stuart test blog

This was widely accepted to happen sooner or later, but Microsoft have today announced that Virtual Server 2005 R2 will now be available as a free download. As both the Enterprise and Standard editions will now be free, the Standard edition is becoming redundant as there is no reason why you would run Standard instead of Enterprise. So only the Enterprise Edition is being made available as a free download.

This definitely makes the virtualisation game a lot more interesting now. VMware recently discontinued the GSX line of their software, instead releasing a free version called VMware Server. This version only runs on server operating systems and provides a similar feature set to Virtual Server. VMware though, are still selling VMware Workstation and the top-of-the-line ESX server – Workstation is designed for use with desktop computers, whereas ESX Server is designed to run on large, enterprise-level servers. Microsoft doesn’t yet have a competitor for ESX – ESX includes a Linux kernel that it boots off so there is no need to run ESX on a server operating system.

In my own tests, VMware has always outperformed Virtual Server or Virtual PC, so I don’t think that VMware is any trouble at the moment. But the recently introduced support of Linux operating systems under Virtual Server, definitely makes the Microsoft package more attractive to those Microsoft-shops out there.