Bold Move

News is starting to leak out that VMWare’s successor to GSX Server will be free. This is a significant and bold move from VMWare that will put more than a few noses out of joint. I’ve always been a big fan of VMWare Workstation, and it would seem that the release of their free Player was a precursor for this. Hopefully like their current offering – and Workstation and Player – it will support Linux.

Mike Gunderloy (a person whose opinion I – and many, many others – value) thinks this is a very good thing:

This is, frankly, a market-changing move, and one that I expect a lot of people will take advantage of. Server virtualization is a wonderful technology; with it you can take a single physical server and partition it into multiple virtual servers that don’t step on each other. For example, I’ve taken a single Dell 1850 dual-processor server and used VMware GSX to simultaneously run a Subversion server, a Cruise Control .NET server, a Windows Software Update Services server, a Data Protection Manager Server, and several more servers – without the hassles of worrying about whether any of that software will conflict or fight over ports.

I’ve no doubt there will be an “Advanced Server” version that you do have to pay for, but I can imagine a lot of people trying – and sticking with – the free one.