In the year or so since VMware released VMware Infrastructure 3.0 (VI3), it has come to be viewed as a watershed event in virtualization. Building upon the reliability of the VMware ESX 2.5 hypervisor, VI3 and its sophisticated VM management tools brought virtualization firmly into the IT mainstream. The recent upgrade to ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 doesn't equal the leap to VI3 (see my review, "Deep dive into VMware's virtual infrastructure"), but it does add a few features that will definitely come in handy for any virtualization implementation.

The Bottom Line VMware Infrastructure 3 with ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 VMware, vmware.com Excellent  8.7 criteria score weight Ease of administration 9 25% Manageability 8 25% Performance 9 15% Setup 9 15% Configuration 8 10% Value 9 10% Cost: $995 per pair of processors for Foundation edition; $2,995 per pair of processors for Standard edition; $5,750 per pair of processors for Enterprise Edition, including Consolidated Backup, Update Manager, High Availability, VMotion, Storage VMotion, Distributed Resource Scheduler, and Distributed Power Management Platforms: ESX runs on Intel- and AMD-based server hardware and supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows, Red Hat Linux, Suse Linux, Sun Solaris, and Novell NetWare OSes Bottom Line: ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 build on the strong VI3 base to improve scalability and add key new management features. These evolutionary upgrades fill important gaps and ostensibly set the stage for the next big release, which may mark the advent of virtualization as the rule in datacenters, not the newcomer. VMware has plenty of work to do to get there, but the company's track record of solid, stable, production-ready releases continues intact with "VI3.5." About our Reviews and Scoring Methodology

[ View our screencast demos of VMware Infrastructure 3's live VM migration using VMotion using VMotion and dynamic load balancing using Distributed Resource Scheduler ]

These features are generally focused on easing the maintenance burden imposed by a virtualized infrastructure. Virtualization promises to make server management intrinsically simpler, but as with many things in IT, it doesn't hit every target. Addressing some important pain points, VMware has added features such as patch management (Update Manager), live migration of VM disks (Storage VMotion), and a capacity planning wizard (Guided Consolidation) to the suite. Each of these new features fills a gap in the overall picture, and for the most part, does so quite well.

It's certainly true that many IT shops will build their first VMware implementation on ESX 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5, and will never have seen their predecessors, but by the same token, many current VI3 shops will be upgrading to the new revs as soon as possible to leverage the new features. To that end, my testing included not only brand-spanking-new ESX installations, but also -- the best possible test of any software release -- production upgrades.

The upgrade dance
Building VMware ESX hosts from scratch is as simple as it gets. Burn an ISO, insert into a server, boot from the CD, click OK a few times, and then add that host in the VMware Infrastructure Client. Configure the network, storage, and licensing, and that's essentially it. You can even reduce those steps if you PXE boot the VMware installer. Upgrading a host from ESX 3.0 to ESX 3.5 is actually simpler than building a new host, and requires very little downtime for the host. If your existing infrastructure is built properly, it means zero downtime for production VMs.

The first overall step to upgrading the whole infrastructure is to upgrade VirtualCenter (VC). Previous versions of VirtualCenter used MSDE (Microsoft SQL Desktop Engine) as the default database, but VMware's recommendation was to use the full-blown Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle Database to handle the database tasks. VC2.5 does away with the legacy MSDE, instead bundling Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Express Edition. This is a better database platform than MSDE, but is still designed for smaller implementations. In many production VMware environments, this is all that's necessary -- a welcome change from the previous iteration.