VMWare throws a virtual counterpunch

On the heels of a similar announcement from Microsoft, VMWare on Monday is rolling out a virtual server aimed at corporate users looking to carry out departmental level server consolidations and at corporate developers wanting to streamline their development and testing environments.

The Intel-based GSX Server 3, like Microsoft's upcoming Virtual Server 2004 which is based on the technology it acquired from Connectix in early 2003, offers full support for both Windows and Linux operating systems. The product enables users to turn physical servers into virtual machines.

However, with the VMWare expected to promote the Linux support in its product much more aggressively than Microsoft, some observers believe it could jump out to a quick start in the market.

"Microsoft's primary thrust will be to support Windows, of course, whereas VMWare is quite open to supporting both Linux and Windows environments as well as NetWare. That is an important advantage," said Gordon Haff, senior analyst at Illuminata.

The product is designed to help reduce software development and testing cycles by shortening the time it takes to provision install, build, test, and restore a new machine to just several minutes. Developers can take advantage of the server's virtual machine abilities to more easily share development environments and pre-packaged operating system and application testing configurations.

The new version is compatible with the company's VirtualCenter Management and provisioning product, which allows it to better deliver cross host management and provisioning features of its virtual infrastructure, company officials said. Version 3 also provides a more direct path to VMWare's ESX Server.

Some of the product's new features include the ability to support as many as 3.6GB of memory per virtual machine, allowing much larger server applications to run. It also features teamed network adapter support, SCSI backup devices, and overall faster processor, disk, and networking support.

The company has also improved the product's management and portability features with the inclusion of VirtualCenter-based customization and provisioning of server images and configurations, Windows integration and performance monitoring, and event logging of virtual machines. Users and developers also can now carry out PXE provisioning for booting and installing operating systems into virtual machines over the network, a company spokesman said.

Available by the end of this month, the pricing for GSX Server 3 starts at $2,500 for two-CPU servers, although registered users of Version 2.5 of the product can upgrade for free. Users can download a trial version of the product by going to http://www.vmware.com/download/gsx_eval.html.