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Microsoft Providing Virtual Server Free

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the right-price dept.

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."

11 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. Really, now... by TechnoGuyRob · · Score: 5, Funny

    That does it, Slashdot. April Fools is OVER.

  2. wow, more echoes from the past by yagu · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.)

    1. Re:wow, more echoes from the past by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative
      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.

    2. Re:wow, more echoes from the past by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful


      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,

    3. Re:wow, more echoes from the past by jthill · · Score: 5, Interesting
      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.

      --
      As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
    4. Re:wow, more echoes from the past by timeOday · · Score: 5, Insightful
      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."

  3. Bah... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Aggressive and surprising? by Krach42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --

    I am unamerican, and proud of it!
  5. My submission about VMWare was rejected.... by Malor · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  6. Virtualization is the next commodity technology by bec1948 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  7. This is a good move for the consumer (hopefully) by fronell · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.