The reviewers seemed to give it a mediocre rating, rather than a terrible one, just because it was a cool idea. $250US for a card that drops performance in order to provide (currently) negligable enhancements to three games - not very impressive.
Maybe in a year or two they'll develop the technology to an interesting level, but right now it seems a bit pathetic.
Manageability: From a sysadmin point of view, VMWare guest is just like a physical server. If you want to apply software updates, you have to log in into each one and run an update procedure. One by one, the very same way you'd do it with separate physical boxes. In contrast, in OpenVZ you can actually see and access all the virtual environments from the host OS, making mass-management possible. You can apply updates en masse. You can do mass-management. Makes sense?
Good point, and that's a nice advantage of OpenVZ/Virtuozzo running lots of little servers. However any tools that an organisation has for working with multiple physical machines will work just as well with virtual machines under VMWare.
When I said independent of OS I meant that the virtual machine could be run under VMWare on a Windows or Linux host. In an organisation primarily running Windows but still using other OSs that's pretty important, and there are lots of uses for that kind of thing (such as software testing). I still think VMWare can be used in a wider range of applications, despite OpenVZ being able to run lots of virtual machines on one physical machine.
As far as increased complexity of VMWare's approach you're absolutely right, but they've done it and done it well.
As you would expect from such an interview, it ignores the advantages of products like VMWare Server which make them attractive over Virtuozzo (and OpenVZ). Hardware virtualization allows the guests to be independent of both host hardware and host OS. To us that alone is worth the trade-off in performance, and giving up the resource management that Virtuozzo has. With the enhanced support for virtualization in hardware (e.g. the new Intel and AMD CPUs) I expect that the performance difference between hardware and OS virtualization software will decrease, but the other advantages of hardware virtualization will remain.
There must also be advantages in security and upgrade-management that come with being less dependent on the OS... ?
"A "random" system is a system where any outcome of measurement is just as likely as any other outcome."
Since we're nitpicking, no, you're oversimplifying. That would mean a probability distribution would have no place in a random system.
But in fairness, "Sensibly dealing with randomness is a hard problem in modern science, mathematics, psychology and philosophy. Merely defining it adequately, for the purposes of one discipline has proven quite difficult. Distinguishing between apparent randomness and actual randomness has been no easier." -- Wikipedia.
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.
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$316 ea for the E6600 if you buy 1000 of them. ;o)
That's a bad analogy.
See also Primer.
Maybe in a year or two they'll develop the technology to an interesting level, but right now it seems a bit pathetic.
Good point, and that's a nice advantage of OpenVZ/Virtuozzo running lots of little servers. However any tools that an organisation has for working with multiple physical machines will work just as well with virtual machines under VMWare.
When I said independent of OS I meant that the virtual machine could be run under VMWare on a Windows or Linux host. In an organisation primarily running Windows but still using other OSs that's pretty important, and there are lots of uses for that kind of thing (such as software testing). I still think VMWare can be used in a wider range of applications, despite OpenVZ being able to run lots of virtual machines on one physical machine.
As far as increased complexity of VMWare's approach you're absolutely right, but they've done it and done it well.
I vote for Foamy Fish! :D
As you would expect from such an interview, it ignores the advantages of products like VMWare Server which make them attractive over Virtuozzo (and OpenVZ). Hardware virtualization allows the guests to be independent of both host hardware and host OS. To us that alone is worth the trade-off in performance, and giving up the resource management that Virtuozzo has. With the enhanced support for virtualization in hardware (e.g. the new Intel and AMD CPUs) I expect that the performance difference between hardware and OS virtualization software will decrease, but the other advantages of hardware virtualization will remain. There must also be advantages in security and upgrade-management that come with being less dependent on the OS... ?
Since we're nitpicking, no, you're oversimplifying. That would mean a probability distribution would have no place in a random system.
But in fairness, "Sensibly dealing with randomness is a hard problem in modern science, mathematics, psychology and philosophy. Merely defining it adequately, for the purposes of one discipline has proven quite difficult. Distinguishing between apparent randomness and actual randomness has been no easier." -- Wikipedia.
Source: GSX page.
It's not OSS. Check out Diane Green's Blog.
Quality. Microsoft has been the premier platform for running viral code for years.