Why is VMware taking their price to zero? I know VirtualBox is free, but is xVM going to be free, too? How about Citrix?

Paris, because she misses Diane.

The zero-price option just means that ESXi will be shipped embedded on various hardware platforms, or available to install on local drives. This will allow the use of ESXi, but if you want to make full use of all the features (vmotion, DRS, HA, etc), then you'll still need Virtual Centre and relevant licenses for it and the features you want to use.

So, yes, the hypervisor will be free, but not much use without the licenses and fee-payable additions.

Actually that sounds a lot like FUD to me, ESXi on its own is pefectly workable for things like dev and test environments and gives significant performance gains compared to workstation or vmware server.

Yes, to do all the fancy stuff like VMotion and HA you'd need VI licences, but not everyone will need this.

In fact I've installed ESXi on a laptop before for a mobile dev environment to give customer demos, so now it's free I'd say that's definitely a "Good Thing".

Steve

Not sure about your own experiences but VC has become more and more stable with each update. Admittedly, VC2 was as wonky as a wonky thing being wonked when it was first released but it's pretty solid now.

All of this FUD about VMware is exactly that. The financial people are motivated by one thing: money. This is a company that made over $1bn dollars last year and is expected to do that again this year. Not many (less than 5?) software companies have EVER done that. Yet, the Wall Street mobsters aren't satisfied???

ESXi will be free - it will be basic (no vMotion, no DRS, no HA) but let's be honest, even a FREE version of ESX is going to be a 3rd generation hypervisor product, built around a Virtual Infrastructure that has been described as "bullet proof" on more than one occasion by the IT press. If you're getting a FREE product that outperforms the competition (I've yet to see actual data showing VMware ESX losing in ANY like for like head to head with hyped-up-V or Xen) then you're getting a good deal.

Let's be honest: VMware are the bad boys of Virtualization to so many people because they're the biggest and yes, they are the best... I've seen countless blogs spouting off about this that and the other based on ZERO hard facts about VMware and ESX pricing etc... in terms of overall value, VMware wipes the floor with the competition.

Posting anonymously as angry M$ fanboys scare me with their cutting insights...

p.s I think it's compelling that VMware will support you running a VM with NT4 on it and Microsoft don't support it themselves... and how many OSes does Hyped-up-V actually support ;)