14 DAY TRIAL // The Register reports that VMWare Inc will soon release a free version of its server partitioning software in the hopes of drawing new customers. The products will be named VMware Server and is not yet meant to be a replacement for the company's other packages, although it will eventually replace the VMware GSX Server.
"There are huge segments of the audience not aware of virtualization," said Raghu Raghuram, vice president at VMware. "Some people have very naive notions about what virtualization is all about. We are planning to change that."
The move doesn't come as a surprise, considering that VMware has a lot more competition these days than it did when the company was started. Microsoft has been offering price breaks on its Virtual Server product and Xen is set to ship as a standard package in upcoming releases of Red Hat and SUSE Linux.
"Xen is only for serious, bleeding-edge Linux enthusiasts," commented Raghuram. "You have to live with a highly unstable open source product that's of little interest to the average system administrator." Although this is true enough, Xen offers very high performance and VMware itself went after the Linux enthusiasts first.
VMware Server joins VMware Player in the list of free apps released by VMware Inc. A beta is expected next week, which will be available here.
