EMC To Acquire VMware 304
kma writes "According to The Register, virtual machine software maker (and my employer) VMware Inc. will be acquired by storage giant EMC, pending the usual approval process." The article explains: "VMware makes the industry's premier set of partitioning tools for running both Windows and Linux on a single server and running multiple applications on a single system. EMC plans to grab the privately held VMware for $635 million in cash."
Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
As long as they keep their product's quality up, I don't mind who's paying the bills.
Given that they need the money, I doubt it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Given that they need the money, I doubt it. (Score:5, Informative)
Cheers,
Doug
Re:Given that they need the money, I doubt it. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Given that they need the money, I doubt it. (Score:2)
$600 mill still wouldn't be too sh
Re:Given that they need the money, I doubt it. (Score:5, Informative)
So, it's not just three people walking away with 9 digit checks, as you are imagining. It's hundreds of employees whose stakes are now worth 6 digits. The terms of our purchase are quite likely better for me than an IPO would have been. From the inside, it looks as though the board actually gave a lot of thought to how this would impact employees.
Re:Interesting (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this is probably a better move than an IPO, just given the lackluster performance of tech IPOs post-bubble burst. I'd take the money anyday, even though things seem to be improving somewhat [wired.com].
IPOs are so 1990s!
Re:Interesting (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, when Microsoft buys your competition, that can tend to change plans.
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:5, Interesting)
VMWare is great for those that have to make their application work on different platforms. VMWare provides a great way to do that kind of testing without having to have a box (or a pluggable hard drive) for each platform. Just boot into Linux (or Windows, if that's your game) and then you can run entire operating systems within VMWare.
Win4Lin is EXCELLENT for those of us--and I think we're the majority of the emulation market--that just need to run some legacy Windows apps within Linux. I upgraded from WinXP to Linux for performances reasons in February and purchased Win4Lin for $89. It lets me run Windows under Linux and every single Windows application I've wanted to run has run fine under Win4Lin. That includes QuickBooks, Quicken, Microsoft Office 2000, VisualStudio 6.0, GoldWave, Paint Shop Pro, a number of 16-bit applications, IE, RealPlayer, etc. I have yet to find an application that doesn't work. Win4Lin does have limitations (USB support and you can't run XP within Win4Lin), but if you are really trying to migrate to Linux then this is not much of an issue. My USB devices work fine with Linux (scanner and camera) so I don't need them to work in Windows, and I don't have any legacy apps that require XP so that limitation isn't a factor either.
When I made my move to Linux I spent a week or two trying to decide which to buy--VMWare or Win4Lin. In the end, I went with Win4Lin. I just decided that what I really needed was some legacy Windows support and that's it. While I was tempted to get VMWare so I could do multi-platform testing, that was more of a "cool thing to be able to do" rather than something I really needed. So far I haven't needed that flexibility. And if what you want is to run Windows legacy apps in Win4Lin, you can't beat the speed. My Windows legacy apps run faster under Win4Lin under Linux than the same apps on the same computer under Windows XP!
Another factor is that Win4Lin uses the native file system whereas VMWare creates a "virtual disk" which ends up being a huge file on your drive somewhere. So Win4Lin runs out of a copy of Windows in my ~/win directory with a whole Windows file structure below it. I can copy/delete, etc. anything in my Windows installation from my Linux shell. And since it uses the native filesystem, it's fast. VMWare, on the other hand, creates a virtual disk which is a huge file somewhere in your filesystem. So you'll see your Windows installation as a 2GB file and the only way to get data out of it is to run VMWare, enter that environment, and then copy it out (using FTP, networking, etc.). Meanwhile, I can get to every file in my Win4Lin installation just by cd'ing to that directory. I don't actually have to run Win4Lin to get to my files.
Anyway, long rant... what I really meant to address is your statement "Why would they go to a subscription model? Because they CAN?" Well, maybe. But I think only a small percentage of the Win4Lin/VMWare market really NEEDS VMWare. For most companies migrating from Windows to Linux Win4Lin is a much cheaper, much faster solution. So I'm not so sure VMWare can really just decide to go subscription "because they can"--unless they plan on surviving on just the developer's market who very well may NEED VMWare. The rest of the market (which is huge) would be fine with Win4Lin.
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:3, Informative)
Neither of them requires binary-only kernel modules; vmware requires kernel modules for which it provides the source, and win4lin requires applying a patch to the kernel source. They are both fairly innocuous.
Larry
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:4, Informative)
Win4Lin requires a patch to the Linux kernel. They just announced support for Linux kernel 2.6; it's a free upgrade for Win4Lin users.
On the whole, I'm pleased with Netraverse as a company. They have been good about upgrade pricing, and they don't require "activation" for Win4Lin. (Just a long annoying license code. I can live with that.)
Win4Lin runs Windows 98 or ME, but not Windows NT, 2000, or XP. (Yet, anyway.) Win4Lin doesn't handle USB devices or a 3D accelerator card. But networking support is complete, including the MS-specific protocols.
If you have a few Windows applications you want to run on a Linux desktop, Win4Lin is a good choice.
P.S. I cannot get Windows Update to run correctly on my Win4Lin desktop. (It doesn't really matter, since Win98 isn't supported anymore. But if you run Win4Lin and Windows Update works for you, please let me know.)
steveha
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:2)
The last four or so times I tried Windows Update it failed. So I just now tried it again and it worked perfectly. I didn't change anything!
So I guess Windows Update works fine with Win4Lin. Good to know.
My Win98SE system is now up to date with the latest Windows Update. I hardly ever use it, but that's nice to know.
steveha
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:5, Informative)
You're forgetting that VMWare has more than just one product. It's obvious from the article that VMWare Workstation is not the product they were after.
This deal is all about getting their hands on the ESX and GSX server products.
That said, ALL of VMWare's products are much more flexible than Win4Lin, which is really just a niche product, even moreso than VirtualPC. Those two are designed for people who just need to run the occasional Windows app on a foreign OS.
The real beauty of VMWare's products, even the Workstation version to a small extent, is that you can actually run production servers within the VM's. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it with Workstation, but I have gotten away with it for brief periods in the past.
Now, with GSX server, you CAN run production servers inside a VM with confidence. And with the VMWare Remote Console, you can access those individual servers from across the network as if you were in front of them physically. Mail server is running out of memory, but the file server has way more than it needs? No problem, just access a web interface and move some memory from one to the other. Beats the hell out of swapping DIMMs around.
Plus you can allocate resources at a much finer resolution than with physical hardware.
Not to mention that my server room now only needs two boxes, and two UPSs, instead of dozens.
Personally, I wouldn't even place Win4Lin in the same product category as VMWare's offerings. And they DEFINITELY have different target markets and intended uses.
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:3, Interesting)
Need to set up a new database server? Grab your OS disks, fire up VMWare Worksation at your desk, and set it up. This has obvious advantages if the server room is across the building, and even bigger advantages if it's across the country.
When it's configured and tested to your satisfaction, just ftp those disk image files to the GSX server, boot it up, and let the users at it. (at least i HOPE they haven't broken that compatibility recently, I know it
Re:Expect their products to be leased not sold (Score:3, Informative)
You can also set VMWare to use physical drive instead of virtual.
Your point are, generally, correct. Even though Win4Lin biased :)
If you were like me (or in my shoes, rather) your preference might be different -- I need to be able to run an alternative OS within a W2K environment -- to carry around things that don't run native (or don't run well
Re:Wrong: Most VMware users need VMware (Score:3, Interesting)
I stopped using VMware as their support for kernel upgrades diminished. This happened gradually, as their VMware f
Re:Wrong: Most VMware users need VMware (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with that, at least in this case, is that there ARE NO open solutions to turn to. Plex86 and bochs are probably the closest, and neither one is even close to being a suitable replacement for VMware.
And that's just looking at their workstation product. The situation is even more grim when you go looking for an open solution to replace their
Weird.. (Score:4, Funny)
Whoa (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Whoa (Score:2)
Re:Whoa (Score:3, Funny)
The joke used to be that EMC stood for "Excessive Margins Corporation".
I'm assuming they'll have to jack the price just to keep their reputation intact.
Costs? (Score:4, Insightful)
At one time, vmware had home user pricing at something around $100. Then, they cranked it up to ~$300. Hopefully EMC will have some pricing options for home/hobbyist/non-commercial use. $300 is a bit too steep for me.. I can build another PC to run windows for that much.
Re:Costs? (Score:4, Insightful)
As much as I really love VMWare (the software), I think the company's getting too high on the horse. Anybody remember that Accelerated-X [xig.com] package? Once the only x86 X version that would run more than one head? The one that everyone bitched about their prices? Well, I haven't even thought of them since XFree86 got dual-head running, and I imagine I'm not the only one (they were pretty arrogant on USENET, I recall).
When VMWare dropped the home pricing a couple of years ago, I had high hopes for bochs and plex86 [plex86.org]. Unfortunately, I don't have much hope these days, as development pace appears to be pretty glacial. Some Linux distros need to pitch in to fund the plex86 project. Emulation/virtualization has been commoditized enough that we shouldn't be paying $300/seat for it.
On the topic of Accel X (Score:3, Interesting)
If ATi follows nVidia's lead (maybe they have already, anyone know?) I'd say Xig is essentially fucked since those two account for the large majority of cards and laptops these days.
Re:Costs? (Score:2)
It doesn't make so much sense for them to focus on home users when it's the very uncommon home user/hobbyist that wants virtual machine software. They might as well ignore them.
Re:Costs? (Score:3, Insightful)
In other words, there is a potentially huge market for an affordable VM solution for small developers. But "affordable" is hard to define... given that we're used to getting our development tools for free, and our operat
Re:Costs? (Score:2)
There is a potentially much much huger market for an affordable VM solution for large developers. This just doesn't seem like a situation in which they need to be scrounging for market.
Of course, if their high prices are what drive plex86 (or whatever they're calling it) to reach serious stability, speed, and ease of
Efficient Storage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:2)
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:2)
Why? To access different file systems? You should be able to mount the volumes all under one OS.
Off-topic: A desktop Pentium-M would be great. I love my Pentium-M notebook.
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:3, Informative)
In order to experiment with DMZ settings for a web front end and an SQL server back end.
In order to test your Win98 client, your Win2000 client, and your Linux client against your server while you are in coach flying cross country (laptop with LOTS of memory.)
In order to download and run the most spyware / virus laden crap on the planet without worrying about it hosing your primary machine.
In order to host 6 different i
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:5, Informative)
Isolation, and performance guarintees on shared systems are often more important than raw performance in something like a datacenter environment.
Adam
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:2, Informative)
Its not really an instruction translator, really more of a fancy instruction scheduler.
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:5, Informative)
With VMWare, you can run several virtual servers on a big (quad cpu) server, attach essentially unlimited amounts of fast disk, and shuffle resource allocation around as you see fit.
If absolute uptime is required, you have two such server in different locations, one of which is failover.
If you can afford 2-8 hours of downtime, you just make sure the one server has as much redundancy as possible, and then you plan to call Dell/HP/IBM if the mobo or raid controller card fails.
It's an old idea made new, but it's a good idea.
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:5, Insightful)
Vmware is the ONLY way many of us can reverse engineer hardware for linux use.
I reverse engineered a serial analog data stream from a PH meter, Refractometer, Ion meter and conductivity meter in a lab I worked at for use with linux by using vmware and running the closed app under windows 95 and sniffing the serial data stream.
VMware is the hardware hacker's dream... It's a way to pry the data you need from the idiotic corperate world.
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:5, Interesting)
Just watch what EMC does with VMware to see if it's being done to prevent OS competition. If they can the OS support and tie it into a Windows-only storage system, you know it was for Microsoft. Otherwise, they would have just partnered with them for use in their storage systems. It would have been cheaper to do that then to purchase the whole company and kill the current business model just to tie it into their SAN system.
IMHO.
LoB
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:2)
This has nothing to do with serious use in a datacenter unless you're actively reverse-engineering hardware on a production server.
better choices (Score:3)
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:2)
I wonder how much Microsoft is paying EMC to take another VM pro
Re:Efficient Storage (Score:2)
In general, VMware isn't emulation.
A.
I just hope... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I just hope... (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/virtualpc/ev
They're not going to support it, it doesn't mean that Virtual PC 2004 won't run Linux as a guest OS. In fact, I know people that are doing so right now.
Don't confuse vendor support for an option with product support for that option. They are two entirely different types of "support".
Re:I just hope... (Score:2)
If all you need is Windows functionality in Linux and Win98 will do, look into Win4Lin [netraverse.com].
I have used and it worked well for my needs at the time, easily native speeds if not better (probably due to I/O being better).
Re:This is not a troll (Score:3, Informative)
Running Linux in VMWare with an XP host however is just not the same experience - Windows starts swapping constantly and switching applications gets painful. (this is with 512Mb physical memory, 12
Re:This is not a troll (Score:2)
Re:This is not a troll (Score:2)
that you will never need to use their freaking
activation system again. You can clone the
VM to your hearts content.
My grandmother's Linux box boots into an XP
VM, for example, straight out of init.
(She needs it until Gnomemeeting can handle
her USB Camera.)
Fantastic, I think... (Score:5, Interesting)
The only downside I can think of is that EMC focuses on the enterprise. Don't know if they give a spider-hole about us lowly single license folks.
I, for one, will await a price decrease announcement after MS ships their product. I desperately need to upgrade, but can't afford their steep prices.
EMC recently acquired Documentum. They are becoming quite a powerhouse. If they acquire Sun, things could get very interesting again.
Re:Fantastic, I think... (Score:2, Interesting)
why? what does your current version not do that is desperately needed, that the new version has??
I'm still using a 4 year old version I bought for $100.00 when it was sanely priced. and it does everything I need, will even run Windows 2000/XP and helps me violate the DMCA daily by making windows only equipment work with linux. (Booo hiss! I'm a information terrorist!)
What does this mean for the Workstation version? (Score:4, Interesting)
I hope "getting more into server management" doesn't mean limited (or non-existent) availablity of a great product for a great price in the future.
Big Surprise (Score:5, Interesting)
It will be nice if this means we can get everyone who currently has separate Linux and Windows systems to move to a single machine with VMware, as we won't have to worry about licensing.
Re:Big Surprise (Score:2)
If it does (AFAICT, DART looks a lot like linux), I could see it being a part of expanding the functionality of the Celerra systems.
DART != Linux (Score:2, Interesting)
Also based off this comment in the article, EMC has been working on a stealth project with VMware over the past year, according to EMC President and CEO Joe Tucci. The project includes building parts of VMware's virtual machine technology into EMC's storage management software. I expect their motive for this purchase it to extend the functionality of their products,
Re:Big Surprise (Score:3, Interesting)
Reading the press release, it sure sounds like these guys are following Microsofts lead in using VMs to make a more reliable Windows based storage system.
IMHO, EMC are still stupid for even opening the door to Microsoft. Hopefully, my friends at EMC won't be out of work too soon.
LoB
The Microsoft connection (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:The Microsoft connection (Score:2, Insightful)
Since EMC itself is on the "short list" for aquisition by Microsoft, this seems less strange but still very interesting.
Buying VMWare as a poison pill. Very interesting.
Re:The Microsoft connection (Score:2)
What's old is new... (Score:4, Informative)
The cycle continues yet again. What will create the next requirement to move systems off of the mainframe? I'm not quite sure, but let's hope that VMware (really ESX Server and GX Server--the real reason they bought VMware) does not get too tied to EMC storage virtualization. There are too many good uses beyond creating reasons to buy hard drives or SANs.
Re:What's old is new... (Score:3, Funny)
Mainframes support 100s or 1000s of concurrent users. VMWare supports about 3. Don't get me wrong, it's a brilliant piece of software and there are tons of things that It's good for, from testing software on multiple platforms, to hosting several operating systems for a single user to use. However, it was never designed for and could never be used for hosting large number
Re:What's old is new... (Score:4, Informative)
Spoken like someone that's never run GSX or ESX server.
Where I work, we run ESX Server 2.0.1 on a quad 700MHz Xeon system with 4GB RAM and a 150GB metavolume on an EMC Symmetrix DMX.
We run twelve virtual machines on this system that support dozens of users. It works very very well. If we had more RAM, we could run even more.
Re:What's old is new... (Score:2)
I can run hundreds of full Gnome sessions in 4Gb of RAM. Course I'd do it on 4 single CPU boxes with 1Gb of RAM each cos it's lots cheaper with higher performance and higher availability. I suppose each to their own.
Re:What's old is new... (Score:4, Interesting)
That's great for Gnome, but if your business requires that you provide Windows systems, the situation changes.
For that, you can also cluster VMware systems. You can't cluster them directly, yet. However, you can cluster the virtual machines themselves to virtual machines on other physical machines.
We did a proof-of-concept using ESX Server 1.5.2, two Dell PowerEdge 2550s, Veritas Cluster server 2.0, and an EMC Clariion CX600. It worked like a champ.
The added benefit was that Veritas licenses their software per physical node, so we only had to buy two VCS licenses. If were were to use MSCS, we'd need to fork out enough for Windows Advanced Server on each of the virtual machines.
Re:What's old is new... (Score:2)
Now each cubical or office has one box, with 4 or 5 NICs installed, 4GB of RAM, running Linux as a host OS, and 4 or 5 virtual machines. The NICs are dedicated for each guest OS, not in promiscuous mode, and each guest runs on its own partition, not a virtual drive. It run
Re:What's old is new... (Score:5, Informative)
zVM is what allows many (thousands on high-end machines) of virtual Linux images to run on a single large mainframe, in combination with other virtual operating systems.
Mainframes are, on the high end, quite capable of supporting 10s of thousands of users, with massive I/O subsystems (litterally thousands of disk drives, all running nearly saturated, continuously). You can use machines with large CPUs for processor-intensive monolithic tasks, or many small CPUs for high-concurrency processes.
You can dedicate resources (CPUs, memory, I/O) to specific virtual systems for high performance or share and/or cap the resource utilization on them. Configurations can be changed on-the fly as demand or needs of the business dictate. A virtual system can even be identified as a V=R (virtual=real) preferred guest, which can take control of the real system dynamically in the event of a VM operating system failure.
Mainframe can be extremely cost effective, in the right circumstances.
Now you know why mainframes still exist.
Gee, Rocky, that M&A trick never works (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Gee, Rocky, that M&A trick never works (Score:2, Informative)
EMC's acquisition of Data General has been quite successful. (EMC cut out the server business that was losing money and made Clariion more profitable and improved its market share.)
EMC's acquisition of McData was reasonably successful, though it was later spun off as a separate company again. (I suspect it was sold for more than it was purchased, but I haven't checked.)
I think you hear a lot more about the ones that don't work out.
HP+Compaq (Score:2)
And of course, it put them on par with Dell in terms of sales (15% vs 15%).
Re:Gee, Rocky, that M&A trick never works (Score:2)
Of course, it's still an good bet. M&A are always risky and often fail, but you did ask for a counter-example...
Re:Gee, Rocky, that M&A trick never works (Score:3, Funny)
how about the workstation version?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:VMWare vs. Stack of mini-ITX machines (Score:2)
VNC will do just fine as a KVM switch replacement. You don't run games under VMWare, or through VNC, so the limits should affect you.
Don't forget too that a mini-ITX system will handle load better because you have a second CPU.
Sad new but... (Score:2, Funny)
Still, it's too bad they couldn't make a go of it independently. It's by far the best value, I actually shelled out $$ for a licensed version, of any piece of software that I've ever purchased.
Re:Sad new but... (Score:2)
LoB
It blows my mind (Score:2, Interesting)
Isn't that more than the combined worth of Redhat, Mandrake and Suse?
Poorly worded article? (Score:4, Insightful)
I've been able to run multiple applications on a single system for many, many years now. It's called multi-tasking
Also, wouldn't a "set of partitioning tools" be something like Partition Magic or fdisk? Or are we using a more generic form of the word partition? I've used VMware a lot, and I had to re-read this a couple of times just to make sure they weren't actually talking about something else.
Keeping things on topic, anyone know how OSS friendly EMC is? I'd love a free copy of VMware instead of guiltily using a years-old copy with a crack
Partitioning (Score:3, Informative)
The latter.
You can "partition" anything computerish into several, virtual, smaller units.
This sort of stuff is much more common in mainframe shops. You might have a single machine with a bunch of processors, I/O channel processors, device controllers, and devices. You partition it into several smaller virtual mainframe machines, each called "partitions" and
Re:Poorly worded article? (Score:2, Informative)
In the world of mainframes, a partition is a common name for a virtual machine...
Re:Poorly worded article? (Score:2)
Nope. A mainframe can have its resources literally partitioned. Physically. Nothing virtual about it. Partion A gets these disk drives, these communication devices, these consoles, this amount of the total physical memory and these dedicated CPUs. A partition runs its own OS natively on the silicon. A virtual machine relies on the parent operating system to make its resources available to it. Lose the main OS and the V
Mutliple Applications (Score:2)
Re:Poorly worded article? (Score:3, Interesting)
> I've been able to run multiple applications on a single system for many, many years now. It's called multi-tasking
>
>
You obviously have not tried to run Microsfot Windows servers. When Microsoft sold companies on replacing their UNIX servers with Windows, it soon was found that one UNIX box runni
Re:Poorly worded article? (Score:2)
Uh oh ... (Score:4, Interesting)
And I plan to grab the latest copy of VMware before the company disappears, of before their product becomes a giant mess.
Remember AOLscape?
Re:Uh oh ... (Score:4, Interesting)
While EMC could do great things for themselves and VMware with this move, it does not mean that they will for sure.
EMC has one of the best sales and support organizations in the industry. They know how to sell to decision makers. They may be second only to Cisco in this right now. If they choose to really back VMWare it could mean great things!
I supported a co-worker's server consolidation plan that proposed a VMware solution that got shot down by decision makers that thought the small company too uncertain.
VMware will not be from a small company if it part of EMC, but will it survive as the same great product or disapear like Amteva's uOne did into Cisco and CMG?
One Word: Bochs. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:One Word: Bochs. (Score:2)
Re:One Word: Bochs. (Score:2)
Re:One Word: Bochs. (Score:5, Informative)
1) VMware is a virtualization program
2) Bochs is an emulator
The difference is that Bochs interprets foreign machine code, while VMware lets code run natively, with "traps" to catch it when it tries to do things with the virtual hardware. As a result, Bochs is slow but can run x86 code on any architecture (a PowerPC box) for example, while VMware is fast but only runs on x86.
Re:One Word: Bochs. (Score:3, Informative)
People should always have been looking at Bochs because Bochs is GPL and VMware is not. Freedom is important. Don't forget that.
However there are criticisms against Bochs as a practical replacement for VMWare.
I can understand EMCs thinking... (Score:5, Interesting)
A few years ago when I was specing new TB sized storage arrays, I wanted an affordable way to allow directly connected access to the same data to multiple operating systems, but allowing for each OS to make native FS calls to get that data. Nobody really had a gracefull solution. Most required isolated partitions, and those that provided a high level emulation layer either had no drivers for Linux, or the cost was in 6 figures for them to even consider developing something.
Needless to say, the cheapest solution was going with a network based access system to that data, which unfortunately meant that I had to spend more money making an isolated high speed network just for FS data, and popping two NICs in everything that was serving that data. Once again, not the most gracefull of solutions.(in fact one of the companies we looked at was EMC, and they were quickly excluded from our list because of their pricing and lack of features)
I've been out of that realm for some time now, so I'm not exactly up to date on advances in that arena. However I'm hoping that by EMC grabbing VMWare that this is one of the things they think they can address with VMWare's intimate knowledge of multiple operating systems peacefully co-existing.
On another note, I've been a huge fan of VMWare, and still use it for dev on a daily basis. If the pricing for VMWare reaches the point of EMCs pricing it will be a very sad day for me.
I sincerly hope that EMC is after the brains at VMWare, and not just the technology. Many companies these days think it's enough just to buy the tech, without its creators, and that's a horrible travesty.
The Bochs claims (Score:2)
$635 million in cash (Score:2)
VMware's VMotion (Score:4, Insightful)
What is VMotion technology?
VMotion technology lets you move running virtual machines from one physical ESX Server to another while maintaining continuous service availability and complete transaction integrity. VMotion is enabled by the ability to keep the entire state of an x86 Server in software, which then allows that state to be duplicated and shifted from server to server. VMotion leverages a shared storage infrastructure -- such as a storage area network -- to allow the state of the virtual machine to be moved from one physical system to another without requiring its data to be moved.
Yup. That sounds like EMC to me.
smartest virtualization play ever (Score:4, Interesting)
now add vmware's esx/gsx with vmotion (which lets me pass a virtual machine over the network from one host to another).
then and add some *really* simple hooks into esx/gsx for mirrorview...which btw are already exist as part of emc's standard CX?00 host agents.
now one can move a server, collection of servers, or datacenter full of servers from one location to another while preserving the state of the disk, memory, and cpu.
so for those out there that are worried about the workstation line, fine...whatever. this purchase is about the smartest consolidation and disaster recovery play i've heard of in a *long* time (if they can make it work right
VMware + EMC (Score:2, Insightful)
If VMWare's developers are going to be assimilated into EMC, I'm pessimistic about this thing. On the other hand, if EMC allows VMWare to maintain substantial autonomy, then it may work.
I'm waiting for IBM to decide it wants to play bigtime in this space. They know how to run Linux on enterprise-caliber hardware, and could probably give "EMWare" a good fight
Re:VMware + EMC (Score:2, Interesting)
'...for $635 million in cash' (Score:2)
They're going to pay $635 million in cash?
I hope they hire some pretty good security - and choose a highly secure location when they make the transaction, or someone might have a really bad day!
Haven't they realised that there are other ways of transferring such large quantities of money around??
Re:'...for $635 million in cash' (Score:2)
Educational concerns (Score:2)
VMware is a bread-and-butter product for people like me delivering computer classes. The company has steadily introduced better and better features for educational customers and I fear we will be kicked to the curb as EMC tries to please enterprise storage-type customers instead. I also suspect that VMware may start to fade into an expensive, proprietary sort of space, ceding the cheap and dirty part of this market to Microsoft's Connectix products.
BTW, a severe gotcha I learned with VMware is that if yo
ah, yes EMC - the Unixware of SAN systems (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Are products that expensive to develop? (Score:2)