NickMattern.com

The Gold Standard for Desktop Virtualization Just Got Better
VMware® Workstation 6.5 provides the deepest OS support, best-in-class virtual machine architecture, the richest desktop user experience and an unmatched set of features to enhance productivity.
InfoWorld says that VMware Workstation 6.5 is “the gold standard for desktop virtualization…truly a world-class product and a pace-setter for the entire [...]

Follow-up from Paul Maritz on ESX / ESXi 3.5 Update 2

Hello,
As many of you already know, on August 12, 2008, we experienced a code issue with the updated versions of ESX 3.5 and ESXi 3.5 (Update 2). The issue triggered a premature expiration of the product license, causing a range of possible problems including the [...]

ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2

Dear VMware Customer,
We have re-issued the entire ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 release (ISOs, upgrade tar and zip files, and patch bundles). They are available for download at http://www.vmware.com/download/.
Please note this update is only relevant to customers who did not install the impacted release of ESX 3.5 Update 2 (build number [...]

ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2

Dear VMware Customer,
This message is to inform you that we are experiencing a delay in releasing the new version of ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2. Our testing of this release is taking longer than anticipated. We are now targeting to release the update between 2:00 AM PDT [...]

ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2

Dear VMware Customers,
We have released the express patches for the product expiration issue. Please go to http://www.vmware.com/go/esxexpresspatches for download and KB articles. Since our last customer email we have completed our verification tests that the express patches we’ve released are fully compatible with the VMware Update Manager. Please see [...]

ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2

Dear VMware Customers,
We have released the express patches for the product expiration issue. Please go to http://www.vmware.com/go/esxexpresspatches for more information.
Problem:
An issue has been discovered by many VMware customers and partners with ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 where Virtual Machines fail to power on or VMotion successfully. This problem began to occur on [...]

Got this from VMWARE today:

ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2

Dear VMware Customers,
Please find the latest update about the product expiration issue. From this point on, we’ll provide an update every two hours. Thanks.
Problem:
An issue has been discovered by many VMware customers and partners with ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 2 where Virtual Machines fail to power on or [...]

On July 29th, 2008, VMware introduced a free, bare-metal, (No host operating system required) virtualization server product.  It’s remarkebly robust and is super easy to install.
Get it here:  https://www.vmware.com/tryvmware/login.php?eval=esxi&t=1
From VMware:

Features & Benefits
Virtualize processor, memory, storage and networking resources into multiple virtual machines with VMware ESXi, an enterprise-class hypervisor with a thin 32 MB footprint for [...]

Think of a normal N-tier application running on a single Windows 2003 Small Business Server.  You likely have multiple servers/services providing support for the web application via ISA, Exchange, SQL Server, IIS, Active Directory, etc., all running on the same physical box.
Now think of the common bottlenecks in this situation: w3wp.exe (IIS App Pool worker [...]

A few comments to start the post:

Virtualization is here to stay, end of discussion
Web server virtualization is just as efficient as physical hosting
Microsoft’s Virtual PC Virtualization is WORTHLESS. End of discussion (The Server 2008 edition rocks, more on that in another post!)
VMware is the industry leader, but there are a lot of other platforms on [...]