back to article VMware's one-trick pony: Destined to be a platform?

These guys could make it. VMware could be another Oracle, another supplier whose steel is tempered by the furnace heat of Microsoft competition, instead of weakening and melting away like Netscape, the Lotus spreadsheet and other classic Microsoft-whipped suppliers. You get the feeling listening to VMware staffers that they …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But....

    Much as I have distain for Microsoft, in this market they are behind, BUT they can and do support and build an eco system of partners around their solutions, whereas VMware are trying to eat their eco system and do everything themselves. Unless VMware learn from MS in this case then they will suffer and ISVs will gravitate away from VMW and closer to Mr Softy!

  2. Steve

    Stability

    Been using ESX 3.0.1 (and VI3) for our core infrastructure for about 3 years now, and I'm now in the process of deploying a new cluster based on 3.5.

    Problem is whilst the hypervisor is cool, and technically it's the most advanced out there - ESX / VI still seems like a solid beta.

    It just doesn't seem reliable enough. HA in particular is flakey at best. Sometimes the HA agent on the host simply decides it's had enough. There's bugs galore in each release that fixes a load of other bugs.

    Microsoft and Citrix are nowhere near as advanced as VMWare, and if I have to virtualise the bulk of our boxes I'd only want to do it on ESX - however in another 5 years I'll be reviewing Microsoft's offer in a lot more detail.

    Remember MS have only released 1.0 of Hyper-V. Give it version 3.0 and things could be interesting....!

  3. Andy Bell
    Thumb Up

    Yes, stability

    True, sometimes HA needs attention, same too for the Vcenter service, and DRS / Vmotion.

    With a very few exceptions these can be resolved without restarting the host, or doing things with VM's that users can notice.

    I can only think of a handful of occasions where a host has gone down causing the guests to startup on anothe host, and they have been hardware problems that no OS could have handled, and i've supported 250+ host environments.

    It seems pretty stable to me.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Linux

    They need to massively improve their Linux support, which they show signs of doing.

  5. Robert Amleth

    VMware is killing their ecosystem

    Agree about Maritz. Seems to be a good fit for vmware and a better speaker than Greene.

    Watching the keynotes this week was interesting. VMware stated subtly, but in no uncertain terms, that they want to own everything. And, much like the Oracle example in this article, VMware charges you through the nose and makes no bones about it. Yes, they provide value, but they still cost way too much.

    Xen is giving away their hypervisor and live migration capabilities. Microsoft was showing off live migration and will also have load balancing and a whole bunch more in their R2 release. While all the cloud talk is interesting, it still seems like a vision that is many years away.

  6. Jeff Dickey

    If it works.... the good news is the bad news is the good news...

    @Robert Amleth: Yes, I think so, too; VMWare DO "want to own everything." And so do Microsoft. And so do most of the "bigs"; they don't know how to grow in an open, openly-competitive market ecosystem. VMWare, at least, have told themselves that they do know - and that is the root cause of the "comeback".

    Thinking about the "one-throat-to-choke" "nirvana"... experienced managers with an appreciation for history may recall that, in the times when Microsoft and, earlier, IBM big iron ruled their respective worlds, the throat that was most often and severely choked was the customer's. Do we as an industry really want to go down that road again? One definition of insanity, after all, is repeating the same actions over and over, in the firm expectation of differing results...

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What are you on about?

    "They need to massively improve their Linux support, which they show signs of doing."

    In what sense? They support MORE distros that anyone else!

    Unless of course you are referring to the lack of a VC client for Linux in which case, just run Workstation with a Windows guest and run it in that. That's what I do (until a client for Linux is released).

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Jobs Horns

    Are we forgetting something?

    Namely, Xenserver which as is works incredibly well and with Citrix's partnership with MS you have got to be insane in regards to counting these boys out.

    Oh and of course the most technically advanced hypervisor out there "Linux KVM" built right into the kernal and shits on anything the others can virtualise.

    I am a windoze 7 boy but when it comes to the best hypervisor, platform or loyalty does not count.

    up yours.

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