pun fun!), and that the most practical and useful form of "virtualization" is actually separation as is achieved by Solaris Zones, FreeBSD jails and (the most advanced of them all IMO) Linux Vservers. A pretty good article on it here.
Separtion carries nearly zero overhead, simplifies administration because there is one kernel and one filesystem. It allows for simple "entry" into a virtual server from the main server, and there are other subtle advantages that I can't think of right now probably....
Correct me if I'm wrong, but couldn't the better machines from the old mainframe days virtualize themselves? IIRC someone ported Linux to one of the virtual machines and was able to run a crazy number of instances on one set of hardware.
I know this sounds (is?) crazy, but why not open up the architecture of the old mainframes, and base the next generation of PC hardware on those ideas? CPU and memory are cheap now, but those suckers were designed to be robust back when you couldn't solve all problems by making large clusters of faulty machines - they had to work, period. Surely modern PCs could match much of the power of an old mainframe machine, properly designed, and the whole modern desktop OS and apps could just be run on a virtual instance from a PC. This would allow, say, Windows and Linux to coexist, run at the same time, have no issues crop up that software like VMware has to work around, and allow for all sorts of interesting debugging possibilities (how about booting up another VM to debug a wiped out desktop OS, just by pressing a button on the keyboard?)
IIRC x86 has some real issues with virtualization, but if what I have heard is true and x86 is now mostly a layer put on top of more advanced cores in most CPUs perhaps the problem has already been (largely) addressed. Does this makes sense to anyone else - would it be good to have "desktop mainframes"?
"I object to doing things that computers can do." -- Olin Shivers, lispers.org
XP is an interesting question. It already has a microkernel that it uses for DRM, called the NIB. You could probably host it by emulating that.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
While hardware being Apple's main profit center has been the main argument for why OS X wont be running on commodity hardware, there is another substantial sticking point. There have always been back room type deals between microsoft and apple over the office suite, and certainly Jobs making an x86 switch didnt happen without either an understanding or perhaps an explicit agreement over office with microsoft that surely included OS X not running on commodity hardware. It's very unlikely OS X Server could move enough volume for commodity hardware to make up for losing the biggest desktop app there is.
AMD will release Pacifica Q1'06 which provides OS virtualization in hardware.
This will allow Xen to transparently virtualize linux, windows, macosx, etc.
What you are seeing is VMWARE desparately trying to entrench themselves in the virtualization market before Xen & Pacifica (and whatever Intel's processor is) makes their product technologically non interesting.
From what I understand they offer nice add tools, and that's pretty much the only way they can actually have any sort of future in the virtualization market.
Yawn? Some of us need a product with VMWare's features, rather than a product that might have VMWare's features eventually, if enough bored teenagers are somehow inspired to hack on the code.
Now before I get modded down, I be to remind whoever might read this that what I am saying is FACT. - bogaboga
Actually, that's not true.
IE 6 for Mac was a fully staffed program, and Jimmy Grewal was the program manager. Immediately after the Safari announcement, a decision outside of MacBU was made to kill IE 6 for Mac. Once this was dead, the program manager actually left Microsoft. To repeat: IE 6 for Mac was actually in internal beta, and was a fully staffed project. Right when Safari was announced, it was killed, and it was killed *because* of the Safari announcement.
We just tried (and failed) to virtualize four machines on a single dual-Xeon system with 3GB of RAM using VPC. After dicking around with it for a week, we switched to VMWare and had it running well in about an hour. Save for the shoddy documentation, VMWare trounced it in every way.
I don't think I'd consider VPC a competitor to VMWare today. Next year, maybe. Right now? Not from what I can tell.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?