Virtualization: Free as in Beer
VMWare started the race by offering VMWare Player and Virtual Server free of charge. Today Microsoft has decided to step up to the plate by starting to offer Virtual Server 2005 R2 free of charge. At the same time Microsoft now offers support on running Linux inside their Virtual Server product, supporting a total of 9 different distributions. This coupled with the licensing changes for Microsoft Server 2003 R2 Enterprise edition, lowers the entry point for virtualization to allow just about any business out there capable of virtualizating their environment. At the same time, VMWare announces it's "Open Virtual Machine Disk Format Specification". Hopefully this will lead to interoptability between the mayor virtualization players, but it seems unlikely at this point. Microsoft and Xen both use Microsoft's Virtual Hard Disk file format, and I doubt that Microsoft will change that format to the VMWare proposed one. Xen has in fact licensed Microsoft's file format, and looks unlikely to change that now. VMWare, on the other hand, will provide support for importing Virtual Hard Disk based virtual machines into the VMWare products. At the very least, Virtualization should now be available for everyone at a near to nothing cost. Get to it, virtualize!Post metadata
Published April 4, 2006 10:24
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Tagged with computing, microsoft, virtual server, virtualization, VMWare and xen
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January 1, 1970 1:00am
Vitual Server Enterprise Edition R2 Becomes Free and Gets Linux Support 3 avril 2006 Apparently Virtual Server R2 Enterprise Edition is now free. This follows on from a similar announcement from VMWare. I’m sure though that Microsoft’s… Virtualization : Free as in Beer 3 avril 2006 VMWare started the race by offering VMWare Player and Virtual Server free of charge. Today Microsoft has decided to step up to the plate by starting… VMWare Serverが新しくなっ
May 4, 2006 2:24pm
[…] Microsoft is now, as promised, offering the Virtual Server 2005 R2 Enterprise edition as a free download. There is a couple of licensing issues that are interesting: In addition to the license terms of this downloaded software, you are also granted rights to use the software to provide hosted services. End customers receiving this software service are not required to obtain their own Microsoft software licenses. End customers receive the right to interact with functionalities of Microsoft software through the services of the provider’s hosted environment. […]
August 2, 2007 2:46pm
Vitual Server Enterprise Edition R2 Becomes Free and Gets Linux Support 3 avril 2006 Apparently Virtual Server R2 Enterprise Edition is now free. This follows on from a similar announcement from VMWare. I’m sure though that Microsoft’s…Virtualization : Free as in Beer3 avril 2006 VMWare started the race by offering VMWare Player and Virtual Server free of charge. Today Microsoft has decided to step up to the plate by starting… VMWare Serverが新しくなっ
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