What does that mean?
VMware has multiple server products for different levels of virtualization needs.
For Free, you can download VMware Server which will create a virtualization environment running under either Linux distributions, or running under Microsoft Windows systems.
While VMware Server (the free edition) will work for many users, where the wheel hits the road is with VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3 (VI3). This is the environment for use beyond normal casual or development needs.
VI3 comes in 3 flavors: (pricing and features)
- VI3 Starter Edition
- VI3 Standard Edition
- VI3 Enterprise Edition
All three editions use a filesystem called VMFS, a very fast filesystem to store the guest operating system images.
VI3 Starter Edition (VI3Starter) will run on up to 4 CPU package systems (number of cores is not counted) but is limited to local or NFS/NAS storage only, maximum of 8GB of RAM on the host hardware, and your guest operating systems are also limited to single virtual CPUs. List price is US$1,000.00 for 2 CPU package license and the maintenance contracts are US$675 and US$805 per year depending on whether you choose Gold or Platinum service levels.
VI3Starter is a wonderful place to start for many small businesses looking to move beyond the free product from VMware but doing so in a very cost conscience manner.
I am sure you are asking…Why would I want to do this?
Besides support, the VI3 systems are very capable systems with broad support of server hardware. The nice thing about VI3 vs VMware Server is that with VI3 you can do quite a few things that are not possible without a lot of work.
- Per host VLANs is easily accomplished, with security settings like rejecting ‘promiscuous’ mode on the guest operating system ethernet interface
- Traffic shaping configuration through the Virtual Infrastructure Client software
- CPU resource settings including maximum allocation and minimum reservation to either the guest operating system or ‘group’
- A complete system ready to boot from CD and install onto your server. There is no need to install your own Windows system or Linux distribution first.
The next step is VI3 Standard Edition (VI3Standard).
VI3Standard removes the limits of VI3Starter and allow the use of iSCSI, Fibre-Channel, and clustered filesystems across multiple physical systems. Also, for those that need to scale systems, virtual SMP is included.
Pricing for VM3Standard is still reasonable at US$3750.00 per 2 CPU packages with support costs at 21% or 25% depending on your choice of Gold or Platinum level of service.
The final version is VI3 Enterprise Edition (VI3Enterprise).
This version adds more features to the Standard edition by including licensing for VMotion (moving virtual servers from physical server to physical server), HA (high availability), DRS (dynamic resource), and Consolidated Backup (I don’t really understand what benefit this gives).
Pricing also increases to US$5750.00 per 2 CPU packages with maintenance at 21% or 25% depending on Gold or Platinum level purchased. Unless you need the other features above, it might be better to stick with the Standard Edition, and perhaps add VMotion as an extra cost license option.
Lastly, VMware is now developing a Intel Macintosh workstation edition. At this time, I do not know if this will be free (ala VMware Server) or if it will be a (basically) read only system (ala VMware Player).