Microsoft Providing Virtual Server Free

liliafan writes "In an effort to gain a market majority over VMware Microsoft announced it is giving Virtual Server away for free, additionally they will provide customer support for Linux. In a related move VMware have opened their partition file format to the community, aggressive and suprising moves in the virtualisation market."

Comments

Really, now...

[TechnoGuyRob]

That does it, Slashdot. April Fools is OVER.

Re:Really, now...

[Anonymous Coward]

April fools lasts all month around here.

Re:Really, now...

[slo_learner]

April fools is over on May 1 or when we run out of fools, which ever comes first.

Re:Really, now...

[kimvette]

All you had to say was May 1. :)

Re:Really, now...

[stunt_penguin]

Heh, but the stories on slashdot are typically a few days behind. There'll be a dupe along in 3.......2........1..

Re:Really, now...

[Chrispy1000000 the 2]

Actually, I plan to destroy the world, so april *may* be over first. It'll be cutting it close.

Re:Really, now...

[Mr2cents]

To be sure, someone please call Satan and ask if it's getting cold down there..

wow, more echoes from the past

[yagu]

Unless I'm missing something here, this action on Microsoft's part is reminiscent of their "response" to Netscape when Microsoft finally recognized they had fallen way behind in an important market.

And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition.

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.

(As an aside, interestingly enough, I was surprised to find Microsoft's virtual server technology STILL does not offer hypervisor services... to give some perspective as to how far behind that puts them in "getting it", I worked on virtualized VM boxes on IBM 360 mainframes in school back in the mid-70s! These systems were implemented with hypervisor. Wow!)

(Caveat: For those of you with home systems with XP Home Edition, this virtual server doesn't come free -- you'll need to flip for the $100 XP Professional upgrade.)

(Caveat II: I don't always completely trust stories from the Register as I find them a little over-the-top in their anti-Microsoft rhetoric. However I was able to verify the Microsoft Virtual Server IS available for free download.)

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.

You're mistaken. That's not how anti-trust law (in the US works). The question is whether consumers are harmed, not competitors. You can make a case that killing VMWare would be bad for consumers in the long run, but that'd be difficult to show today.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition.

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.



I thought so too, but it also seems that VMWare started the price war when they started giving away VMWare Player. Microsoft may be able to fairly say that they are just reacting to pricing in the market,

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[booch]

Definitely. VMware would be foolish not to file a lawsuit against Microsoft for leveraging its monopoly in operating systems to gain an advantage in virtualization software.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

MS has very little to loose. As they are putting this INTO vista. They have stated this many times.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[hey!]

I thought so too, but it also seems that VMWare started the price war when they started giving away VMWare Player.

Which arguably they wouldn't do in a competitive operating system market.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[schon]

MS has very little to loose.

I disagree. Vista is a monster of Godzilla proportions, and if they loosed that on the world, they could wreak some major damage.

MS has a lot to loose, and they have nothing to lose by doing it!

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Null Nihils]

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.

Funny, most F/OSS software is given away for free, should that be illegal too? To answer my own question: of course not! The situation is quite different. However, I'm willing to bet the situations arising from Microsoft's "free" offerings and the "Free" Software movement look the same in the minds of certain lawmakers/enforcers (and if this were true, this would not be a Good Thing).

Let's hope we keep our freedom to give things away for free!

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[jthill]

They didn't start this. VMware have $0.00'd a midrange VM server. Works real nice.

It's the "supporting Linux" part that gives me the giggles. Believe anything out of a Microsoft mouth on the subject of Linux? The giggles are getting uncontrollable.

They may not be in trouble, but they're definitely having to do things they'd very much rather not do.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[ergo98]

As an aside, interestingly enough, I was surprised to find Microsoft's virtual server technology STILL does not offer hypervisor services... to give some perspective as to how far behind that puts them in "getting it", I worked on virtualized VM boxes on IBM 360 mainframes in school back in the mid-70s! These systems were implemented with hypervisor. Wow!

It wouldn't be virtualization if it didn't have hypervisor services. Maybe you're talking about hardware virtualization, which was just added by Intel, so it was somewhat difficult for Microsoft to support this before.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[killjoe]

It's a little bit different. In the netscape their aim was to "cut off the airsupply" of netscape by giving away a free browser. In this case they are simply reacting to the fact that RedHat, Novell, IBM etc can now offer XEN out of the box with better performance and scalibility then anything MS has.

What's great about this announcement is that MS paid lots of money for virtual server and now they are forced to not only give it away for free but also provide support for it. That's millions of dollars down the drain for MS, money that could have gone to research, lobbying, advertising, PR, or even given back to the shareholders. Money down the drain, bad for MS, good for the rest of the world.

Is all this legal? Well probably. To be honest in a very real sense it's dumping. No company without a monopoly and monopoly profits could have afforded to spend that kind of money on virtual server and then give it away AND support it. The only reason MS can do it is because they have two established monopolies and they can use the obcene profits they make from their monopolies to fund money losing schemes like this (and virtually every other piece of software they hawk). In a pure market economy this could not work.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[LurkerXXX]

Not just VMWare player. VMWare server is free as well (though still in beta at the moment, it is supposed to be free when finished)

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Cl1mh4224rd]

Unless I'm missing something here, this action on Microsoft's part is reminiscent of their "response" to Netscape when Microsoft finally recognized they had fallen way behind in an important market.

And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition.

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.

Looks like someone slept through Microsoft Hating 101...

IE wasn't a big deal because Microsoft gave it away for free. It was a big deal because they bundled it with Windows.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[archen]

That's millions of dollars down the drain for MS ..

Down the drain how exactly? Yes they put money into it and are now giving it away for free, but this is an investment in much the same way IE was. Who is going to use this? Home user? Doubtful. No this is targeted at the server area which is exactly where microsoft has been flailing around as of late. If you run this then they have to support it yes, but you're already running windows and that's another server they can claim.

What is a million dallars to MS? I can say I fully believe that MS would pay some magic fairy a billion dallars if it meant Apache would be crushed tomorrow. A few million is probably less money involved involved with those stupid commercials with people flying around because they use Windows XP.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[SilentChris]

"Unless I'm missing something here, this action on Microsoft's part is reminiscent of their "response" to Netscape when Microsoft finally recognized they had fallen way behind in an important market."

Actually, it's more of an act out of desperation. VMWare started this was a few months back by releasing one of their server products for free. Arguably VMWare is the monopoly -- Microsoft is nowhere near the company in terms of marketing penetration or mindshare.

"And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition."

Microsoft's monopoly is with Windows, which is installed on 90%+ of the world's machines. What got them in trouble in the browser wars (and again with media players) wasn't the fact they were giving software away but they bundling it with Windows.

Microsoft isn't bundling Virtual Server with Windows. In fact, it would make little sense, as very few Windows users would have a need for this software. If any when they release it with Longhorn Server (which is their plan) then it could be seen as unfair competition.

"And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal."

You're mistaken. Again, dumping software doesn't get these companies in trouble -- bundling it does. If you applied your logic to every company, Apple should be in trouble for iTunes, Sun for Java and Macromedia for Flash.

"(As an aside, interestingly enough, I was surprised to find Microsoft's virtual server technology STILL does not offer hypervisor services... to give some perspective as to how far behind that puts them in "getting it", I worked on virtualized VM boxes on IBM 360 mainframes in school back in the mid-70s! These systems were implemented with hypervisor. Wow!)"

At this point "hypervisor" is a more a marketing term than anything. You don't need a hypervisor to have a successful VM. 360 mainframes were able to do it because their CPUs were designed to. The x86 architecture hasn't lent itself very well to hypervisors, which is why most companies that do VMs (including VMWare) don't use one on the platform. Intel is finally releasing a desktop chip that will support virtualization. Don't blame the software companies for lackluster hardware support.

"(Caveat: For those of you with home systems with XP Home Edition, this virtual server doesn't come free -- you'll need to flip for the $100 XP Professional upgrade.)"

Considering it's called "Virtual Server", why would anyone running Home edition try to use it? It's clear that the product is intended for administrators and developers, hence the OS requirement.

"(Caveat II: I don't always completely trust stories from the Register as I find them a little over-the-top in their anti-Microsoft rhetoric. However I was able to verify the Microsoft Virtual Server IS available for free download.)"

Um, congrats? You're able to use Google. Very nice. Not sure why this statement should be considered a caveat.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[nolife]

Others have pointed out in other threads but I will summerize.

VMWare makes quite a few virtualization products and they have been on the market for quite some time. They are pretty much the standard for virtualization. Years later, MS decides to enter the market. VMWare, wanting to survive has to do something. In the past 6 months, they have released two "free" products, VMPlayer which allows any Windows/Linux machine to run certain VMWare virtual machines and more recently, VMWare server which is very similar to the existing VMWare GSX line of products. They now have a wider range of products to compete at many different levels. The top is ESX with Virtual Center, this product allows different forms of clustering, state saving, seemless and automatic moving of VMs between different physical servers for failover and load balancing and much more. The bottom is the free VM Server products with VM Desktop and GSX in the middle.

MS, knowing that VM is opening up to a broader market and trying to gain a larger foothold, is also going to try saturation bombing with some form of free version to gain its own share of the market as well.

So far MS entering the market has been good for IT folks overall as VMWare is adding features and cheap or free products into the mix. Do or die I guess as I'm sure MS can sustain a lot more negatives then VMWare can in the long fight.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[dunng808]

... I'm willing to bet the situations arising from Microsoft's "free" offerings and the "Free" Software movement look the same in the minds of certain lawmakers/enforcers ...

I believe that most politicians can distinguish between free as in speach and free as in heroine. They just need some political motivation for caring, which is our job.

The fact that vista may incorporate an anti-virus function that threatrens to kill off yet another U.S. tech sector just might get the attention of the current administration. Talk about strange bedfellows!

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[fm6]

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal.

I think you're mixing your rhetoric here. It's either "In my opinion, this should be illegal" or "Unless I'm mistaken, this is illegal."

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[cmacb]

"(As an aside, interestingly enough, I was surprised to find Microsoft's virtual server technology STILL does not offer hypervisor services... to give some perspective as to how far behind that puts them in "getting it", I worked on virtualized VM boxes on IBM 360 mainframes in school back in the mid-70s! These systems were implemented with hypervisor. Wow!)"

Same here (except I was out of school)...

What people your age, my age, and older get to witness is Microsoft and the PC world continually re-invent the wheel and calling it new. You would think they would have caught up by now, but I'm beginning to think they will never catch up because the mainframe stuff isn't standing still either, whereas some of the PC stuff has gotten so complex and poorly designed that it seems destined for a meltdown.

What I don't get is why would anyone want to run a stable, malware resistant OS with a reputation for poor user interfaces (Linux) UNDER an OS with a widely accepted user interface that is unstable, virus prone, and not know for great multitasking or multiprocessor support (Windows)? Running Windows clients under Linux VM makes a lot more sense.

But since they just bought this technology a year or two ago, maybe they are approaching the point where management is asking them what use it is.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[nuzak]

Bitch, bitch, bitch. This is tiresome.

Giving away IE was never illegal. The bundling that OEM's were forced into was illegal. Virtual Server does not come with windows, ergo there is no bundling.

This is competition. Hardball competition, but quite fair. The fact that VMware still has technical advantages over Virtual Server should demonstrate that VMware still has value people are quite willing to pay for.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[snp-7-3]

I hope this doesn't come across as flamebait, and I'm certainly not the biggest MS fan, but... When VMWare gives away a version of one of their products, the consensus is "YIPPIE!!! How cool are they?!" (and it is very cool)... When MS does the same though, some view it as reinforcement of their monopolistic business practices and its TOTALLY bad. What gives? Am I the only that thinks this is a bit unfair? Maybe I'm missing something.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[killjoe]

"Down the drain how exactly? Yes they put money into it and are now giving it away for free, but this is an investment in much the same way IE was."

With IE the goal was to kill netscape by giving away everything netscape sells. Not the shoe is on the other foot. It's not an investment because XEN is giving away they something they planned to sell.

"What is a million dallars to MS?"

Nothing of course. They have the luxury of having two monopolies and they can dump products on the market using their monopoly profits. In a better world with a better administration they would be back in court because dumping is illegal but in this world and with this administration they get away with it.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

VMware makes far more money off support contracts than off selling VMware. this exchange has been a back and forth, originally microsoft announced a price of $99, for a license comperable to what VMware was charging $400 or more for.

Then in the other corner the VMWare guys have Zen to worry about. Let's face it, VMWare ought to ask AOL to buy them up, because frankly if you look at the history every major company that tried to really compete with microsoft found themselves on the loosing end of the battle. First CP/M, then Apple (who are back alive again mainly due to the iPod), WordPerfect, Winamp, then Netscape.. the list just keeps going

Even If Vmware matches the price tag for software, microsoft will just FUD them on TCO reports based on service and support contract prices that micrsoft knows they can underbid, because they have so many successful divisions. (Office, windows)

the VMWare guys are great, virtualization just plain facilitates security when 'serving' content on the public internet (what's more secure than a machine that doesn't exist and can instantly be restored to 'unhacked' state

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[tomstdenis]

Difference is VMware is in the VM business. It's like Coke giving out free samples of Coke [e.g. when they come out with new flavours].

MSFT is in the OS business and bundling VPC [which they probably will] with their OS is exploiting the monopoly they hold on the OS world to basically make VMWare redundant.

If MSFT wanted to really remain a real business they'd sell VPC as an add-on package and then the users find competition.

Though to be honest I use QEMU on my 4-core Linux workstation to emulate WinXP so I can write my book [using Word]... so VPC would be useless for me.

And BTW, QEMU with the kqemu kernel module is actually fairly fast. Aside from slow [but functional] I/O support the cpu emulation is fast. For instance, once firefox or Word has loaded they run smooth as if they were on a native box.

QEMU is also free and open source.

Tom

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

free as in heroine.

I don't know many heroines that work for free

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[edbarrett]

I thought so too, but it also seems that VMWare started the price war when they started giving away VMWare Player.

VMWare Player allows one to "play" a preconfigured virtual machine. Of course, any monkey with a text editor can edit the config file, but MS Virtual Server is more like VMWare Workstation or GSX server, AFAICT.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[quantum bit]

Virtual Server does not come with windows

...yet.

I'd be willing to bet that unless they're threatened by a government entity, MS plans to integrate virtualization into a future version of Windows Server.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[drsmithy]

Microsoft sell a hell of a lot more than Operating Systems (and pretty much always have).

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Kilz]

It dose harm consumers if it forces compitition out of the market.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[ClamIAm]

It's almost like Microsoft is a snotty tourist trying to keep a straight face when forced to eat a local delicacy. Ballmer can't go on a chair-slinging rampage about it (at least not publicly). But yeah, giggles is a pretty accurate description of what the headline "MS supports Linux" gave me as well.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

virtualization just plain facilitates security when 'serving' content on the public internet (what's more secure than a machine that doesn't exist and can instantly be restored to 'unhacked' state

No kidding. When our test server (WinXP on VMWare on Linux) got hacked we just deleted the image file.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[vhogemann]

Microsoft won't top VMWare unless they release a Linux version of both Server and Client.

While it may be nice to run Linux inside Windows, as a development or test sandbox, running several mission-critial services virtualized inside a Windows Box sounds like non-sense to me.

You get far more performance from SMP sistems, more stability and a safer environment with Linux! VMare is perfect to secure that legacy Exchange, Active Domain or MS SQL server... But why, save for development or testing, would you run an Apache, OpenLDAP or PostFix server virtualized inside a Windows box!?!?!

Now, when VMare will release a MacOSX version of their free player?

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[ConceptJunkie]

I believe that most politicians can distinguish between free as in speach and free as in heroine

Yeah, Wonder Woman has a golden lasso.

The fact that vista may incorporate an anti-virus function that threatrens to kill off yet another U.S. tech sector

If MS suddenly started writing secure software that would threaten to kill off yet another U.S. tech sector too. Is _that_ also monopolistic behavior?

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[timeOday]

My perspective is as a user of VMWare products under linux hosts. For me, the harm of Microsoft's "gift" is obvious! I don't want VMWare to be driven under and be forced to use Windows as the host OS.

VMWare has recently started giving away some valuable products too (Player and Server), which perhaps clouds the issue. But the fact is, VMWare has to make money on their virtualization software, and Microsoft does not. They can use the Windows tax to subsidize virtualization for as long as need be to ensure that, eventually, Windows is the only "choice."

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[YrWrstNtmr]

(Caveat: For those of you with home systems with XP Home Edition, this virtual server doesn't come free -- you'll need to flip for the $100 XP Professional upgrade.)

People running XP Home generally aren't worried about running virtual servers. Or if they are, it's on a general house/kid PC, not the main box.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[funpet]

And, unless I'm mistaken, this should be illegal. Yes, because giving things away is illegal. It's clearly an abuse of monopoly power when companies decide to release free software.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[massysett]

And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition.

Yes, MS has a monopoly in the desktop market, but not in the server market. Don't give MS too much credit.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Knara]

Which arguably they wouldn't do in a competitive operating system market.

Or they do it because it's a competitive market and they see this as a way of getting an edge up on a major competitor who is attempting to steal a portion their market-share.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[0racle]

VMWare server is going to be free. Now VirtualPC is going to be free. This is competition. The consumer will decide which they want.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Skjellifetti]

Its been awhile since I've had an antitrust course, but I believe that a monopolist is not allowed to use their monopoly profits to cross subsidize another non-monopoly product (e.g. sell the non-monopoly product for less than its production cost). This is a form of predatory pricing designed to put rivals out of business. A monopolist is also forbiden from bundling the monopoly and non-monopoly products together for similar reasons.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[clem.dickey]

I'm trying to guess what the grandparent means by hypervisor services. A Google search turns up less than 100 hits for "hypervisor service." The only link I can think of between VM/370 and "hypervisor" is that the some 3rd party tools referred to the CP/370-specific Diagnose codes as "Hypervisor Calls," a play on the name of the IBM "Supervisor Call" instruction. Does "hypervisor services" refer to the services (of which I know of no definitive list) implemented by CP/370, or VMWare, or both?

Another possibility is that it just means direct execution of most guest instructions. VMWare does this - that's the tricky part of VMWare - and maybe Microsoft does not. If so, I guess there's a performance difference betwen native execution (aka "hypervisor services") and interpretive execution. But as the Java advocates have been fond of telling us, that difference does not always favor native execution.[1] An interpreter can tune its interpretation dynamically but a native executor cannot.

[1] I don't necessarily believe the Java advocates, but they do say that.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[ergo98]

I'm trying to guess what the grandparent means by hypervisor services.

I wasn't sure either, but presumed that they are simply referring to the concept of a hypervisor, which is the foundation of a multi-operating system platform. Regarding native instruction pass-thru, both Virtual Server/Virtual PC and VMWare's products do largely the same thing, passing most instructions through directly. What the article talked about regarding Microsoft's next version was support for Intel's new Vanderpool technology, which is basically additional support for virtualization on the chip itself. As it is the software expensively save and restore states between context switches to different virtual sessions, and Vanderpool offers some hardware that makes it much less costly. If you have a lot of CPU saturated virtual sessions, it can make a big difference.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[tomstdenis]

Yeah but the things they sell they don't bundle with their OS for free.

You need an OS, if the OS packs other things [at a direct loss recouped through license hikes] is just more monopoly wrangling. They bought out the company that original wrote VPC and now want to give it out for free? With their new OS you say? At a loss? ...

That really isn't the problem. The problem is two fold after that. first it attracts a lot of users, then they raise the price and have no reason to really add value.

I don't recall Win3.11 costing 299$ ... I don't recall Office costing 1000$ back then either ...

Now that they own the scene they can charge whatever they want. They're taking advantage of how large they are to absorb huge losses to then take out the competition. That's not GOOD for the consumers and is WHY we have monopoly laws.

Everyone seems to think anti-monopoly zealots are just sore losers, but when MSFT wins yet another market by losing more money than the combined market earns together ...you lose the ability to select products and have options.

Now you could say "just don't buy windows" except then try and go out and buy a laptop or PC without windows. If your job is not highly technical chances are not only do you need Office but you won't know how to install Linux or BSD [let alone use it]. If 10 years ago people had the choice between Windows and Linux or BSD you'd see more people today running something else.

Tom

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

VMWare Server will not be free once out of Beta. This right from two VMware reps today during a webex.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Lord Ender]

Thy don't really give away VMWare Server. Only the beta version. And the beta will just quit running on you every so many days when the beta-test license runs out and needs to be renewed.

Also, the beta has many bugs, such as the bug that makes the clocks of VMs race way ahead of the host system's clock. Better set up NTP with a 5 second refresh time!

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[alc6379]

Not just VMWare player. VMWare server is free as well (though still in beta at the moment, it is supposed to be free when finished)

BINGO!

...That's the product Virtual Server is going to compete with.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[SpacePunk]

------------------
"(Caveat: For those of you with home systems with XP Home Edition, this virtual server doesn't come free -- you'll need to flip for the $100 XP Professional upgrade.)"

Considering it's called "Virtual Server", why would anyone running Home edition try to use it? It's clear that the product is intended for administrators and developers, hence the OS requirement.
------------------

My winblows machine does just fine with Windows XP Home. Vmware runs on it, and for that they beat the crap out of Microsofts piece of shit untill they take out the artificial OS limit.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[jthill]

Waaait. Damn it, they fooled me! The Beta has BUGS? I'm calling my lawyer.

And it'll stay free. They say so on their web site and in email to beta testers. You know enough to post details about their beta, but you don't know that? Something's wrong here, Elmer. Whatever Microsoft's paying you, it's too much.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

"Then in the other corner the VMWare guys have Zen to worry about."

Uh? You obviously are not a customer of this market. Xen (it is spelled with a X) is nowhere near where it is hyped to be in terms of ease of installation, stability, and performance. In this market, there is currently only one player: VMware ESX Server. Nobody considers Xen seriously.

Let's not even talk about why the Xen patch is still not included in the mainstream kernel, because it is way more bloated and complicated than the elegant VMI patches that gives more choice (of hypervisor, and of upgrade path) to the customer.

Seriously, I love Xen as much as the next open source zealot, but let's face it: by over-promising it and under-delivering, XenSource have made a shame of themselves. They have yet to release a product or announce a customer. This Xen stuff reminds me of Plex86 (nee FreeMWare). Lot's of hype, zero market share.

Have you tried Xen? "No, but I heard it is great". Well, exactly... Try it, then come back posting this kind of comment with a straight face.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

According to the rumor mill, they are working on it.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[GoatPigSheep]

Free software should never be illegal

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

You're mistaken. That's not how anti-trust law (in the US works). The question is whether consumers are harmed, not competitors. You can make a case that killing VMWare would be bad for consumers in the long run, but that'd be difficult to show today.

You're mistaken. Dumping is illegal and it's illegal exactly because it harms competition (and thus distorts the market). If I had a supermarket chain, I wouldn't be legally allowed to sell products at a loss which I can absorb, since that'd drive competitors with smaller cash-reserves under which would in turn allow me to jack the prices higher than before.

Now whether Microsoft's actoins can be considered dumping is another matter.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[ChipX86]

As one of the developers of VMware Server, I can tell you that it *will* be free when out of beta. This is a free product. We're only making money off of optional support contracts.

I doubt that legit VMware reps would have made a claim otherwise, but if so, they either misspoke or were given incorrect information.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[mabinogi]

but VMWare don't sell operating systems...and Microsoft don't have a monopoly on Virtualisation - not even close, and they're not using their monopoly on operating systems to gain one on virtualisation.

Also, they don't even _have_ a competing product to VMWare's flagship - ESX server.

I don't believe Microsoft are doing anything remotely illegal in this, and I also don't think that VMWare have anything to worry about...at least not from MS

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[MPHellwig]

Well the _Release_ of VS isn't any better, but then of course you install the vmadds and your clocks gets synced, to bad they don't offer adds for any other platform than windows (and recently linux) or just open the frigging specs.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

... but it could take some time (/me looks at my watch)..... i.e. until 2009!!!

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose, for just a moment, that a developer might have an XP Home box at home, and other machines that don't run Windows. Suppose further that such a developer doesn't want to pay for an Windows XP Pro upgrade for his artificially-crippled games box which is near its end-of-life anyway.

Net result: said developer will still use VMWare, just like in the office.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[richlv]

OMG !!~11!
chicken of godzilla proportions ? RUN !

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[gonk]

Virtual Server will remain free after the Beta period.

Yes, the time keeping issue is annoying, but it is not an unknown issue. See this whitepaper: http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vmware_timekeeping.pdf

robert

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[thrills33ker]

> Thy don't really give away VMWare Server. Only the beta version.

Not true, it will continue to be free after the beta. Here's an email I got from them today about the Beta 2:

In addition to bug fixes, VMware Server Beta 2 also includes exciting new features such as:

        * support for connecting to and configuring GSX Server 3 hosts
        * VMware Server C API Technology Preview.

We appreciate your candid feedback on VMware Server beta software and documentation. For more information on the software, we also encourage you to visit our free online knowledge base and the community discussion forum. If you encounter problems during beta testing, please submit an online support request.

VMware Server will continue to be a free virtualization product when it becomes generally available.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Lord Ender]

What I said actually IS true. Present tense, and all that.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[birder]

I've had this problem on 2.6 kernels VM's. All I had to do, was set tools.syncTime = "TRUE" in the .vmx file to keep it straight.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[hey!]

but VMWare don't sell operating systems...

No, but they do sell a product that is useless without an operating system against a competitor who has a monopoloy on operating systems.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[LurkerXXX]

Let me just say kudos to you. You guys make a great product. I'm a workstation customer and also now user player and server. Great stuff. Thanks!

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Jaseoldboss]

We all know what's coming, it will be free whilst there is still competition around. After that it will only be available in the 'Premium' edition. Which means we the customers untimately pay to limit our own choice.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[j-pimp]

Uh? You obviously are not a customer of this market. Xen (it is spelled with a X) is nowhere near where it is hyped to be in terms of ease of installation, stability, and performance. In this market, there is currently only one player: VMware ESX Server. Nobody considers Xen seriously.

Uh I do.We've rolled it out on a dual PIII 600mhz running 2 linux virtual machines, one a production web server and the other a development box where I wrote soap clients with gsoap (don't ask using gsoap wasn't my idea.) Yes it is a pain to install. Not being able to boot from a cdroom is definatly a problem. However, performance wise it is great. We are going to go with quemu instead, but thats because of windows support and not performance.

Personally I think the biggest performance boot you can give to any virtual server envirorment is to use raw disks and not loopback images. That seems to make all the difference.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Red Flayer]

"In a pure market economy this could not work.

In the US market economy, supply consumes you!

Anyway, monopolies break the microeconomic theory that applies to markets in general. Plus, these goods are not commodities, they are not completely interchangeable. To suggest that a pure market economy would keep MS from leveraging its monopolies is disingenuous at best -- in pure market economies, monopolies can and do develop -- it's the natural progession of economies of scale.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

>If you applied your logic to every company, Apple should be in trouble for iTunes, Sun for Java and Macromedia for Flash.

Uh... iTunes is just a front for an online music store. The purpose of iTunes is to sell stuff for money. And Sun and Macromedia SHOULD be in trouble for all the java and flash crap cluttering up the internet.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You're mistaken. That's not how anti-trust law (in the US works). The question is whether consumers are harmed, not competitors.

Who in the world mods this crap up? No one could take the 30 seconds with Google it takes to notice this completely incorrect? US antitrust law is founded on the principal that monopolies should not be allowed to undermine the free market. Tacked onto this is the justification that the free market benefits the US and citizens. All the legal tests for anti-trust action is based upon markets and not consumers.

This particular action may be illegal under the predatory pricing and tying rules for monopolies. Is free below the normal market price for this software? That is to say, if MS did not have a monopoly and the assured constant stream of money for it would it be giving this product away for free? If not and it can be proved they are breaking the law. The second aspect, tying, is due to the fact that this product only works with the professional versions of their OS, thus it is tied to their existing monopoly (warning oversimplification).

In future, please actually read the Sherman and Clayton acts, or at least a well written summary of them before making uninformed comments like this.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[jqpublic13]

What's great about this announcement is that MS paid lots of money for virtual server and now they are forced to not only give it away for free but also provide support for it. That's millions of dollars down the drain for MS, money that could have gone to research, lobbying, advertising, PR, or even given back to the shareholders. Money down the drain, bad for MS, good for the rest of the world.

Considering the negative response of the poster, how could money "down the drain" possibly be considered "good for the rest of the world?" Assuming that Microsoft does have said "established monopoly," it stands to reason that any money that could be spent on research would be a good thing. I think it's highly unlikely that anyone is completely unaffected by the Windows Operating System, and love it or hate it, I'm sure we'd all prefer that our ATMs, powerplants, and yes, even Navy Warships to operate bug-free and reliably. Any of these critical resources would stand to benefit from Microsoft's research; wasted money is hardly good for the rest of us.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

You're mistaken. Again, dumping software doesn't get these companies in trouble -- bundling it does. If you applied your logic to every company, Apple should be in trouble for iTunes, Sun for Java and Macromedia for Flash.

While I mostly agree with your comments, I can't let you slide on this one. It is very much illegal for a monopoly to practice "dumping" or "predatory pricing" in a market using funds from their existing monopoly. It is one of six specific examples of illegal behavior in US antitrust law. Apple, Sun, and Macromedia are not monopolies and can thus do whatever they want (as far as pricing goes). The rules are different for monopolies due to their unique and dangerous leverage.

In this particular instance, things are more than a little muddy. VMWare is also giving away applications, but charging for support. MS is giving away the product and the support (but their support is almost non-existent). In this case it may or may not be illegal, but in general you're wrong about what monopolies can and can't do.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[mdielmann]

If you applied your logic to every company, Apple should be in trouble for iTunes, Sun for Java and Macromedia for Flash.

It's worth noting that the Sherman Act only applies to Monopolies. The first test is whether they have a monopoly, then whether they're leveraging it to gain a new monopoly. I don't think this can be said for Apple (there are other media player hardware and applications out there, and they aren't a monopoly yet) or Sun (they don't have a monopoly on Java or anything else from what I can see), although it might for Macromedia (I'll give you the monopoly on Flash, but what are they leveraging it to build?).

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[SillySlashdotName]

Laws are strange, it is legal for a non-monopolist company to do some things that it is NOT legal for a monopolist company to do.

VMWare taking profits from a higher end product to subsidize a lower end product is legal (the first taste is free, then we start charging!)

Microsoft taking profits from their OS monopoly to invade another area is NOT legal - and it is not legal BECAUSE they are a monopoly in the OS area.

IANAL

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

In Data Center Edition, it already is integrated. So what? Windows didn't originally come with TCP/IP ... was putting Trumpet out of business a bad and evil thing?

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[quantum bit]

I didn't say it was evil or a bad thing, just that they would do it.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[clymere]

then use qemu http://fabrice.bellard.free.fr/qemu/, or Xen http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/. I use the former for testing on my laptop, similar to vmware workstation, and the latter for server-based stuff. If you're a linux guy, you'll find a robust command line on both.

honestly, i'm happy to see competion in the virtualization market...but those two open source products meet my own needs as well, and in some ways better, than vmware did

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[clymere]

not exactly true either. vmware's products run on a lot of host os's besides windows. ESX has its own os, which is linux-based IIRC.

vmware is much more concerned about Xen.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[SilentChris]

"My winblows machine".

The 80s called. It wants its insult back.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Math, The Ancient]

Dumping is illegal

How is it illegal if they are both offering free products?

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[Anonymous Coward]

but VMWare don't sell operating systems...

What is ESX? chopped liver?

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[mycall]

When virtualization goes to the chip level, MS might kill off VMware..

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[mabinogi]

Do they?
That's news to me. I suspect it's news to VMWare too.

Which VMWare product relies on Windows?

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[mabinogi]

Yes, techinically it's an operating system. But you don't buy ESX server to browse the web with, nor do you buy it to run Oracle on, you buy it to run guest OSs on.
It's not competing with any Microsoft operating system.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[plumby]

Difference is VMware is in the VM business

Well, as VMWare is now part of EMC, they are technically in the whole data storage and management business.

MSFT is in the OS business and bundling VPC [which they probably will] with their OS is exploiting the monopoly they hold on the OS world to basically make VMWare redundant.

So you're accusing them of monopolistic behaviour in this because of what you assume that they will do in the future? And anyway, they don't hold any form of monopoly in the server OS market.

Also, would you accuse Red Hat of monopolistic behaviour if they started to ship VMWare as part of their install? It's not the bundling IE with Windows that was the real problem, it's how difficult it was to remove it and use a different browser that (at least in my understanding)is what the actual complaint was about. MS gives all manner of tools/utilities away for free on its website, but they are not considered anti-monopolistic as their existence doesn't stop you from installing anyone else's utilities.

Consider Google - giving away the Google toolbar (and making it prominent on their search engine) is fine - you're still able to install the Yahoo toolbar if you want instead. If they somehow prevented people from searching on Google if they'd got the Yahoo toolbar installed, then that might be considered an abuse of their position as near-monopolists in the search arena.

Re:wow, more echoes from the past

[SpacePunk]

Seinfeld called, he wants his $1.95 for that.

What kind of free?

[LunaticTippy]

Is this free as in beer or free as in screensaver?

I'm guessing it isn't gonna be free as in Free.

Re:What kind of free?

[Mozk]

That's a really good quote. Mind if I steal it from you?

Re:What kind of free?

[Foofoobar]

It's free as in soul.

Re:What kind of free?

[jdray]

And what effect does it have on the price of VirtualPC for Macintosh??

Re:What kind of free?

[LunaticTippy]

You can have it. I don't think I invented it or anything, so don't bother attributing.

Negativland did a really good song about freedom with hilariously sad quotes.

The strongest word is still the word "Free."
At 7-11 freedom's waiting for you.

Re:What kind of free?

[Fujisawa Sensei]

Is this free as in beer or free as in screensaver?

How about Free as in "Free Crack"?

Re:What kind of free?

[QuantumG]

"free" as in "a freebie from a crack whore". i.e., you'd probably pass on it anyways cause it's not like that's worth very much.

Re:What kind of free?

[Bacon Bits]

Well, the key is that only an idiot would use MS VS to run Linux. Everybody knows that. Your implementation would have to be so obscure and arcane so as to be irrelevant to the whole.

So, if you don't run Linux on MS VS, what do you run? That's right, you run MS Windows. So now you have one big server running three copies of MS Server:

Number of CPUs: 2

MS Server 2k3 /w VS
1. MS Server 2k3
2. MS Server 2k3 /w MS SQL 2k
3. MS Server 2k3 /w MS SQL 2k

So, on 2 CPUs, you are running four copies of MS Server and two installationf of MS SQL sevrer. How many licenses must you buy? Four for Win2k3, 2 for MS SQL.

No wonder they're giving it away.

Re:What kind of free?

[MioTheGreat]

Microsoft's Website:

"Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition provides better value in server virtualization. Licensing policy changes now allow customers to run up to 4 virtual instances of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition on one licensed physical server or hardware partition."

Re:What kind of free?

[kensai]

Wrong. MS recently changed their licensing in that yu can run 4 virtual instances of 2k3 Server using just the base 2k3 license.

Re:What kind of free?

[rur]

If you have to agree to an EULA, then it's not free.

Re:What kind of free?

[nachoboy]

So, on 2 CPUs, you are running four copies of MS Server and two installationf of MS SQL sevrer. How many licenses must you buy? Four for Win2k3, 2 for MS SQL.

They're giving away the OS licenses too...

"Better virtualization value. Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition provides better value in server virtualization. Licensing policy changes now allow customers to run up to 4 virtual instances of Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition on one licensed physical server or hardware partition."

Re:What kind of free?

[LordEd]

If you have to agree to an EULA, then it's not free.

Under that argument, by using open source software and agreeing to the GPL, it isn't free either.

Re:What kind of free?

[civilizedINTENSITY]

But the GPL isn't an End User License Agreement, it is rather a copyright license. The GPL doesn't tell you how to use, or not use, the software. You don't even have to agree to the GPL to use the software.

Re:What kind of free?

[Anonymous Coward]

Err, ummm, NO.

The GPL, and other OpenSource licences, are not EULAs. The "End User" does not need to agree to anything, the "End Users" can "Use" it as they see fit. It's more of a Redistributer Licence Agreement, as it only restricts you if you redistribute the software/code (modified, or not).

Re:What kind of free?

[LordEd]

It is still an end user license in the sense that it licenses the user to do anything they want. If this isn't an end user license, then what dictates that the end user can use GPL software?

The GPL says:

the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software--to make sure the software is free for all its users.

Most licenses say you can use 1 copy, but this one just happens to multiply the 1 by as many as you want.

Re:What kind of free?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you have to agree to an EULA, then it's not free.

Under that argument, by using open source software and agreeing to the GPL, it isn't free either.

Choosing to agree to the GPL is not the same as having to. The "have to" refers to being unable to legally use the product without agreeint to the EULA.

Re:What kind of free?

[Bacon Bits]

Wow. That's a big change, too. I remember when they changed lisencing so that it was per installation in addition to being per CPU (probably 8-10 months ago) which obviously made virtualization less appealing.

Yeah, I'd say they're looking to make VMWare into the new Netscape.

Aggressive and surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

More like desperate. They're only doing this because Xen's eating their lunch.

Re:Aggressive and surprising?

[Krach42]

More like desperate. They're only doing this because Xen's eating their lunch.

No, it's because the Virtualization market is heating up. And it's likely VMWare that's causing Microsoft to sweat, not Xen, or any F/OSS alternative.

You used to see this back in the day when local, and ma' and pa' shops roamed the earth. For instance, one bakery would have a monopoly in the area, when a new one would pop up, and start undercutting the other's prices. Then they'd retaliate, and you'd end up with a flying storm of lowering prices, until one of them were forced out of business.

At this point, the price would be rock bottom, and the winner, would gradually increase prices until they were making a good profit again, but generally it worked out well for the community that was shopping there.

Of course, the whole problem comes in that to startup a bakery you don't need billions of dollars and years of development to produce your product. Microsoft is now sitting in a practically unchallengable monopoly position. When monopolies hit this point, it's my opinion that controls should be leveraged to ensure that they're not gouging their captive audience.

Re:Aggressive and surprising?

[LewsTherinKinslayer]

When monopolies hit this point, it's my opinion that controls should be leveraged to ensure that they're not gouging their captive audience.

$0 seems fair to me. I suppose at this point my choice between VMWare and Microsoft's virtulization software comes down to who's is better. I don't really care who makes it.

Although, if VMWare is giving theirs away, and Microsoft is giving theirs away, I guess whoever has the deeper pockets is going to prevail, as in your baking analogy. (Of course, this only applies to the "personal" use software I assume. Both probably still charge for server level virtulization, no?)

Re:Aggressive and surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think I've ever seen MS raise the price of software after eliminating its competitors. IE is still free. Office standard costs about $400, which is less than WordPerfect or Lotus 1-2-3 by themselves cost 20 years ago. Windows 1.0 cost $99, and I believe the cheapest version of Vista is expected to cost about that much, too.

dom

Re:Aggressive and surprising?

[Krach42]

Yeah, I don't think Microsoft is gouging the public either. That's why there haven't been more lawsuits on that issue.

But there are and have been other monopolies that did do this. Ma' Bell for example was a good example of a company that abused a captive audience.

I suppose it's possible that the thing that saved Microsoft from getting split up, was precisely this; that they don't abuse their customers.

Re:Aggressive and surprising?

[Krach42]

$0 seems fair to me. I suppose at this point my choice between VMWare and Microsoft's virtulization software comes down to who's is better. I don't really care who makes it

Exactly. This is also the reason why Microsoft has to be careful about how they market things. If they abuse the position of their monopoly to increase their marketshare, then that's been deemed illegal. Lucky for Microsoft, I don't think any of this Virtual Server stuff is any sort of abuse of their Monopoly. Mostly, this claim has come up when something gets bundled with Windows for free, when someone else is providing a for-pay version. Since Microsoft can afford to undercut anyone, and can leverage the distribution of their software through their OS.

This is one of the things about Windows Media Player. Then, you get WMP free with Windows, but you have to either download RealPlayer, or Quicktime, and while both have a limited capability free version, both are for-pay products in the full. Only WMP is free for the full version, and only WMP is included automatically with Windows. That's why this was deemed to be an abuse in Europe.

So, again, not saying MS is doing anything wrong here with Virtual Server. But just remember, if it ever comes down to who has the deepest pockets, MS has some ridiculously deep pockets.

Re:Aggressive and surprising?

[LewsTherinKinslayer]

So, again, not saying MS is doing anything wrong here with Virtual Server. But just remember, if it ever comes down to who has the deepest pockets, MS has some ridiculously deep pockets.

Certainly true they have some deep pockets, but I've heard they're getting more shallow.

This is one of the things about Windows Media Player. Then, you get WMP free with Windows, but you have to either download RealPlayer, or Quicktime, and while both have a limited capability free version, both are for-pay products in the full. Only WMP is free for the full version, and only WMP is included automatically with Windows. That's why this was deemed to be an abuse in Europe.

I'd never really understood that particular argument. So Microsoft bundled software with their operating system, its not really free. You had to buy the OS. And at the price for a new XP pro disc, I should hope that they bundle or give me the option to install as many programs as possible. I see no issue with that. If QuickTime or RealPlayers or whoever can't make free products that can compete with Microsoft's, then that's not really an issue of monopoly so much as its an issue of their business model being incompatible with a market that essentially, is free. Media Player Classic, Winamp, etc. Plenty of free and decent alternatives.

I think the problem as far as monopoly goes, really shows through with the fact that you can't remove them. When XP first shipped, removing various aspects of the bundled software was nearly impossible for the average user. And in some cases, removing the software would damage the integrity of the windows install. Indeed, this is what I call anticompetitive.

in related news...

[clanky]

microsoft has also started offering its own proprietary air for free, in an attempt to muscle out the Earth's atmosphere from its traditional strength position in the marketplace.

Re:in related news...

[dhart]

When asked for a comment, an anonymous Microsoft developer stated "I know that it's ancient history, but some of us were really sorry for that 'cut off their air supply' comment... long live Netscape!"

Re:in related news...

[Ruie]

microsoft has also started offering its own proprietary air for free, in an attempt to muscle out the Earth's atmosphere from its traditional strength position in the marketplace.

Beware - besides regular dust this air contains RFID chips and they will measure how much of their air you breathed by scanning your lungs..

This Move doesn't make any sense to me.

[Phantombrain]

Why would Microsoft give away a product (not making ANY money) and THEN give support for a rival? Microsoft has done a very good job of holding it's monopoly, and now it seems it WILLINGLY giving it up. Something either REALLY fishy is going on, or someone at Microsoft is smoking something.

Re:This Move doesn't make any sense to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Because Microsoft hopes that poeple will host their virtual servers on Microsoft Windows platforms, even if the guest operating systems run Linux.

Re:This Move doesn't make any sense to me.

[Anonymous Coward]

Think a little bit more down the lines.

You have to run Windows to use Virtual Server. Isn't that their big monopoly? This is just another package deal like WMP, IE, et al.

Plus, this is the big bucks enterprise server OS market. Any one of the Server 2003 flavours retail for far more than you could sell Virtual Server for.

Windows and Office (yes, still) are their cash cows. They're doing just fine defending their monopolies.

Re:This Move doesn't make any sense to me.

[fatted]

This is standard issue Microsoft tactics. If someone's doing something interesting simply destroy the market. Heck Microsoft don't have to make money, they've got a gazillion dollars* under the mattress.

*may be slightly less.**

**Not by much though.

Re:This Move doesn't make any sense to me.

[SpaceLifeForm]

Try some smoked salmon?

Re:This Move doesn't make any sense to me.

[Action_Jax]

Well, are they really giving it away for free? The way I see it this is really good for Microsoft, with server sales predicted to slow down over the next few years due to the rise of increasing more powerful machines with multiple cores and cheaper memory, people are less likely to buy a new server because there will be so much more spare resources and capacity on an existing one, so if you could keep on virtualizing a multi-cpu/core system then you could keep on charging for extra vm's using your using your vm pricing model.

So bang you've now decoupled your license sales from dwindling hardware sales and there will typically always be a need to separate your servers either physically or virtually due to application or security needs so you lower the bar by reducing the cost, with the promise of lower power and cooling costs.

If I was Microsoft I'd bundled the VM functionality into the OS as quick as I could and make it exceptionally good so I could provide it as a value add to Enterprise, why deal with VMWare when I could do it all in house and control the quality of the product as well, more license sales for me and increased likelihood that the host os is Microsoft.

Re:This Move doesn't make any sense to me.

[Salsaman]

Knowing M$, it will probably run Linux *really slowly*, and make it look like any bugs in the underlying virtualisation were caused by Linux.

Upgrade to Windows Vista

[Frosty Piss]

additionally they will provide customer support for Linux.

And what will their standard answer be? "Upgrade to Windows Vista"?

Re:Upgrade to Windows Vista

[Frosty Piss]

Hey! It's a joke people!

Re:Upgrade to Windows Vista

[zanglang]

Obligatory quote:
Have you turned it off and on again?

Excellent!

[Joey Patterson]

Now I can emulate DOS within Linux inside Mac System 6 on Windows 2000 Professional running in VMWare Workstation running on Windows Vista Interim Build 5342 running on Virtual PC running inside Windows Server 2003 via the Citrix connection on the server at work! w00t!

The article sums it up even better

[karvind]

For those who didn't RTFA, the next paragraph says it all

Given these moves, we're reminded of the scene from Spaceballs when Lord Helemt orders an underling to thrust his ship from light speed to ludicrous speed. "Prepare ship, prepare ship for ludicrous speed. Fasten all seat belts, seal all entrances and exits, close all shops in the mall, cancel the 3-ring circus, secure all animals in the zoo..." shouts the underling.

Re:The article sums it up even better

[DeDmeTe]

I believe the "underling" was Col. Sanders.

I will now hold my breath...

[14erCleaner]

Until the US Justice Department stops this move by Microsoft on anti-trust grounds.

OK, I changed my mind.

Re:I will now hold my breath...

[Cheapy]

The U.S. has a Justice department?

Re:I will now hold my breath...

[cgenman]

Yup. They're thinking of folding it into The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

Re:I will now hold my breath...

[jmv]

Of course, there's a justice department. There's also a Ministry of Truth, a Ministry of Love, a The Ministry of Peace and a The Ministry of Plenty.

Re:I will now hold my breath...

[Anne Thwacks]

Yes, but its less effective than the British Ministry of Silly Walks and less profitable than our Ministry of Sound

VMWare == good

[tcopeland]

We use it for testing indi on a variety of platforms - we've got preconfigured WinME/XP/2K VMs that we can fiddle with. It's great for isolating bugs like "when indi is installed on a Win2K box where Outlook has not been configured, blah happens". Nifty stuff!

Do they support Linux as a Host or just a Guest

[Anonymous Coward]

If it's a Host - COOOL - we're likely to use it!

If it's just a guest OS - who cares - do you really want all the pain of Linux running under all the flakyness and unstability and insecurity of Windows that you'd get by making Windows the host OS?

Microsoft Virtualization is the key to the future

[jimmyhat3939]

I'm really glad they're doing this. Other virtualizations systems that I've seen/tried really can't offer the full set of APIs and functionalities that a real Microsoft product offers. For example, things like Wine can't offer the full __DllRegisterExpiryCacheDelayTwelveSeven() functionality.

Same goes for CPU-based stuff, like Virtual-PC. They just don't run Windows properly. The thing is, since Microsoft has the only operating system out there that is largely, or even majority, undocumented, it makes sense for them to provide the virtualization software. That way they can make it work on their own undocumented platform, while using other platforms' APIs to permit easy access to Linux, OSX, etc.

This is a win-win-win for everyone!

VMware

[Sduic]

This will enable use by all developers, software vendors and projects and includes open licensing compatible with those operating under open source licenses such as the GPL.

Just how compatible must the license be be (I imagine a BSD type is pushing it)? Also, do they mean GPL 2 or 3?

Bah...

[Anonymous Coward]

Must better coverage over at this blog. Check out VMWare President Diane Greene's blog.

And here is direct link to the Microsoft download page that requires registration.

Direct link to the 32bit version: here. (no reg required)

Direct link to the 64bit version: here. (no reg required)

Happy downloading.

Re:Bah...

[MoogMan]

Great. Where can I find the download that runs on a Linux host?

Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Spy der Mann]

When you gave away MS Internet Explorer for free, many of us fell for it. Now we know better.

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Professor_UNIX]

When you gave away MS Internet Explorer for free, many of us fell for it. Now we know better.

Most likely the "free" Virtual Server will require Windows 2003 Server which is very expensive. "free" VMWare Server is $0 running on GNU/Linux.

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm going to install it on the XP Pro installation I borrowed. Plenty of room left on that drive after the Visual Studio Express I installed yesterday.

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Dysproxia]

If you think giving software away for free is bad, wait till you hear what the open source community has been doing!

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[TrancePhreak]

According to the info on Microsoft.com these OS's are supported for installation:
Windows Server 2003
Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 1
Windows XP Professional Edition
Windows XP Service Pack 2

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Thing 1]

Most likely the "free" Virtual Server will require Windows 2003 Server which is very expensive. "free" VMWare Server is $0 running on GNU/Linux.

So: betting has started on how long it will take Wine to support the "free" Virtual Server...

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Crackez]

Remember when you could get IE for Unix? now that was weird. IE4 on Solaris 7, I remember people asking for it.
I mean damn, even on my 486 I ran Netscape.
Strange stuff...

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ughh, I hope not. It's a waste of time.

For free, on Linux, you already have two varities of VMWare, there is the now rather fast Qemu, and there is XEN. Add MSVS?, why???

The fastest, most advanced one is XEN, by far. At the moment though, there isn't a whole lot of hardware out there that can run it well (or even run Windows under it at all). With the new processors out now, it runs Windows just fine, and fast. The hardcore will choose XEN, and MSVS won't even be considered (especially under Wine). It is going to take new hardware for many of us, though.

The average user will get by just fine with the native VMWares, since MSVS doesn't really add anything special. Native code will out perform anything under Wine, and why add the complexity. Wine is good, but you do take a hit.

Those with more experimental (weird) needs have Qemu, which is alot faster these days for x86 on x86. It also remains the most flexable, what with having other architectures available, and all.

For the corporate side, there is VMWare ESX (not free, by a long shot), and MSVS doesn't even come close (ESX's speed can rival XEN). That isn't going to change, at least for Linux shops.

The only place I see this being used, is on Windows boxes. Mostly for running Windows v-boxes, on Windows boxes. Sure, there will be the occasional SomethingElse v-boxes, on Windows boxes; but those probably won't be seen in production very often. I'm sure 90% of the VMs that will be running on MSVS, will infact be, Windows. This thing is made for all the MSFT-Fanboy, MCSE Windows admins. Everyone else has options.

I really hope the Wine guys have better things to do than try to get this "thing" running.

Re:Sorry, Microsoft, we know your tricks.

[Thing 1]

Even though you're AC, I'll bite.

One huge positive from getting MSVS working under Wine is that, in doing so, they will likely have to support a wide range of APIs. Which will help their efforts for the rest of the Windows applications.

Of course, you probably do have a point: spending time on the little-used APIs that MSVS might use could take focus away from higher-priority APIs (i.e., used by many more applications).

Eeh...

[jamesgamble]

I think this has been blown out of proportion a bit. Sure, Microsoft is going to support getting Linux running, but so what. If they support Virtual Server, they have to be able to support everything that can run on it. I don't see what the big deal is other than Linux purests saying "OMG, Micr0$0ft i$ $upp0rting Linux! LOLz0rz! HAHA". Come on, it's stupid, it's annoying, and no one cares.

Stifling Innovation?

[Enrique1218]

Is this yet another expample of Microsoft stifling innovation. Some had already mention the parallels to Netscape where Microsoft essentially knock them out of business witht the free release of IE. Then, let IE development stagger till it became riddle with holes and bugs. I worry that they are doing the same thing in virtualization.

Re:Stifling Innovation?

[Anonymous Coward]

Stifling huh? Where do you think http://www.aarongiles.com/ works?

Re:Stifling Innovation?

[Keeper]

Am I the only one who remembers Navigator being a free download, while Netscape planned to make money off of their server software?

Re:Stifling Innovation?

[TrancePhreak]

VMWare Player and now Server have been free for a while. So in all actuality, MS is just adjusting costs to market normals.

Re:Stifling Innovation?

[stony3k]

IIRC, initially Navigator was not free ($25 or something). It was only after MS started giving away IE that they started offering Navigator for free. Free browsers were great for the consumer in the short term, but bad in the long term. Its only recently that the consumers have started recovering from this.

Re:Stifling Innovation?

[jakupovic]

I don't think this will happen, because virtualization is currently a very hot topic and will probably replace the current way of doing things, e.g. Dell black box with $Windows running on it versus $Windows running in a virtual world on some box, even if VMWare dies :(.

Re:Stifling Innovation?

[Keeper]

Bullshit. Every copy of Navigator I ever used was downloaded for free. Even back in the Win3.11 days. (far, FAR before IE existed)

Xen???

[Spy der Mann]

From TFA:

Microsoft has teamed with the developers of the open source Xen product to gang up on server slicing leader VMware.

OK guys, now I'm confused. WTF is going on here? Have the Xen people been bought my Microsoft? :(

Re:Xen???

[Locke2005]

No, Xen has purchased Microsoft in a really, really, REALLY leveraged buyout... oops, it's not April 1 anymore, is it?

Unfortunately, Xen hasn't learned one of the prime lessons of history: partnering with Microsoft is merely the first step towards being put out of business by Microsoft.

Re:Xen???

[Anonymous Coward]

Development of Xen was sponsored by Microsoft Research. This is why the Xen people were able to do a build of Windows XP that ran on Xen (although this isn't publically available).

This news isn't so strange.

Re:Xen???

[Anthony Liguori]

OK guys, now I'm confused. WTF is going on here? Have the Xen people been bought my Microsoft?

No, TFA is just misleading. A while back, Microsoft documented the VHD format under an anti-GPL license (similar to what they did with CIFS a while ago). XenSource, the commercial company trying to make money from Xen, simply downloaded this license after agreeing to the terms and announced that their product, XenEnterprise, will support importing VHD hard disks.

There is no Microsoft/Open Source cooperation here. See http://www.virtualization.info/2005/10/microsoft-d iscloses-virtual-hard-disk.html.

Re:Xen???

[dougTheRug]

Microsoft is going to put Cambridge University out of business?

Re:Microsoft Virtualization is the key to the futu

[JDevers]

You are comparing OS level emulators to virtual machines. The competition in this space is VMWare. Using this sort of software, you actually NEED Windows. You boot up a VM and then proceed to install an OS just like a real machine. This is massively unlike Wine and is somewhat different from VPC too.

Also, remember, VM products aren't designed to run the latest and greatest games or something. They are designed to fill two niches, extremely secure testbeds for software where you want crashes to be easy to recover and server virtualization where one machine imitates several.

Xen isnt eating MS at all..

[nurb432]

Last i heard you couldnt virtualize windows with out illegal patching ( since you cant get the source legally to do it )... so xen really isnt hurting microsoft at all.

Now, perhaps they are afraid of QEMU ? Or is that what caused VMware to give away their low end products, and now MS is worried about VMware taking more market share?

Fox Supporting the Penguinhouse

[Doc Ruby]

Oh, yeah - I want Microsoft "supporting" my Linux installs, so they can count all my nonfunctioning instances against the Linux stats when they tell the world how Windows is "more reliable".

Re:well...

[TheCarp]

Shit, why are you bothering me? _I_ knew that.

Why on earth...

[Skiron]

...anyway would people want to run GNU/Linux on a MS VS???

Re:Why on earth...

[Anonymous Coward]

It presents a challenge to them. Their goal is to have a longer uptime on the Linux guest operating systems than the Windows host...

Re:Why on earth...

[sxeraverx]

That we can do already, sorry. Just 'Freeze' the guest OS under VMWare, and reboot the host. I've been doing it for ages under VMWare, and it's faster and easier (you don't have to close programs) than shutting down and then starting up again the guest.

Re:Why on earth...

[caffeinemessiah]

Here's a reason why (although there are many others): I recently built a spanking new box and ordered FC4, Debian and Gentoo from FrozenTech. FC4 x86_64 had trouble with the video, FC4 x86 worked fine but kept freezing every 20 minutes with no useful log messages. Debian x86_64 didn't like my wireless drivers, including the native src drivers from the manufacturer. Debian x86 also had problems with my wireless card.

Solution: if you can't get drivers for your hardware, use VMWare to abstract the Windows drivers to Linux. My wireless card looks like a regular 100mbps Ethernet card to Linux, which needless to say works great. With a decent processor and 2gigs of ram, I'm very, very happy with FC4 under VMWare at 1900x1600.

If there's one thing that Windows is unbeatable at, it's adapting proprietary drivers to Linux!

Re:Why on earth...

[Jesus_666]

I know someone who does this. He's mainly a Win user, but occasionally needs *nix apps. For him Linux-in-a-box is a better choice than multiboot since he can just pop the VM open, do his work and close it without leaving his default environment (after all, he does do his regular stuff like mail under Windows). He doesn't try to be a power user and he has not had many unexplicable system failures, so he's quite happy with Windows.

Although this is only until I can talk him into a Mac, of course. ;)

Re:Why on earth...

[A Nun Must Cow Herd]

Quality. Microsoft has been the premier platform for running viral code for years.

Degraded Performance?

[nurb432]

I wonder if they will ship a slightly degraded version, much as VMware is doing.

Re:Degraded Performance?

[N1ghtFalcon]

I'm curious, where have you heard that VMWare Server has worse performance than the former GSX? (I'm assuming that is what you're taking about?)

Re:Degraded Performance?

[Anonymous Coward]

Degraded performance?

Its a freaking beta with debugging enabled by default ...

Of course its going to be slower than the production release.

However, Vmware are not releasing a "crippled" version of anything - Server will run at the same (if not better) speed as GSX. Considering they are the same product.

With Workstation / Server or GSX ... you should receive about 65-75% of native speed. If your in an enterprise environment I would suggest ESX.

Re:Degraded Performance?

[nurb432]

Ok, ill give you that on the GSX/VMServer comparison.

But Im also talking about the workstation version. Even after beta its still worse performance then my 'paid' copy.

Re:Degraded Performance?

[nurb432]

No 'hearsay', this is direct comparison of both products on the same hardware. However, as another person points out that ( at least in the server case ) they have debugging turned on, which would slow things down.

Re:Degraded Performance?

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is that it is still in beta.

Once it is out of beta then compare it again, but till then it is still a beta version and should be treated as such (i.e. it is unfinished, may still contain bugs, debugging code enabled, not a completed product etc).

Re:Degraded Performance?

[tonyb452]

The point is you're comparing two products with vastly different aims. VmWare workstation is designed for a single workstation and as such it is designed to use limited resources as efficiently as possible to make the experience inside the virtual os as similar as possible to native performance. On the other hand, VmWare Server is designed for servers, which generally have vastly more memory than a standard workstation and as such, it is not nearly as important to focus on having a single virtual machine functioning as close to native performance as possible, but rather it is designed to quickly allow a server to perform as multiple virtual servers with multiple operating systems and have each of those virtual machines perform reliably, especially in a network environment. As such individual performance of a virtual machine on a workstation may be poorer in VmWare Server than in VmWare Workstation, however on a server platform with multiple virtual machines running concurrently, VmWare Server will probably be a better choice. Who knows, it's still in beta. I don't have a server to test it on, but people really shouldn't make these broad comparisons without at least understanding the difference in goals of each product. I for one am all for the opening up of virtualization platforms, especially as virtualization technology is adopted by processors themselves. Preemptive multitasking is going to be preempted by preemptive multi-osing, where you will have multiple applications running on multiple platforms at the same time, all easy enough to switch between as it is to switch between programs today. It's what Java promised us years ago yet failed to deliver for one reason or another: the full abstraction of computer hardware and the independence of our computers from their operating systems. I look forward to this future and hope at least half of these promises are fulfilled. See ya in 5 years guys.

Re:Degraded Performance?

[cadence007]

I do believe that may have something to do with the fact that VMWare Server is in Beta testing right now.. hence the debugging being turned on.

FWIW, Beta 2 was released today.

Fighting the last war

[jmorris42]

Microsoft sees VMWare as their enemy because they are banking cash today. (Thou shalt have no other vendors other than Microsoft) However Xen is probably the bigger threat. And I'd say they understand that as well, otherwise they could have done the one thing that would have made an instant difference.

Remember that when Xen was a research project at a university they had XP running in Xen because they had a source license for XP. However since said license didn't allow actually releasing anything derived from knowledge gained from that source they couldn't release the XP client drivers. Had Microsoft removed that restriction or, even better, provided Microsoft supported drivers Xen would likely crush VMWare in a few short years.

Re:Fighting the last war

[bitflip]

If you scroll to the bottom of the Cambridge page (http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/), you can see that MS Research was involved with its development.

MS is calling it a "hypervisor", and plans to include it in Vista (probably as an add-on, later).

I don't doubt that giving away Virtual Server is related to putting a stop on VMWare. At the same time, they may see it as a non-issue, long-term, because they aren't likely to make a bunch of money off of Virtual Server when the hypervisor ships.

Re:Fighting the last war

[mnmn]

Xen itself is not the threat. Hardware Hypervisors are. Xen is like the software driver for the hypervisor technologies, and could be in theory replaced by other such apps.

Hypervisors will completely replace virtual machines in most markets. In others where strict timing is required or is measured, and where the server OS should not be preemptively disturbed, or where more memory is required than is available, or where standardized virtualized hardware is required, or in the emulation of different hardware/architectures, vm software will still have its place. The majority will simply use Xen.

I wonder if in a few years the standard way to install Windows on a server will be to install NetBSD + Xen and then Windows on top of it. Even better, if the BIOS will be replaced by a small NetBSD or Linux distro with Xen. This way a running OS can be moved live to a different machine mainframe-style... only on servers, desktops and maybe laptops.

Maybe I can move my live running game on the desktop to the laptop when I have to leave.

Wrong

[Anonymous Coward]

Wrong. Microsoft did not offer any support to paying customers who installed Linux under Virtual Server. Now they provide support if you run Linux from either Red Hat or Novell. Furthermore, the press releasealso has a link to the Linux tools necessary for smooth video and mouse movement. It helps to read a little before commenting.

Great news! Question...

[geekylinuxkid]

I wonder now that it's OSS, now it can be thrown into the kernel and possibly be mounted like any other fs? Is this possible? Thanks.

Re:Great news! Question...

[sh4na]

You're a bit confused...

1. They're giving it away for free, they're not opening the code.
2. Virtual Server is not a system, it's a virtualization application that simulates hardware so you can install operating systems inside it's environment. The OS thinks it's running on a real machine and not under a software... that's why it's called *Virtual* Server. :p

Re:Great news! Question...

[tender-matser]

An OSS implementation exists since years as part of qemu (even if they don't handle vmware version 3 images correctly - but that's easily fixed).

I always used "qemu-img" to convert vmware images to sparse files that I mount then as loop devices (note: don't try this with a "modern" filesystem that doesn't support sparse files - like reiserfs).

It's probably easy to write some FUSE module to let you do this without converting the image first, but is it worth the trouble ?

Re:Great news! Question...

[nurb432]

Too bad performance of QEMU still doesnt match VMware. I know personally id rather use it on my BSD box, then be stuck running windows all th etime. Ive tried, but its far to slow ( and a tad unstable ).

Yes i know its free, and they have doen a LOT of good work on it, but its not yet to where i can realistically use it at the office.

Re:Great news! Question...

[gstoddart]

I wonder now that it's OSS, now it can be thrown into the kernel and possibly be mounted like any other fs? Is this possible? Thanks.

Hmmm ... you're joking right?

The article said nothing about open sourcing the virtual server. Or even shared sourcing. They said they are giving it away for free.

A closed source piece of software which comes in an installer and which doesn't cost you money is in no way shape or form something you can call OSS or wonder how to integrate it into the kernel. And a virtual OS isn't something you can 'mount like a filesystem'.

I'm not saying it's bad that they're giving it for free. But I sure as heck wouldn't call this open source. You can't get there form here.

Cheers

Re:Great news! Question...

[Arker]

First, the article does actually say they're making it free, which would mean that it's now OSS were it true. But clearly, it's not, and any of us that know MS know at a glance that the blurb is wrong. The word there, btw, should not be *free* but *gratis*.

Second, the poster you're replying to was clearly NOT talking about the virtual server mushware at all, he was talking about the filesystem from vmware, which IS free!

Re:Great news! Question...

[A Nun Must Cow Herd]

It's not OSS. Check out Diane Green's Blog.

VMware server is free too.. and better..

[cowmix]

I am using VMware server now.. and its great..

All the work I do; making VMs, API based automation, etc.. works great on a Linux or Windows host.

Why would you want to run VMs on only a Windows host when VMware gives you choice?

after the market research....

[know1]

and looking at the open source software world, microsoft finally hit on the favourite price that consumers want

My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[Malor]

Note that VMWare is also giving away their Server product for free. For some reason, Slashdot hasn't been willing to run this story, even though it's important.

It's a new product, still in beta... about equivalent to the GSX Server. They just released Beta 2 either today or yesterday. It's a _really_ good product. The current keys they're giving away expire, but they say the final version will also be free-as-in-beer.

Basically, it'll do everything Workstation will, plus it allows you to see the consoles of virtual machines that are on another computer. It also gives you a fairly rudimentary web-based control panel, wherein you can start, stop, or restart particular VMs. You can also set up user accounts, and restrict access to particular machines appropriately. It's not ISP-class, but it'd be damn useful for QA teams or suchlike.

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[DAldredge]

/. did cover it.

http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/02/03/132 0216

Damn I am defending /. the world must be coming to an end.

I LIKE PICKLES!

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[Professor_UNIX]

Note that VMWare is also giving away their Server product for free. For some reason, Slashdot hasn't been willing to run this story, even though it's important.

The reason is because Slashdot ran the story two months ago here.

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[Al_Lapalme]

I guess dupes are necessary after all...

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[Blackforge]

You forgot one important bit (to me anyways): VMWare supports 64-bit virtual machines on a 64-bit host. Currently Virtual Server doesn't.

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[Malor]

My apologies, Slashdot editors. I must have missed it. It looks like they ran it even before I got the announcement email from VMWare, so of course they'd have refused my submission. Doh.

Anyway, it IS good software. Wish it were truly free, and I'm looking forward to what happens with Xen, but free-as-in-beer will do for now. :)

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically, it'll do everything Workstation will

Except the clone feature or multi-snapshots like workstation like 5.5. This is a killer feature that makes workstation worth the money for dev or test work.

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[A Nun Must Cow Herd]

It was run weeks ago. More interestingly, it's not just about equivalent to GSX, in fact GSX Server is being discontinued and replaced by VMWare Server. :o)

The free VMware Server represents the upgrade path for all GSX Server customers. Once VMware Server is generally available, which is currently planned for Q2 2006, it will replace GSX Server as VMware's hosted server virtualization offering. At that time, VMware will also start offering Support and Subscription services for VMware Server for purchase.

Source: GSX page.

Re:My submission about VMWare was rejected....

[Anonymous Coward]

Off topic, my ass. DANTISEMITEredge is a Jew hater. Telling a Jew Hater to shut up because he is a Jew Hater is not off topic. Moderator is obviously anti-semetic too.

Mark Parent Troll

[sinner0423]

This isn't illegal, it's business.

And Hi, it's The Register - what's wrong with you? I'm even wearing my little vulture logo shirt as I type this, they aren't evil, they're brits - there is a difference.

VPC != MS Virtual Server?

[sh4na]

Using this sort of software, you actually NEED Windows. You boot up a VM and then proceed to install an OS just like a real machine. This is massively unlike Wine and is somewhat different from VPC too.

Where is VirtualPC different in this? Virtual Server *is* VPC, MS bought Connectix and changed the name of the product... VPC is an virtualization environment where you install windows (and other OSs), so you need windows to install it, I don't see the difference.

If you say Microsoft's Virtual Server is considerably worse than VPC was, then I can agree there's a difference, and this is not just MS bashing. I've tried both, and know windows admins that have tried both, and we all rue the day that Connectix got bought, because VPC was (and still is, amazingly enough) a much better application than Virtual Server, in speed, stability and compatibility.

It's ironic that MS is basically killing a good product much in the way that IBM did when they bought Lotus. There are things that just shouldn't be bought by big companies, they have too many conflicting interests and not enough vision and purpose to carry out a truly good thing.

Re:VPC != MS Virtual Server?

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you didn't need to mention WINE.

plastics!

[Anonymous Coward]

They're giving it away for free but they'll make up for it in volume!

Re:VMware server is free too.. and better..

[Anonymous Coward]

VMware is not free, they merely have a player version that will run existing virtual machines you have access to. You cannot create a new machine using their player.

Nice timing

[Jsutton1027w]

It seems like a good time for VMWare to open up it's disk format, now that Qemu has it completely reverse-engineered. :)

I would not bother with MSVS

[Anonymous Coward]

I have deployed VMware and MSVS. I have to say MSVS is junk. I won't even bother download the damn things off my MSDN.

Go figure!

such a waste...

[Anonymous Coward]

In a related move VMware have opened their partition file format to the community, aggressive and suprising moves in the virtualisation market."

Surely one of the most perfect opportunities for correct semicolon usage for which one could ever wish; these chances should not be so lightly squandered.

Start Making Sense

[PhYrE2k2]

Start Making Sense Or I'll put you into a home!

In related news

[rsilvergun]

dogs and cats where found living together while mass hysteria ensued.

To be fair...

[Null Nihils]

FTA: "To be fair, VMware has a free version of its mid-market product in beta and this software stacks up well against Virtual Server."

So VMware is giving a version away for free as well, so its not all that one-sided. However, the 800-pound Microsoft is looking directly in VMware's direction. VMware should indeed be scared, and customers should definitely worry that in a few years there might not be as much choice in the virtualization marketplace.

On the other hand, we could get VMwarezilla in the end. And, eventually, VMwarefox?

Re:To be fair...

[Erik_]

On a side not, VirtualServer is currently NOT gaining any market share in my country in medium to large companies. People try it... and move to VMware ESX platforms.
VMware currently has a good head start on Microsoft. And it has what's very important for an Enterprise
platform, it has large storage facilities (SAN, now NAS, NFS and iSCSI). Behind VMware you have EMC2. They storage company.

ok

[Anonymous Coward]

"customer support for Linux"

What next? Vista built on top of Linux?

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

I have often wondered if/hoped that microsoft would get out of the operating system market. Microsoft seems to excel at releasing pretty window-managers. If microsoft turned vista into an X window manager most users wouldn't know the difference. I know, pipe dreams of convincing hardware manufacturers to support linux, but who knows. As the Prof. said about the fing-longer, a man can dream.

Re:ok

[Anonymous Coward]

nope, vista is built on mac os 10.5 leapord, so that's what happenning

i, for one, welcome our vista leapord linux bsd apple-eating monopolistic overlords

Re:VMware server is free too.. and better..

[Anonymous Coward]

VMWare Server is free. And you can create virtual machines in it. Check the website, dumbass.

Let's Not Forget The Mac Community...

[__aaclcg7560]

What about the Mac community? Microsoft should make Virtual PC free and VMware should have their product available on the Mac for the same price. If you're going to run other operating systems on a VM, Mac hardware is just as good as anyone else's.

Re:Let's Not Forget The Mac Community...

[sh4na]

Let's not forget that the battle here is for control of the enterprise use of windows. Before the wave of virtualization software, if you were a sysadmin on a company, you used whatever OS was handed down to you from up above, mostly, of course, windows.

Multinationals institute a standard OS that sysadmins are stuck with, and you just can't justify changing OS's on anything unless it's critical for your business that you do it, and that's a tough sale indeed if any MS representative can go to the boss and say that what you want to do can be done in windows (note I'm not saying that it's done as well as with other OS's, just that it *can* be done, MS has enough software to cover all bases).

So now with virtualization software you don't have to dump the OS... you just run another one inside it, so the sysadmin doesn't have to justify big expenses and has the advantage of showing that another OS can work better on any given task. So suddenly the field is open again, one can sidetrack the *official* platform and increase productivity (= $$$).

And you know what, the boss listens when a sysadmin says "we don't have to spend that much more $$$, and we can improve our efficiency on this and this if we just run a linux on this box and have it do X. It's still running windows so we're not breaking any official company rules here, our objectives (= $$$) will be met, and we can drop the annual MS fees"

So now MS has a conundrum on it's hands... suddenly the monopoly is endangered in the worst possible way; big companies escaping it's grasp (i.e. not buying the top dollar server apps it sells). So what does it do? Buys a virtualization software so it can launch it's own platform and try and prevent the admins from escaping. VirtualPC was very good at virtualizing non-windows systems, Virtual Server is not that good at it. VPC was very sleek, VS big and bulky, so that admins who try it out won't be too tempted to run lots of stuff on it.

In all of this, the Mac is really not the target. The battle front is not at the Mac, as far as VMWare and MS are concerned. The virtualization market might be the biggest battle for control of the admin that we've seen ever, and might just be the one that finally breaks MS, especially because it comes at a time when MS is being dragged down by it's own sheer weight, and it's not the agile, fast-to-the-market company it once was.

One can only hope... :p

Re:Let's Not Forget The Mac Community...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the Mac community? Microsoft should make Virtual PC free and VMware should have their product available on the Mac for the same price.

Apple is free to make a virtualization product. If there is a demand for it, someone will.

Re:Let's Not Forget The Mac Community...

[Anonymous Coward]

What about the Mac community?

Ah, no one gives a fuck about those dick smokers. Bunch of faggots who can't get their heads out of their ass and realize that Mac is little more than a hobbiest PC.

Re:Let's Not Forget The Mac Community...

[Slashcrap]

No - just for once, please, please, please let us forget the Mac community.

You pop up in every other Slashdot story, let's have a break. I mean this is about Enterprise class business products - it's so obviously not for you, fruit fans.

Don't worry - there's bound to be another tenuous iPod Slashvertisement soon. You can all wank yourselves raw to that instead. Just shut up for a few minutes, the rest might do you all good.

now you can buy multiple windows licenses per box

[LodCrappo]

Seems like a no brainer to me... anyone silly enough to be running MS VM is probably going to be running more silly MS operating systems with it, which means now MS can sell multiple (expensive) server licenses per box. Oh yeah, the VM is free. But you still have to buy Windows, in this case several times perhaps. If I was running that place I'd have been giving away the ability to purchase multiple OS per box all along.

DINGDINGDING, ERROR!

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, you're the confused one: He's talking of the second half of the post, in which it states that Vmware has opensourced the specs (and source, it sounded like) of their vmdk file format, which is used to store system images (or just storage space) for vmware virtual machines.

Thank you for playing, we have some *lovely* parting gifts for you...

Re:DINGDINGDING, ERROR!

[sh4na]

Is he now? ah well, clarification withdrawn, looking forward to the replies then :)

Can I have my gift now please? Gee, I sure hope it's something nice and useful! Is it yellow? :D

Yup ...

[hotspotbloc]

The first hit is always free. =)

i tried installing it

[know1]

it bitched about not having IIS installed. where i come from they call a software package that requires another to installed first an expansion pack. just thought i'd point out it isn'tas free as they say. oh well, guess i'll stick with apache on a non virtual server...

Re:i tried installing it

[Anonymous Coward]

What language is your post in?

Re:i tried installing it

[Hyram Graff]

The simple solution to not having IIS installed

1. Insert Windows XP Pro CD into apropriate media reader connected to the PC you want IIS installed on.
2. Go to add/remove software from the control panel.
3. Select add/remove windows componets.
4. Select IIS, then select OK.

And you should now have IIS installed without costing you any more than that WinXP Pro CD did.

(Warning: I am not at my Windows box right now so the actual steps may varry slightly. If you can't figure out how to deal with any variations by yourself, then you probably shouldn't be installing IIS.)

Re:i tried installing it

[omega9]

VMWare Server does the same thing when installing on Windows based systems. If you're not running IIS you can still continue the install, but you won't have the web-based administration available.

Besides, if you're installing Virtual Server onto a version of Windows that doesn't ship with IIS available, then I'm willing to bet it's not going to be the most important server in the NOC.

Re:i tried installing it

[know1]

"If you can't figure out how to deal with any variations by yourself, then you probably shouldn't be installing IIS."
give me a break chum, i'm running apache right now. and what if (although this isn't the case) it was a machine that only had the operating system installed at the store? i remember one of my exs emachines box (shudder) was like that.

Re:i tried installing it

[know1]

heh it isn't the most important server - it's my desktop :)
just wanted to install it and play with it. i've already been informed that IIS is on the xp pro cd by someone else, but as i said to him, there are a lot of boxs out there that only had the OS installed at the store (allthough that isn't the case with mine).

Re:i tried installing it

[Hyram Graff]

what if ... it was a machine that only had the operating system installed at the store?

In that case these simple instructions aren't for you. You need a more advanced set of instructions. ;-)

Re:i tried installing it

[know1]

heh, that made me laugh

Re:i tried installing it

[Anonymous Coward]

part of licensing requires stores to provide the CD or a partition to access the install of windows. Anyone that bought a windows PC and didn't get any form of media got ripped off by the store.

Windows on Windows?

[jefu]

So will you be able to run Windows in a virtual machine running on windows?

The register piece makes it look like you'll only be able to run other OSs. Being able to virtualize Windows could be a Good Thing.

The end of the world as we know it...

[TeknoHog]

Microsoft supports Linux... head explodes... what next? Cats and dogs living together?

And don't forget AMD/Intel

[PCM2]

Microsoft sees VMWare as their enemy because they are banking cash today. (Thou shalt have no other vendors other than Microsoft) However Xen is probably the bigger threat.

Absolutely Xen is the bigger threat, but more importantly, the new Intel VT and AMD Pacifica chips are the writing on the wall for both VMware and Microsoft. The technology in these new chips makes it possible for XenSource to come out with a version of Xen that will run Windows, not just modified Xen OSes. It won't be hard for other folks to do the same. This obviates all the hard R&D work that Connectix and VMware put into doing the same thing without hardware support. In the very near future, the ability to provide virtualized systems and run virtual machines will be a non-issue. The only race left is to deliver the best support and management tools.

Re:And don't forget AMD/Intel

[QuantumG]

meh, then VMWare will just add support for this hardware to their product. They'll still win.

Re:And don't forget AMD/Intel

[bakes]

The only race left is to deliver the best support and management tools.

Who is winning that race? From what I've heard, the VMWare management tools are far superior.

(Someone with experience in that space pls comment)

Re:And don't forget AMD/Intel

[PCM2]

Who is winning that race? From what I've heard, the VMWare management tools are far superior.

VMware is way out ahead. Their ESX Server product is worth paying for if you buy into their idea of "virtual infrastructure," which is basically doing the kind of stuff that mainframe users were doing years ago, only with commodity hardware. You can move virtual machines back and forth from different hardware resources, do automatic failover, all kinds of stuff. What the basic Server product can do is nothing when you consider what the full-blown product can do. In that sense, VMware has been very clever in releasing free products like VMware Player, and now Server, in that it helps everybody get their heads around the idea of virtual machines for day to day computing.

That said, there is no shortage of competitors, as far as companies that are trying to come up with tools. XenSource and Virtual Iron are two I can think of off the top of my head. Right now neither is positioning itself directly, head-to-head against ESX Server, because they know that's a hard road to climb. But eventually they'll have to. I have no doubt that Red Hat, and Novell especially, will be getting in on that action soon, too, given their support for Xen.

The next couple of years are going to be pretty interesting for the virtualization market.

Re:And don't forget AMD/Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

"The technology in these new chips makes it possible for XenSource to come out with a version of Xen that will run Windows, not just modified Xen OSes."

Running it is one thing. A more interesting question is "how fast?". What makes you think the technology in these new chips will allow to run virtual machines as fast or faster than you can run them today with VMware or Microsoft's products?

Re:And don't forget AMD/Intel

[PCM2]

Running it is one thing. A more interesting question is "how fast?". What makes you think the technology in these new chips will allow to run virtual machines as fast or faster than you can run them today with VMware or Microsoft's products?

Ummm ... because native hardware support for virtualization is bound to be faster than a software-emulated equivalent? What kind of question is that? Sure, let's wait until we see the benchmarks come out, but I doubt anybody is holding their breath on this one...

Re:And don't forget AMD/Intel

[Anonymous Coward]

Standard thinking: hardware is "bound to be faster" -- but in this case it isn't! Maybe in a few years when the hardware guys figure out how to make it fast, it will be, but not today.

Re:And don't forget AMD/Intel

[mnmn]

You dont know much about Xen do you?

Most other 'fast' VMs out there only pass the kernel system calls to the vm subsystem which translates it. Everything else is more or less direct in a protected memory space, and the binaries are natively run on the hardware (ie vmware).

Xen is better. The virtualization and memory protection all happen within the hardware. All hardware access can be translated and sent to a Xen 'controller' which manages hardware between virtual OSes. Everything else is direct-to-hardware access and binaries are natively run on the CPU.

So I dont know what you mean by if it has been tested. Of course Windows has been tested on the i386 cpu since its inception, and so has all its x86 binaries. x86 software is optimized for x86 CPUs which is why it'll run real fast on a Xen box. Faster than vmware since what little virtualization is done (very unlike bochs) in software is then done in hardware.

Of course Xen has already been 'tested' if you will, between the BSDs and Linux and its definitely fast. I dont know if it has been tested on the POWER architecture, but POWER has hypervisor in hardware for AIX and its LPARs are definitely fast.

risky, risky, risky.....

[ecalkin]

a lot of the ms strategy involves people not being exposed to linux and being able to make a comparison. i would beleive that the last thing microsoft really wants is for someone running xp pro to fire up a free version of vpc and running linux to see what is looks like and how it works.
    so i don't understand.

eric

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Ít's too late though. They're offering a product that's intended to do just that: run Linux. So sure, they can virtualize other Windows instances, but really a lot more people are going to be exposed just by the existance of their product, not to mention Live Linux CDs, free VMWare, and gads of other ways to at least try Linux easily in a Windows environment.

Virtualization is coming. Really, they have to adapt or lose a key software market. Woohoo, monopolies.

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[TeraCo]

a lot of the ms strategy involves people not being exposed to linux and being able to make a comparison.

Are you high? I'm sorry, that's crap. People interested in virtualization software are going to be 'in the industry', and either have already made the comparison, or are just flat out not interested in switching.

I find it very hard to believe that anyone interested in 'virtualization' would not know the pros and cons of the various unices.

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[Guido von Guido]

I have to disagree tdhat people intererested in virtualization have to be knowledgeable about Linux/Unix. My employer is a VMWare partner (albeit a small one). One of our consultants gave an internal training session a couple of weeks ago. He told me that a lot of his customers are Windows shops, and they're interested in Windows almost entirely. He's a Windows guy himself, so it makes sense that most of his customers aren't interested in Linux/Unix.

Why? There seem to be two big drivers: server consolidation and disaster recovery. You can clone key machines as virtual machines, and store them off site (either on a VMWare server [or the Microsoft product] or just as flat files). When your main data center is hit by an asteroid, you can run your business off the virtual machines instead.

With VMWare, there are also some other neat futures (like vMotion).

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[TeraCo]

One of our consultants gave an internal training session a couple of weeks ago. He told me that a lot of his customers are Windows shops, and they're interested in Windows almost entirely. He's a Windows guy himself, so it makes sense that most of his customers aren't interested in Linux/Unix.

That's exactly what I said. People who are learning about virtualization have either looked to find out what unix can offer them or made the deliberate decision not to. They aren't naive experimenters about to stumble across 'the joy of linux' despite Microsoft's attempt to keep them from it.

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[Guido von Guido]

I wasn't disagreeing with that--only your contention that you found it "very hard to believe that anyone interested in 'virtualization' would not know the pros and cons of the various unices."

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[TeraCo]

Well, I'm assuming that people deciding they aren't interested in unix are making a considered decision based on the pros and cons of the various alternatives. Instead of just rolling a dice or consulting a dismembered chicken.

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[bi_boy]

i would beleive that the last thing microsoft really wants is for someone running xp pro to fire up a free version of vpc and running linux to see what is looks like and how it works.

I think if someone was even interested in running a emulation program to see how linux was, they'd probably be smart enough to download a free live cd and just boot from that to get a glance.

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[kiddx]

No, the issue here is that people who are virtualizing in the enterprise are most likely going to have linux/unix/oracle or other type servers. Right now their only choice would really be vmware. All the vmware products run on linux, including of course, esx which is its own linux variant.

Now you can say, well lets look at our options with Server2003 as the host o/s. Why? Because of products like Livestate, Veritas, and the billions of other vendors peddling backup and bare metal type solutions. Not to mention MS' own volume shadow snapshot.

I am not a linux expert (ran hp/ux at an isp years ago) but I dont recall any VSS type stuff on linux.

Re:risky, risky, risky.....

[Technician]

a lot of the ms strategy involves people not being exposed to linux and being able to make a comparison.

So to retaliate against all the free Linux ISO's out there, when is MS going to come out with a Live VISTA CD for users of Linux to try?

Oh, Vista would never fit on a CD.. Nevermind.

Darn it

[Spy der Mann]

What I don't understand now... why was I modded funny? :(

Re:Darn it

[hkb]

Agreed. I don't see why this is modded as funny, when its true. Microsoft has a history of using this tactic. IE being the most infamous example. The screwing comes later.

Re:Darn it

[SpaceLifeForm]

Astro-mods trying to distract readers from the truth.

Same old Microsoft...

[FridayBob]

Giving away products for free in order to kill off another ISV that they decide to compete with. Of course, VMware has only itself to blame: this is what you get when you grow your market share enough to attract Microsoft's attention.

But seriously, in a normal market with healthy competition among OS makers, Microsoft would leave VMware alone and be happy that they're doing so well, selling products that work with Windows. However, this is not a normal market and Microsoft is a monopolist by any definition but their own. Therefore, VMware must die. Ho-hum.

Let's hope that nice lawyer lady from Iowa that Cringely was talking about last week drags them into court again soon.

Re:Same old Microsoft...

[ClamIAm]

I think it's important to note that VMWare played with some pretty dangerous fire: they created a product that could damage the Windows/Office monopoly. Microsoft most likely looks at VMWare's products and sees that they allow Windows to be relegated to a secondary role in an environment, whether it's home or business, desktop or server. MS realizes that as soon as Windows/Office becomes a secondary product (rather than the end-all be-all), their business is gone, since their entire business is built upon being the ONLY vendor.

Re:VMware server is free too.. and better..

[Anonymous Coward]

So, are you a paid Microsoft toady, a Microsoft toady-at-large, or just an idiot?

...And its cheap at half that price!

[CFD339]

I've been using VMWARE for years now at the workstation. Each client of mine that I support gets a "support vm" dedicated to them with the tools I need for their environment and a network stack that contains their own VPN configuration. That allows me to load a support VM for a client without having to stop what I'm doing on my own network, without having each client's VPN config interfere with the others, and also allows me to take along a DVD for each client so that if I have a problem with my laptop (like when I dumped a 5oz glass of water into mine in Munich 10 minutes into a conference session I was giving) I can quickly get the support vm up and running on almost any available equipment. All my demos and seminar examples are in VM's so that they are transportable. I even keep a default install of win2k, win2k3, win98, winXP, as well as Suse, RH, and Fedora linux as a vm. Any time I need to test something, I instantiate a new copy of whatever OS I need -- and it takes less than 5 minutes.

Re:...And its cheap at half that price!

[swb]

I wish I could get a laptop with that much disk space. I keep stock VMs that I clone for client projects worthy of it, but even with cloning I find myself pruning VMDKs that haven't been used a while.

If you have 80 billion in cash

[WillAffleckUW]

and Linux is radidly eating into your server sales market, well ...

anyone remember when IE became free?

The Net community said that Netscape would still win, since it had most of the market share.

But, in the end, only one cheese stood alone, and it wasn't Netscape.

[note, today I had to reload my printer driver since the one MSFT included in the downloads won't work with my HP printer, so maybe I'm slightly more cynical]

Re:If you have 80 billion in cash

[Anonymous Coward]

Remember, IE never "became" free -- browsers were always free, so why should IE be any different? Just because Netscape decided to charge, MS has to also?

You see, back in 1994, before Netscape was even called that (they used to be Mosaic Communications and their domain was mcom.com), they started it all. Before the browser was even in beta SGI was planning to ship it with IRIX 5.3. What was MS supposed to do? Would they be forced to also license Netscape also? Or would they just not be allowed to match their competitor's features?

It was obvious to me even then, and should have been to any reasonable observer, that there was no significant money to be made in the browser business. In fact, the day the first beta (0.9) was released (Oct. 13, 1994), the Wall Street Journal quoted Marc Andreessen as saying "Clients aren't where the money is anyway". It's not really clear that they even started out intending to charge for the client. I remember that the servers were always expensive ($5000 for the SSL-enabled "commerce server"), but that prices for the client were initially elusive.

Also, I should point out that it's probably HP's fault that the driver that they gave MS for you to download doesn't work with your HP printer.

dom

So what's the underlying OS

[sl4shd0rk]

And is *that* GPL'd? The legalities that are going to surface when Microsoft finds out they will have to GPL whatever they put in Xen to change it. Including anything that belongs to someone else that they are licensing.

Virtualization is the next commodity technology

[bec1948]

I've been studying these technologies for a while now. It's only recently that processor power has reached the point that an x86 powered computer had the processor performance to overcome the inherent design limitation historically imposed by design decisions made by IBM and subsequently Microsoft and Intel that can make use of all the power available in the processors themselves. For a multitude of reasons (off topic) this power is irrelevant to most home users and business users of pcs. More importantly this power is irrelevant to the majority of server purposes. It's well known that most servers used in business are running at much less than 20% utilization levels. And that's with old boxes. This means that buying a new server with current technology results in a box running at levels as low as 5 or 10% utilization. Why bother? Enter virtualization. With virtualization a single box can replace 4, 7 16, 20 or more servers. Not that good for IntelDellIBMHP etc, but great for you and me. Less electricity needed, less cables, less everything. The only factor holding this back is licensing costs. If you can reduce those costs too, wow. Microsoft allows a single $4K Windows 2003 Enterprise Edition license to support up to four instances. If you don't have to pay extra for virtualization software, then the price starts to be very competitive with supported Linux licensing. More importantly it makes virtualization a standard way of doing things. The real question is what happens to the open source community when the development of free tools like Xen loose their support fee value when competing with a more mature platform that costs the same thing. We're not there yet, but it will happen. In a year or three.

Re:Virtualization is the next commodity technology

[eluusive]

It's only recently that processor power has reached the point that an x86 powered computer had the processor performance to overcome the inherent design limitation historically imposed by design decisions made by IBM and subsequently Microsoft and Intel that can make use of all the power available in the processors themselves. For a multitude of reasons (off topic) this power is irrelevant to most home users and business users of pcs. More importantly this power is irrelevant to the majority of server purposes.

You mean like the force?

Re:Virtualization is the next commodity technology

[Anonymous Coward]

20 servers replaced by virtualisation? You do realise that computers could run more than 1 app at a time BEFORE virtualisation came along? If they really used such meagre system resources you could just run them all on the same box as regular processes.
And, if there's some reason you can't do that, i.e. unstable, not portable, etc. then you need to be dumping them if possible, bitching to vendors, and if nothing else works hiring some guys to write a decent app for you - which you can then sell and recoup the costs, if the competition is that useless.

Re:Virtualization is the next commodity technology

[EvanED]

There's plenty of reasons why you might want OS isolation besides stability, etc.

Think about the benefits of giving people their own VM. Then they can set up anything at all on it without any worry really about hurting anyone else. Like they can run unsecured CGI apps and not disrupt other VMs.

VMWare Forums not good example

[augustz]

For a company that sells a product with bullet point after bulletpoint on their capacity, expandability, robustness etc, try going to their forums at

http://www.vmware.com/community/ or http://www.vmware.com/community/forum.jspa?forumID =219

These sites run like a dog, even though they presumably have access to all the latest high tech VMWare stuff, and the funds to support the highest performance forum software. Not very inspiring.

Re:VMWare Forums not good example

[Thing 1]

I have no knowledge of this, but they probably contract that out. (Or give it to one guy in house. That's what we do.)

If you can't beat 'em, join 'em...

[Anonymous Coward]

...and if you can't build market share by creating a superior product, fuck the guy who is by giving your mediocre product away for free.

Xen will run Windows soon (w/new CPUs)

[WoTG]

True, you currently can't run Windows in Xen; however, both AMD and Intel will be offering updated processors with enhanced virtualization instructions that will allow Xen (and other VMs) to run Windows in a VM much more easily. So, IMHO, both VMWare and Virtual Server are trying to be proactive here and entrench themselves before the $0 VM from Xen becomes a real option.

Goodbye VMWare

[Gothmolly]

We make heavy use of VM at $LARGE_US_BANK. When MS ships it for free, VMWare will go out the door faster than you can say "budget cut".

VMWare, we love you, we'll miss you, but none of us has the power to save you.

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[jours]

Not surprisingly, it doesn't sound like anyone here has actually used MS Virtual Server. MSVS doesn't (yet) offer even half of what VMWare does...and the gap is even wider if you compare it to the ESX platform and the related tools. The MS product might be nice for a small development team or QA staff (though we've even had limited sucess with that), but Virtual Server isn't a serious consideration for any large-scale virtualization.

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[omega9]

Why? I don't understand the motivation to switch just for switching's sake. VMWare Server was announced as a free product before Virtual Server. If you're running ESX and plan on moving to Virtual Server because it's free then you also plan on losing a lot of functionality.

If you've already got an infrastructure built in VMWare, how does it make sense to spend the labor leaving it for no good reason?

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm

since when did microsoft not offerring even half of what others does

ever be an impediment thier adoption?

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[ClamIAm]

You must be new here.

Microsoft's continued domination of the software industry has been because of many reasons, but one of the major ones comes into play here: the fact that they're the biggest. The biggest vendors are a lot of times seen as "authorities", even if the products they offer are utter crap. Inertia also ties in here, as businesses hate spending money to train people to work with new software.

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[omega9]

"..as businesses hate spending money to train people to work with new software."

Wasn't your original post about switching to Virtual Server just because it was a Microsoft product, even though you have a current VMWare setup? And somehow, whoever it is you work for is willing to see that as enough reason to cover the labor of switching?

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[KarmaMB84]

Well, it might be cheaper to switch no rather than wait until Microsoft has killed VMWare under the weight of their monopoly on desktop machines. It would be a shame if Vista and/or the next WinXP service pack didn't play well with those servers hosted on your VMWare...

Re:Goodbye VMWare

[ClamIAm]

Which post? Provide a link.

This is just bogus.

[xiphoris]

And, unless I'm missing something again, I think Microsoft still qualifies as a legally defined "monopoly", and this looks like leveraging their monopoly to unfairly skew market forces and competition.

I know, I know, we've all heard it before, Microsoft is a convicted monopolist... but for what? Bundling a free (as in beer) web browser with their OS qualifies as taking advantage of their monopoly?

People get upset every time Microsoft gives something away for free, always claiming it pushes other companies out of the market. Newsflash: Netscape gave away its browser; so did Microsoft. Where is the "market"?

Mindshare != market.

Or are you effectively saying a company can NEVER compete with an OSS project, because the OSS project will always be free while it's "unfair" for the company to give something away from free? I am unclear what standard you wish to impose. Answer me this: if a company (Microsoft) wants to make a product, which has free open-source or otherwise equivalents in the market, is it anticompetitive practice to also release a free one?

Re:This is just bogus.

[popeguilty]

Actually, simply including MSIE with Windows wasn't their crime- it was their insistence that vendors include ONLY MSIE, along with other demands, else lose the right to sell MSFT products, that was MSFT's crime.

Re:This is just bogus.

[Thing 1]

People get upset every time Microsoft gives something away for free, always claiming it pushes other companies out of the market. Newsflash: Netscape gave away its browser; so did Microsoft. Where is the "market"?

I remember seeing Netscape at software retailers (brick-and-mortar, i.e., I saw the box) in the early 90s, for $39.

Microsoft forced them to make the browser free, and try to earn a living by selling the server. The trouble was, there wasn't much of a server market back then.

Re:This is just bogus.

[RobertLTux]

the big problem is sort of like this imagine that Microsoft was a city 1 on the town border if you had a nonMicrosoft car then tire ripping devices would spring into action and destroy your cars tires 2 if you tried to use a tracked vehicle then the rocket launchers at every corner would get you 3 most of the roads are only "compatible" with Microsoft cars 4 most parking lots have features that only a Microsoft car can use 5 try to fly in Microsoft and you will be shot down 6 if you try to rent a car it will be a Microsoft car even if you asked for some other type of car do you see the problem now??

Re:This is just bogus.

[FireFury03]

Bundling a free (as in beer) web browser with their OS qualifies as taking advantage of their monopoly?

Yes - giving people something which is Just There (rather than them needing to go out of their way to download or buy it) is a pretty good way of making sure the majority of people won't even bother looking at the competition. When you are using a monopoly product in order to distribute this then you are unfairly abusing a monopoly. The destructive influence this has had can quite clearly be seen:

1. Netscape, Mosaic, etc were all competing and rapidly developing the feature set of their products. (As you would expect with free market competition).
2. MS enter the market and bundle IE - now everyone has a web browser installed as standard, why bother looking at the competition?
3. The competing browsers die since very few people are now using them
4. As IE reaches market saturation, MS see no point in continuing development - the feature set stagnates for years

Even though IE6 is 5 years or so behind the competition, the majority of people still use it - the majority of people probably don't even know that there are alternatives to IE.

When you have a monopoly platform, you can use it to launch into almost any market and completely destroy all the competition - this is considered an unfair abuse of the monopoly and is thus illegal. I'm unsure how you can ever think that using a monopoly to completely destroy a market is a Good Thing for the end user - choice and competition produces innovation.

The other relevent quip...

[fm6]

Didn't Nostrodamus predict this?

In the future software will be free and we will...

[Proudrooster]

Wasn't Microsoft mumbling something about how hardware in the future would be free and we would only pay for software. Looks like the opposite might be true instead. We will pay IBM/Intel/AMD for the hardware and get the virtualization software FREE.

Free?

[VGfort]

Well at least the consumer wins, for once.

Re:Free?

[ClamIAm]

Yeah, just like in Nescape vs. IE. Oh wait, that paved the way for IE's near-total monopoly on browsers, the prevalence of ActiveX (which helps malware writers), and a severe decline in web standards (which continues to this day).

Re:Microsoft Virtualization is the key to the futu

[Anonymous Coward]

You'd be 100% right if they offered it on linux.

Can you run windows on linux? Is Microsoft helping or hindering?

Half a step in the right direction anyway....

Microsoft "customer support for Linux"

[DrJimbo]

Microsoft: We're willing to wipe the slate clean, give you a fresh start. All that we're asking in return is your cooperation in bringing a known terrorist to justice.

Linux User: Yeah. Well, that sounds like a pretty good deal. But I think I may have a better one. How about, I give you the finger ...
[He does]
... and you give me my phone call.

Re:Microsoft "customer support for Linux"

[Anonymous Coward]

OMG. Angelina Jolie pre oscar. mmmmmmm.

Where's that soundtrack.

Same old excuses.

[Anonymous Coward]

"But seriously, in a normal market with healthy competition among OS makers, Microsoft would leave VMware alone and be happy that they're doing so well, selling products that work with Windows. However, this is not a normal market and Microsoft is a monopolist by any definition but their own. Therefore, VMware must die. Ho-hum."

Your argument doesn't wash because VMWare has been under "attack" even before this announcement. Everyone, and their dog has virtulization software. Plus OSS is reverse-engineering VMWare's stuff as well. How could ANY company survive being assulted from all those directions?

Re:VMware server is free too.. and better..

[kayen_telva]

http://www.vmware.com/products/server/faqs.html

Mod parent down, has no clue about VMWARE

[TrancePhreak]

VMWare has been giving away their product for a while now. MS is late to the game.

Re:Mod parent down, has no clue about VMWARE

[FridayBob]

VMWare has been giving away their product for a while now. MS is late to the game.

Huh? That would be nice, but I just looked and they're still selling VMware Workstation 5 for $189.00 to $199.00. So, what is it that VMware are supposed to be giving away for free? Only their virtual machine disk format, as far as I can see.

Re:Mod parent down, has no clue about VMWARE

[Anonymous Coward]

So, what is it that VMware are supposed to be giving away for free? Only their virtual machine disk format, as far as I can see.

Then look harder.

They are giving away the GSX server product as well. Download the free beta version now. Not to mention the player software is already free.

The good thing about it is it can be hosted on Linux as well as on Windows.

Re:Mod parent down, has no clue about VMWARE

[kylef]

We're talking about virtual server software, not virtual workstation software.

VMWare Server beta is available for free download here. The company has stated that there will be a free version of the VMWare Server once it is ready for release.

This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully)

[fronell]

Virtualization is the future and helps us get to that goal of utility computing. Its not too surprising that Microsoft has done this, nor was this the first drop in price for their server virtualization product.

What is surprising is Microsoft lagging behind VMWare big time when it comes to server virtualization. When I spoke to a VMWare sales rep, he said the money comes from ESX (which costs $3750 a pop), not GSX or the workstation products. People buy ESX because they want the following (I know this because the company I work for evaluated the different VM products):

-Faster VM performance
-Support (anyone that works in a datacenter will tell you that support is always necessary)
-Features (virtual center, virtual SMP, vmotion)

No other product stands up to ESX when it comes to the datacenter environment, and thats the market Microsoft needs to go after. The midrange virtualization products like GSX or virtual server are used for developer testing or in QA, but not for running production services (at least not in the big environments). This move by Microsoft won't make much of a dent in VMWare's share (at least where the money is) so its not a huge step.

I love ESX, and one thing that I hope will make ESX better is Microsoft putting pressure on VMWare to not get too comfy and to constantly innovate because the company's future depends on it. I just hope it doesn't have the same outcome as IE vs NS.

Okay, great, but....

[Hosehead17]

First off, this is a good thing. As someone else said most new servers are running around 5-10% utilization. In fact we have a server at work dedicated to running virtual servers that is running 7 under MS Virtual Server 2003 R2 64-Bit, and it hums along at about 15%. Our only limiting factor is RAM and hard drive space, but more so the RAM. Most new services we are looking at implementing we mock up in a virtual server before even considering putting it on a host machine. If we like the way it runs in the virtual server we often decide to just leave it in a virtual server, extra RAM for our virtual server box is cheaper than a whole new box.

Now for the downside. As nice as this is, I see this as a ploy for MS to sell more copies of Windows, even with them releasing the Linux tools. If I was in their shoes, sure give Virtual Server away, the ones losing are the hardware vendors.

Re:Okay, great, but....

[bec1948]

Actually it's not a ploy to sell more licenses, but to defend the license sales they've already made. Both MS and Intel/AMD realize that through virtualization they're going to sell less units. But if you can sell an OS license at $4K instead of $800 (the difference at retail of Windows Server 2003 Standard and Enterprise editions) you're making more than 4 times the revenue for what is essentially the same thing.

Similarly, Intel and AMD (and their OEMs) can make more profits from a higher end processor being used for servers in virtualized environments than they would from commodity processor based servers (read as single core vs. dual core with today's products).

In both cases the vendors know they're going to sell fewer units, but if they make more money for each unit, they may still make their numbers.

Conversely, this also lowers the acquisition cost delta between proprietary OS (Windows, Max OS X) and open source (Linux, BSD). If you can buy supported licenses for 1/4 the previous price you're used to and you purchase at least some supported licenses from Novell or Red Hat, the TCO argument gets harder to make from the Linux side and easier to obscure from the Windows side.

Xen???-RMS's "going out of business" sale.

[Anonymous Coward]

"Unfortunately, Xen hasn't learned one of the prime lessons of history: partnering with Microsoft is merely the first step towards being put out of business by Microsoft."

*rolls eyes*

"Xen is Open Source software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. [emphasis for the thinking impaired]"

Also

"Work on Xen has been supported by UK EPSRC grant GR/S01894, Intel Research, HP Labs, Microsoft Research, Network Appliance, and XenSource Inc. [emphasis for the "website? What website?" impaired]"
--
http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/

OSX?

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that MSVS actually runs MacOSX86. Is that true? That would probably explain why MS is giving it away for free, since they can use it to undermine Apple's position.

Re:OSX?

[FKnight]

Wrong. Microsoft Virtual Server does not run Mac OS X.

Re:VMware server is free too.. and better..

[omega9]

Go home and stop acting like a ho!

You got served!

VMWare the new Netscape

[dentar]

Hmm. What happened last time a company had a great program, was selling it, and was then forced to give some of it, then all of it, away for free in order to "compete" with Microsoft?

Re:VMWare the new Netscape

[Ash-Fox]

AOL assimilated them.

Re:VMWare the new Netscape

[metricmusic]

It disappeared into the shadows and flung a chunk off to open source which then rose from the firey volcano as Phoenix, I mean Firebird, I mean Firefox. :)

I don't know what Vmware can do if it walks the same path. They're completely free already. Maybe they will give money away. :)

Re:VMWare the new Netscape

[edmicman]

I don't remember having to buy Netscape....

Re:VMWare the new Netscape

[dentar]

Netscape used to be a "for sale" product. Even though you could download it for free.

Not unexpected. MS is simply price matching VMWar

[ChrisA90278]

VMWare started offing thier "VMWare Server" for free a few weeks ago. Microsoft is simply price matching the VMWare product.

I'e been using QEMU which is GLP'd and does a few things neither of the above products do. However I have to admit that VMWare is slick. Good interface and easy to install.

Virtual Server is better than VMWare

[tjstork]

I had the opportunity to conduct a month long virtualization pilot which, among other things, evaluated Virtual Server vs VMWare, and, Virtual Server surprisingly came out on top.

a) Virtual Server is 64 on a 64 bit OS, if you want it, but VMWare was only available in 32 bit.

b) Virtual Server, running the application as VMWare, actually ran those apps 10% faster than did VMWare. Our application pegs the CPU for several hours, and so we felt that this was as good as test as any.

c) Virtual Server was easier to set up and use.

d) For the price difference, you could get another few datablades.

Your mileage may very, but the bottom line is, until you download Virtual Server and compare it to VMWare, don't believe the hype about performance, because, it may well be hype.

Re:Virtual Server is better than VMWare

[Anonymous Coward]

You tested one application for one month and you then determined that across the board, "Virtual Center is better". Could you include some more details...

Were you using a SAN or some type of shared storage? How smooth was the moving of a running virtual machine from one host to another? How configurable or easy was configuring the automatic load balacing across multiple hosts? Were you only monitoring CPU or were you looking at many parameters across all of the virtual machines and hosts? Did you adjust the "shares" for the CPU and/or dedicate CPU's to different virtual hosts at all? What was the effect of using hyperthreading if so equiped (effectively using 2 CPU's but must wait for both to become availalbe if enabled). What were your bottlenecks. How many virtual machines were running on your host?

Re:Virtual Server is better than VMWare

[Anonymous Coward]

*sigh*. I don't know why I do this...

a) Virtual Server is 64 on a 64 bit OS, if you want it, but VMWare was only available in 32 bit.
64-bit OSes run 32-bit code just fine (well, except linux distros that screw up the 32-bit compatability layer ... but windows runs 32-bit code fine). The real test is running 64-bit guest OSes - who can give the application the advantage of 64 bits? Because it's the application that matters, not the OS.

b) Virtual Server, running the application as VMWare, actually ran those apps 10% faster than did VMWare. Our application pegs the CPU for several hours, and so we felt that this was as good as test as any.
And if you're trying to virtualize CPU-bound apps, you deserve to lose the money. Everyone in the server market knows that it's throughput, not speed, that is king. What market are you in?

c) Virtual Server was easier to set up and use.
MS Virtual Server is feature-comparable to VMware Server, which you didn't try. Feature-wise, you've just told me MS XP Home is easier to set up than MS Advanced Server 2003. Duh.

d) For the price difference, you could get another few datablades.
I'm a VMware employee, and I encourage anyone to try both.

Re:Virtual Server is better than VMWare

[Alioth]

The trouble is Virtual Server does not run on Linux - so it can't even compete with VMware Server if your server runs Linux, or Xen if your server runs Linux and you want to run Linux or NetBSD virtual machines.

Re:Virtual Server is better than VMWare

[tjstork]

64-bit OSes run 32-bit code just fine (well, except linux distros that screw up the 32-bit compatability layer ... but windows runs 32-bit code fine). The real test is running 64-bit guest OSes - who can give the application the advantage of 64 bits? Because it's the application that matters, not the OS.`

Have you even -tried- to run 32 bit software on 64 bit Windows?

Re:Virtual Server is better than VMWare

[tjstork]

ou tested one application for one month and you then determined that across the board, "Virtual Center is better"
For, our kind of application.

Were you using a SAN or some type of shared storage?
Tested both configurations.

How smooth was the moving of a running virtual machine from one host to another?
copy a file

How configurable or easy was configuring the automatic load balacing across multiple hosts?
the system we were benchmarking performed load balancing of the application for us.

Were you only monitoring CPU or were you looking at many parameters across all of the virtual machines and hosts?
all parameters, however, our own previous experience with benchmarks indicated tat CPU was the bottleneck.

Did you adjust the "shares" for the CPU and/or dedicate CPU's to different virtual hosts at all?
Yep.

What was the effect of using hyperthreading if so equiped (effectively using 2 CPU's but must wait for both to become availalbe if enabled).
I turned hyperthreading off as previous data indicated this was advisable.

What were your bottlenecks. How many virtual machines were running on your host?
Bottleneck is always primarily CPU with this app. We ran the test over several configurations of virtual machine on two kinds of blade processors. There were times Intel came out on top, a few where AMD came out on top, but the VMWARE NEVER came out on top.

Your mileage may vary.

Re:Virtual Server is better than VMWare

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard virtual machines were the coming thing, so I tried out the new MS Virtual Server back in December. Or rather, I started to try it out. After loading it, I found out it required IIS. There didn't seem to be any means of starting or stopping VMs without having IIS running on the server too.

Having been burned by IIS in the past, I have one firm rule: no IIS here. That put an end to my evaluation of Virtual Server.

(and yes, I know IIS 6 is supposed to be better...)

Good thing

[MobyDisk]

Ignoring the obvious VMWare comparison, this is really good for the Microsoft shops. Many shops use Virtual Server, but there are very few tools for working with the partition file format. On several occassions, I've wanted to copy a file to a virtual server without booting it up. In some cases, it was a server that couldn't boot up. It's really quite funny to insert a virtual Linux CD into a Microsoft Virtual Server so that you can access the hard drive. Plus, there's no good tools for building and creating virtual server images, which makes it nearly useless for enterprise testing or debugging.

Re:Good thing

[The Cisco Kid]

You misread. It was VMWare that released the partition format for their product, not MS for theirs.

Re:Microsoft Virtualization is the key to the futu

[binkzz]

"__DllRegisterExpiryCacheDelayTwelveSeven()"

Is that the function that shows a bomb in minesweeper?

Windows can't even run windows

[Anonymous Coward]

why would i want a virtual machine on buggy windows so i can run buggy windows in vm on buggy windows, or multiple versions of buggy windows to test if windows is in fact buggy before i promote my product on buggy windows so people wont think its buggy when um something crashes

err or something like that

all this coding and time and new and money on an OS with DOS lineage...something never intended to be more than a very simple operating system... besides the obvious question of WHY the obvious question is why keep going?

sheesh windows world make sense not

Re:now you can buy multiple windows licenses per b

[SapphireHawk]

Actually, MS is changing their liscensing in support of virtual operating systems.

New virtualization use rights for Windows Server(TM) 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition and Windows Server "Longhorn" Datacenter Edition enable cost-effective consolidation. Licenses for the upcoming Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise Edition will allow customers to run up to four virtual instances on one physical server at no additional cost. Licenses for the Datacenter Edition of the version of Windows Server, code-named "Longhorn," will give customers the right to run an unlimited number of virtual instances on one physical server.

http://blogs.msdn.com/virtual_pc_guy/archive/2005/ 10/10/479186.aspx

Free as in FREE!

[babbling]

It's free as in:

• "Buy one, get one FREE!"
• "FREE for a limited time only!"
• "and ... FREE spyware!"

Re:This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully

[digidave]

Isn't ESX an OS? I am under the impression that it runs directly on the hardware, which would explain the great performance.

I'm leaning towards using GSX for a trial on our web network. It's working great in the dev environment. When our web site grows by about 40x in the next two years due to massive corporate expansion, I'll look to switch to ESX.

Re:Microsoft Virtualization is the key to the futu

[jimmyhat3939]

Yeah. They have one undocumented function for each square.

Re:This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully

[Anonymous Coward]

ESX has its own custom kernel, with a Linux (wasn't it RedHat?) environment sitting on top, which fools a lot of people into thinking that it just runs Linux

FAT

[PacketScan]

Could MS be forced to release FAT ? This could get interesting.

Yes, but does it run under Wine?

[multiOSfreak]

I ditched my last windows machine 18 months ago. Will I able able to run this MS virtual server under Wine on my Linux box?

*ducks*

Re:Yes, but does it run under Wine?

[The Cisco Kid]

Yes, just sign this form here sir. Oh, just ignore that part about agreeing to lobotomization, thats on all our forms.

i would never trust it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems to me that, back in the dark ages (early 90's) Microsoft found a way to break windows when it was running on top of an "alternate" dos, like DRDOS, then blamed Digital Research.

I think there was even some legal discovery at some point to this effect--MS internally, intentionally broke their system and blamed DR.

I don't think I would ever trust microsoft not to do the same thing to a "non-microsoft" offering running on their VM.

All it would take is a wee bit of code in a service pack, and suddenly your non-MS solution has its performance or stability whacked in some way.

No thanks. I'd prefer a third party product.

Laptop drives aren't that expensive

[CFD339]

The 40gb that I trashed in Germany (that was the only thing I couldn't salvage) was replaced with another cheap 40gb and a copy of XP/HOME in German from a shopping mall in Munich that afternoon. When I got back, I orderd a 100gb 7500 RPM one that makes a huge performance difference.

There are lots of ways to get good utilization out of a few gigs of VM. I tend to create my VM's on 4gb virtual drives, that way they fit easily on a DVD. 4gb is enough for most operating systems at least. If you need other drives for data, just create a few and attach them, or make a partition on the drive and let the vm have it directly as hardware (which is better for performance, but worse for transportability).

Re:Laptop drives aren't that expensive

[swb]

I even make mine with dynamic-sized VMDKs to keep space low (generally it's not a performance strain except during initial setup), but I guess you can never have enough disk space.

For me the biggest issue with running too many simultaneous VMs isn't disk but RAM. I like to keep RAM allocations generous to keep swapping at a minimum, since I think VM swapping laptop HDDs is more of a penalty than anything.

VMWare is just the beginning

[tyler_larson]

Note that VMWare is also giving away their Server product for free.

And note that Microsoft is also giving away their SQL server for free, and their developer studio (caveat: restricted versions of each). Same story with Oracle, and a long list of others.

Open source is really putting the crunch on software vendors. Xen vs. VMWare vs. VirtualPC is just one more in a long string of areas where free software is starting to eat proprietary vendors' lunch. If you want to see why they're doing it, just look at where the business is going. This trend in the proprietary world of giving away product is the only option these vendors have left if they want to continue to make money. Here's why. We'll take Oracle vs. MySQL as our example, just to pick a pair. Though the same principles apply everywhere.

Peter the programmer starts his job at a medium-sized business with 8 years of programming/sysadmin experience in school and in the workforce. All his work has been with small organizations with small budgets, so he's gotten used to working with free tools. His job is to build a high-performance, high-reliablity, high-availablity customer management solution. They need a database, he knows MySQL, he's heard of Oracle. He picks MySQL because he knows it best. They need reliablity that MySQL can't provide, so they build it into the application layer and modify some of the MySQL code to fit their needs. They need speed and transaction management beyond MySQL's capabilities, so they build it into the application layer. With 6 developers and 18 months, they finally come up with a perfectly working solution, and pay nothing in licensing fees.

Perhaps if they had gone with Oracle they could have finished in 8 months instead with only 5 developers, but they would have to pay X amount in licensing fees. Perhaps it would have even been worth it to the business, considering how much they spent for their in-house solution in salaries and lost revenue. But Oracle was never in the running--in a situation that might have fit Oracle's target audience perfectly, where they could have added substantial value and made tens or hundreds of thousands or dollars, Oracle gets nothing because Peter was unfamiliar with their product.

This isn't a hypothetical "what if" scenario. This is a true story. It's what's been going on for years, and what's going on right now. This is how open source is stealing customers from software vendors. The tools are too expensive for developers to "play around" with, especially considering all the free alternatives. As a result, these vendors' products are losing relevance and losing market share.

Their solution: give it away for free. They're not giving away their top product; that's where they intend to make their money. They'd prefer to give away nothing and make $60 off the student version, but that option has become too costly in the long run.

So expect to see more of this. These companies aren't trying to be nice or support the community or anything so noble. They're trying to stay relevant, they're trying to survive.

Re:VMWare is just the beginning

[Malor]

That's a good observation. It'll be interesting to see if the trend continues.

Re:VMWare is just the beginning

[Forbman]

But then there is the flip side. Company X has already paid for an Enterprise license, that lets them install it on more than a few CPUs, probably in support of some other enterprise-level software application (SAP, PeopleSoft, Siebel, etc). The Oracle license is trivial compared to the other software license fees. So the DBAs set up a development Oracle server, as well as another server to host stupid little departmental databases that get upsized from MS Access, at least those that have grown beyond the thumb-handed hacker that managed to crib something together to scratch an itch.

As far as the MySQL-developed application, with all the cool business logic and stuff written in a custom application layer, how is one supposed to develop another application (that can also update the data...) off of the same layer? How does one access that middle tier to get some of the logic out of it for reporting or data warehousing?

Urrgh, if there is a flamefest that sucks even more than Windows vs MacOS, it's MySQL vs every other SQL-based RDBMS (including Access).

VMware started this ...

[kiddx]

While I really like VMware and think its better than MS product, the MS product is catching up. The free part was done by VMware first and MS is simply responding. Dont forget that MS does support virtualization. If you look at their new licensing for 2003 R2 they support 4 server licenses for 1 server license purchased on each physical machine. This is a very good deal! So now you can purchase one server license for each 'physical' machine and run 4 vm's on each one (or combination of).

The supporting linux simply means that there is default settings for linux enviornments much like vmware and if you call MS because you are having a virtualization issue or driver issue in linux on Virtual Server they will work with you on solving it.

This again is nice, because you can get the flexibility of linux running on the same box as Windows. So you get the nice domain integration and AD security model (or easy anyway) and you can still drop a linux VM on top of it for file/print or to do some other tasks. It looks like MS idea here is to simply say run anything virtualization product or software you want but run it under the Windows o/s. To be honest, I have dozens of clients running 2000/2003 server as the host and several VM's in vmware. The boxes untouched and vlan'ed (you can vlan the host and not the guest) are very very stable.

Re:now you can buy multiple windows licenses per b

[LodCrappo]

ok, so gee I now might actually have a reason to upgrade all those NT4 and 2000 server licenses I have.. still a score for MS. And enterprise/datacenter edition are not exactly cheap. People using older server software or the much more common standard editions of MS's server OS are still now in a situation to pay more for licenses if they want to make use of this "free" VM technology. You may have found an exception, but I think my point is still valid for many if not most scenarios. After all, why would *any* company give something away if not to in the long run sell more product? it wouldn't be responsible to their shareholders and it certainly wouldn't be characteristic for a company like MS.

REVENGEOFTHEDINGDINGDING!

[SPY_jmr1]

Is this let's not read day or something? I hate to do it, but a RTFA is in order here... You would have gotten the lovely parting gift too, but since you're nowhere near as polite as the sibling poster, you go to the lightning round, and get to be the rod. :p

He is talking about the *SECOND HALF OF THE POST* in which *VMWARE*, not *MICROSOFT*, is opening the spces and drivers(?) used for their *VMDK IMAGE FILE FORMAT*.

If you don't feel like reading the whole little news blurb (like we all don't, I admit), at least read what the other replies in the same thread are talking about, maybe?

Spy, who also posted the other very similar but more patient correction in this thread AC due to being at school eariler

PS: How does that saying go? Never assume because it makes an ass of.. something or other? Anyway, yeah, don't assume stuff so readily.

Of course it's NOT completely free...

[Anonymous Coward]

...you do have to run it upon a licensed copy of Windows Server 2003 or at minimum, XP Professional. The free VMWare counterpart will run on top of a free Linux master host o/s.

yawn. Double yawn

[Anonymous Coward]

Another free virtualizer. Yawn.

Vmware file format open? Double Yawn. Qemu supported vmdk files for probably a year now.
Meanwhile vmware player clicky menus don't understand bridging both to eth0 and eth1. Huh? Two nics? Whatchu talkin about willis

The only thing qemu lacks, besides the fancy graphical menu, is good network support. (For those purists complaining about the virtualization module not being GPL, hey use qvm86 instead)

My question

[einhverfr]

is really pretty simple.

If it was a predatory tactic for Microsoft to tie IE to Windows to kill Netscape, is it at least an illegal mainenance (if not extension) of monopoly power to do the same to VMWare?

Re:My question

[uglyduckling]

No... the issue was that they brought out a new version of Windows with IE tied to the OS such that it was very difficult to uninstall (without 3rd party specialist software) and had it configured as the default browser. They also leant heavily on hardware vendors and cut them out of the best licensing deals if they shipped machines with Netscape configured as the default browser. These were unfair uses of monopoly powers.

To provide a competing product for free is quite a different situation, and isn't really anything to do with their monopoly powers, but more to do with their capital - they can afford to give it away as a loss-leader until the competition goes out of business and then choose to hike prices back up if they want to ("...to provide a better service to customers and invest in research and innovation the free version of Virtual Server will no longer be available...").

Both situations are obviously bad for the consumer, but the second situation is much harder to tackle (I presume) from a legal point of view.

Re:My question

[supersnail]

Well if it was a Korean form giving away DVD players for free, or,
an Indian giving away steel cheap. It would be (and is) considered illegal
dumping. So whay not for software?

Re:My question

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 Insightful

That's really an excellent question... While I'm of the firm opinion that if you choose to develop a piece of software and give it away for free (even to the detriment of your competition), that's your decision, it is inconsistent with other well known legal constructs.

I'd love to hear the official answer to a question like this...

Re:My question

[einhverfr]

IANAL, but I don't think giving away software for free is a per se violation of fair trade laws (including antitrust law). The issue more has to do with Microsoft's insistance on harming VMWare as a way of running various operating systems virtually. If Microsoft were to force VMWare out of business, they could then stop supporting Linux in VirtualPC and thus use the lockin to maintain their monopoly.

It seems to me that this move is *more* clearly tied to protecting the OS monopoly than the development of alternative web browsers.

M$ is not stupid --- there is a catch...

[woolio]

What's great about this announcement is that MS paid lots of money for virtual server and now they are forced to not only give it away for free but also provide support for it. That's millions of dollars down the drain for MS, money that could have gone to research, lobbying, advertising, PR, or even given back to the shareholders. Money down the drain, bad for MS, good for the rest of the world.

I think they could profit by making their virtualization software free....

How?

Well, one advantage to virtualization is that a company could host their external webserver, internal webserver, and mailserver on separate virtual machines... By separating these, each would be (somewhat) protected against any of the others becoming compromised. It also makes sense from an adminstration standpoint.

Now the CATCH! If each virtual machine runs Windows, then how many Windows licenses are required? And how many will be purchased when the next "upgrade" occurs?

And in case anyone hasn't noticed, the near-recent changes in Windows Update seem to indicate that they are going to really start monitoring/enforcing the usage of license keys....

I would like to see someone show this is not the case... But sadly, most "charitable" actions by companies are really the result of a bean-counter finding something clever.

Re:M$ is not stupid --- there is a catch...

[killjoe]

I think you missed the point. Microsoft bought virtual server in order to charge people both for the virtual server software AND the license for windows. Now they are unable to charge people for the virtual server because both Xen and Vmware are free. Sure they are still going to charge a license for each installed windows OS but they do that anyway.

This is another case of open source products causing MS to drop prices. This time down to zero. MS can bleed like this for a long time but not infinately. Eventually they are going to have to figure out how to survive in a world where your competition is giving away what you are trying to sell.

They know they killed netscape that way, they know they could be killed the same way.

Re:M$ is not stupid --- there is a catch...

[Anonymous Coward]

MS can bleed like this for a long time but not infinately.

If it bleeds, we can kill it.

Re:This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully

[fronell]

ESX is an OS customized for virtualization. Its actually Linux but with a modified kernel used to run their hypervisor (the hypervisor is what gives ESX the performance boost) and vmfs file system. Having both GSX and ESX in our environment, I can tell you that no one in the IT department wants to use GSX because the ESX servers are much more responsive. Since ESX is much more effecient with the hardware, it allows you to load more VMs on a physical server thus a greater return on that physical server purchase.

Another nice thing is since ESX is the app and the OS, the support contract will cover both. With GSX, you would have to get a support contract for GSX and the host operating system (which would be Windows Server or Linux).

Re:VMWare Server Beta 2 released Today.

[cadence007]

Free VMWare Server, Beta 2 was released today.. possibly this fixes some of the bugs you've encountered.

I don't consider it a bad thing, if the only "good" thing that comes of VMWare's offering causes Microsoft to release its server as free also.

Microsoft Support for Linux

[4r0g]

Yay - there goes the age old FUD argument Linux has no support!

Who do you trust for support if not Microsoft?

Netscape Navigator was defacto free

[I'm Don Giovanni]

"IIRC, initially Navigator was not free ($25 or something). It was only after MS started giving away IE that they started offering Navigator for free. Free browsers were great for the consumer in the short term, but bad in the long term. Its only recently that the consumers have started recovering from this."

Browsers were historically free before Netscape; MS merely returned browsers to "free".
Secondly, Netscape was only *ostensibly* not free. For "students" it was free, and for "beta users" it was free, and for "evaluation users" it was free (you could "evaluate" it for free for a certain amount of time). Netscape didn't bother to enforce any of these provisions, so in reality it was free for the general populace (however, businesses that wanted to use it in a legit fashion did pay (not at $25 per copy; they got a site lisence that was nearly free)).

Netscape's business model wasn't to charge for the browser; it was to give the browser away in order to increase popularity of the Internet and then make money on Netscape web servers. Apache blew that business model apart by giving internet servers away for free, which was the real reason for Netscape's downfall.

VMWare for evar!

[mOOzilla]

I use VPC and it is a PoS, it is not as fast, stable and does not support nearly as much device isolation as VMWare does. VMWare even has its own virutal BIOS, alough one thing I would like is virtual EFI support so I can run OS X in VMWare :) Does anybody know if VMWare plan on adding EFI support to their virtual guests?

I'd *love* to run this on the home desktop

[billstewart]

That'd let me run a VM server (theoretically don't care which OS), with a WinXP client on top for my wife to use with disk space that's really dedicated to her use, a WinXP client for me to use for iTunes and other Windows toys, and a Linux client or two that I can run a web server and generally develop on.
I'm assuming that the desktop provides some convenient way to switch between VM clients? It's probably not easier than hitting Alt-Shift-F6 or whatever, but if it means not needing to re-render the whole Windows environment when my wife wants to use the machine, then it's faster than the current WinXP user switching.

Intel MacOS runs on top of Virtual Server

[billstewart]

Hey, if it's still April 1, might as well go for the whole flying hog!

So MacOS runs on top of Intel machines, then obviously it ought to run on top of _this_ machine. Once in a while you'll want to push the MacOS window aside and look at the Evil Empire OS server so you can run Windows-based games, but otherwise you get to run in MacOS. Imagine it as a demo disk that Just Installs, and while it's there it runs Reality Distortion Effect popups to remind you that you _could_ just junk Windows entirely and buy the real MacOS, which would run faster and could talk to the sound card.

Of course, you could equally well imagine an environment that has native MacOS underneath and runs Windows in a virtual machine for the occasional times that you want it, but who'd want to do something silly like that :-)?

Re:Intel MacOS runs on top of Virtual Server

[Guspaz]

Old news. People were running OSX under VMware before they got it running on bare metal hardware.

Great news

[keithmo]

As several people have already pointed out, Microsoft is just responding to VMware's free-as-in-beer release of its VMPlayer and VMServer (beta 2) products. It will be interesting to see how VMware responds.

I hope part of their response includes a port of VMWorkstation, VMPlayer, and VMServer to *BSD, *especially* OSX. An Intel-based Mac running VMware would make a damn fine host for Windows/Linux/etc development and testing.

So far, the official responses on VMware's forums to "OSX hosting" requests has been luke warm at best. That said, it's hard to tell if they're really not that interested in doing the work, or if they're just "playing their cards close to their chest". Time will tell.

Depends if you are licencing per CPU or per user

[ndg123]

If you're on a named user licence, you can have as many Windows servers as required. SQL is a different matter - but why would you use that when there's MySQL on the one side and DB2 on the other ?

MisUnderstood...

[nurb432]

No, i was comparing workstation to 'viewer', and GSX to VMWare server. Not comparing between the two types of products.

And as another guy says, while in beta debugging is turned on, so ill be waiting to try again.

And isnt free-workstation out of beta now? If so, I'm still having speed issues there.

err... why?

[HaydnH]

Apart from educational use for Linux newbies & cross-platform development I really don't understand why anyone would want to run Linux under a VM on Windows. The benefits of Linux are all low level (security, good control over the OS - that kinda thing). The cons of Linux are that you have lack of applications in some areas (games etc). I can see the point in running Windows under a VM to run an app to do X that you can't get on Linux, but why the other way around? If you're mad enough to compromise security etc to run Windows as the host OS, what would you be using the VM for??

Re:err... why?

[C_Kode]

Circumstances cause it. I've landed a new job. They hired me because I have over 7 year Unix/Linux experence. Well, they are 90% windows shop, but they do have a small factor of *nix. Now, where I use Windows VM to support Linux. Since I've started we've been consolidating many servers. Some Windows stacking, but also some conversion to Linux. In many areas, we have Windows VM Linux for testing and even use. We have a large FTP site that actually runs more like 5 different FTP sites that have different types of authentication. We are converting it all to Linux site by site. Right now they are all on the same server running under different platforms as the trasformation takes place. Plus, if you have a big peice of hardware, why not VM it if no single server takes a 10th of it's resources. We have a Windows Update server, CIF file server thats also VMed Linux/Apache web serves and Postfix SMTP anti-virus server. It works great! :)

Re:This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully

[birder]

I've been an admin of 12 ESX servers for 2 years now. I would say this a very good move for the market as frankly VMware, namely ESX, has been sitting stagnet for some time, something that Microsoft is normally called out for. I'm hoping that the battle to one-up their competitor results in some accelerated innovation in this market.

The new VS2005 R2 has some very interesting features such as iSCSI and 64 bit support. VMware can start making rapid updates to Server to compete and roll up the good stuffs into ESX for the datacenter workhorses.

BSOD in Linux!!!

[tachyon]

Now us Linux geeks can have a blue screen of death!!!

Also requires IIS

[spike2131]

I just tried to put it on my Windows XP Professional box and and found out it also wants IIS to be installed and running before it will intstall. Screw that....

pfft

[everphilski]

seeing as mac has about a 2.2-2.3% market share according to both IDC and Gartner, I don't think the demand is all that great compared to the remaining 98%. Besides Virtual Server is aimed at ... wait for it ... the server environment, same as (VMware's) ESX/GSX, where the Mac community is typically looking at end user content.

and besides... you can dual boot XP now, you can run Virtual Server.

So does VMware...and you have IIS on your XP cd...

[everphilski]

VMware will too, it doesn't matter so long as you don't want to do remote administration. If you are just tinkering around with it at home it really doesn't matter. And if you have XP Pro, you have a free copy of IIS on that XP install CDROM.

Just like IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, now that Netscape is out of business we are all paying big $$$s for Internet Exploder.

Foo

Smells like antitrust

[arrianus]

Sounds like dumping. Offer a product for free to destroy competition, so you can later charge for it. If I were VMWare, I'd get the DOJ and its international friends involved. They'd probably win in at least one country.

Re:Smells like antitrust

[Mistah Blue]

VMware doesn't have a case. They give away VMware Player and VMware Server. Further, they are opening up their APIs.

Virtual Servers and Vista

[theonetruekeebler]

This may be the smartest thing Microsoft has ever done: Not because of what it means to current products, but because of what it means to future MS operating systems.

The biggest reason for all the bugs, compatibility issues, and bloat in Microsoft's operating systems is backwards compatibility. And I have to admit that they've done a commendable job, given the tens of thousands of Windows applications out there, each with multiple versions. Not a perfect job, but I have a few ten-year-old applications running, unrecompiled, on my XP box at home.

Microsoft wants Vista to be excellent, and to break new ground, but they are hobbled by binary compatibility issues with versions of Windows dating back to the 80386 -- and the 8086 in some cases. Instead of being excellent, Vista has been a nightmare. They can eliminate that nightmare, can dramatically reduce the size and complexity of Vista if they were just willing to jetison backwards binary compatibility. And with Virtual Server, they can do just that.

Imagine: Your company lives or dies by an application written by a long-gone vendor, that runs great under NT 3.1 but crashes everything written since. No problem! Boot up NT under a virtual server and run it there. Got a proprietary database that only runs on Solaris x86? Same answer. Your kid's favorite game originally written for Windows 95? Hell, a computer built in 2007 won't even notice Win95's footprint.

In fact, it probably makes sense for Microsoft to ship Vista with new versions of XP, NT, 95, Win3.1, DOS 5.0, and whatever else floats their boat, each recompiled with exactly one device driver for video, keyboard, mouse, disk, CD and network.

So everybody's legacy system problems are solved by Virtual Server. Meanwhile, Vista itself provides a fast, stable, flexible platform for new applications to be built on, and Microsoft has a maintainable operating system, completely unencumbered by their past mistakes, that they can improve on for years to come.

Re:Virtual Servers and Vista

[typical]

Instead of being excellent, Vista has been a nightmare. They can eliminate that nightmare, can dramatically reduce the size and complexity of Vista if they were just willing to jetison backwards binary compatibility.

Have you read this?

Results: Client appcompat % hovering at <40% (GASP - INTERNAL INFO... better moderate this one out!!!!)

Re:Virtual Servers and Vista

[theonetruekeebler]

Yeah, they've had a substantial number of head-rolling clusterfucks on this one. Just file my post under WIBNI.

Re:Virtual Servers and Vista

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree its one of the smartest actions Microsoft has ever taken. And it's also completely illegal.

This is price gouging, pure and simple. It is an anti-trust offense for a monopoly. The monopoly can't lose money by slashing their prices just to crush competition - that's illegal and always has been.

I'm shocked the Feds have allowed Microsoft so much slack. They make more money than any other software company, more than any other 3 combined. Someone needs to crack down and break up this company. The EU will do it if the Feds won't.

Ram is always a big deal.

[CFD339]

My "old" Dell Inspiron 8200 can only hold 1gb total, so until replaced that's a bit painful. I've been holding off because I want my next laptop to be a dual core AMD with minimum 2gb, 100gb at 7200rpm SATA-NCQ, and a GOOD 15" screen in a tablet configuration -- from a good manufacturer. It also must be under 9 pounds and no more than 2" thick.

So far, I haven't seen one I like.

Re:This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully

[Zwack]

"I love ESX, and one thing that I hope will make ESX better is Microsoft putting pressure on VMWare to not get too comfy and to constantly innovate because the company's future depends on it. I just hope it doesn't have the same outcome as IE vs NS." What, you mean VMware being bought by someone else, open sourcing their product and a MUCH better and more innovative version coming along for free a year or two later? What's so bad about that? I can't wait for vmzilla... :-) Z.

Re:This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully

[Mistah Blue]

VMware has already been bought. It is a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC.

Re:Depends if you are licencing per CPU or per use

[Bacon Bits]

You've never seen any software that says:
"Requires MS SQL Server 2000"

Or do you prefer ignoring your vendor's requirements and still expecting them to support you?

OS X on Windows Via Virtualization?

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine the "try before you buy" scenario if OS X becomes available as a trial download that will run in a virtual machine under Windows! Many users may finally switch to Mac! The writing is on the wall for Windows I think.

That's wrong

[tacokill]

You are not correct. Anti-trust laws in the US *DO* take into consideration the impact on competitors. ie: dumping laws.

To say it's just about consumers is incorrect. It's not just harmed consumers that have a case. A competitor who is "wronged" also has a case. ie: Netscape

Already installed... and removed!

[csoto]

Boy, this pales even in comparison to VMware Workstation 5.5. What a fetid turd. It's totally Microsoftian, in the "bad" way. VMware is infinitely more usable. I installed it this morning and have removed it before lunch. I'll stick with VMware, thanks.

Yes, we also run ESX/VC. There's no comparison.

Too generous

[bill_mcgonigle]

It looks like they ran it even before I got the announcement email from VMWare, so of course they'd have refused my submission. Doh.

You're suggesting the editors exercised judgement against a dupe rather than being fickle and capricious? Silly, rabbit.

Free Support?

[bill_mcgonigle]

What's great about this announcement is that MS paid lots of money for virtual server and now they are forced to not only give it away for free but also provide support for it.

They're not going to charge the usual $50/minute for support on this product?

"Hacking OSX"

[bill_mcgonigle]

i.e. until 2009!!!

Are you just smoking funny cigarettes today or does this come from somewhere? I doubt any software vendor knows what its 2009 roadmap looks like, so I'll bet on the former.

At this point I'm probably going to get a MacBook to run Linux on, with Windows XP and Mac OSX VM's running on VMWare Server for linux. Yes, that's right, I'll have to get one of the "hacked" kernel drivers to run OSX on Apple hardware.

Re:"Hacking OSX"

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

Are you just smoking funny cigarettes today or does this come from somewhere? I doubt any software vendor knows what its 2009 roadmap looks like, so I'll bet on the former.

The 2009 came from TFA... but it makes absolutely no sense in the context of the threads to which I appear to have replied! So, I'm inclined to agree with you and bet on the former also!!! :D

(seriously -- I'm not sure what I was trying to say. I think I must've been reading one thread and replying to another, or something)

Make the Mac Version Free

[1110110001]

That's what I need. I can't use the free VMWare stuff and Bochs is really, really, really slow. But it's too expensive, even the student version, just to run, again, Microsoft stuff.

OSX Virtual PC?

[nurb432]

Any hope of this becoming free after this move?