VMware Releases Server 1.0

epit writes "VMware has released v1.0 of their VMware Server product for free (as in beer) as planned. Up until now, it had been a beta download. You can download your copy via the VMware website. Release notes are also available."

Comments

Virtual PC

[xilet]

I wonder if there is any concidence between this and Virtual PC 04/07 being released free. Hrmm...

The business uses of VMware are obvious...

[mmell]

and have been stated elsewhere in this thread.

What seems to be missing is good reasons for using a VM at home. I can think of several:

1) Seems a lot easier than dual-booting (for those of us with SO's who aren't comfortable with Linux)

2) Makes a good home lab for what is rapidly becoming another standard tool of the IT trade

3) Hardware speeds are approaching the level where (except for gaming and certain compute-intensive applications) most home machines are quite powerful enough to run multiple partitions without the user even noticing a slowdown.

4) Shiney!

5) Free (as in beer)!

Feel free to add to this list - it's a long way from being complete.

Incidentally, I wonder if Windows Vista will run under VM? I'm guessing yes (as anything else would mean that Microsoft is cutting their own throat).

Re:With this out, why would I need vmplayer?

[gbjbaanb]

I think VMware realise that there are a lot of free virtualisation products out there, and so they had a choice of entering the free market or slowly dying out - something like Novell, Corel, Netscape etc.

Once we all get used to virtualisation, then the big companies that will start using this and see the benefits will buy the big, expensive ESX Server product.. and the support, and the tools and add-ons. For the rest of us, we get free toys so everyone's happy.

Xen is a different product, its a virtualisation tool, but it allows you to split 1 OS into several running 'instances'. VMWare is a 'wrapper' that allows you to run several different OSes side by side. Which one you'd go for depends on your requirements.

Re:Browsing in a sandbox to escape spyware

[Kadin2048]

Also, VMWare's support -- I'm told -- for FireWire is limited and/or not present, and USB 2.0 also is pretty poor. I don't know if that means you can't run a VM off of a mounted volume that originates on a Firewire/USB 2.0 device, or that the guest OS just can't "see" the FireWire bus, but you might want to be careful before designing something around VMWare and FireWire or USB 2.0.