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XenSource CTO on VMware's SMB package

VMware, in a fit of generosity, has announced it is slashing prices for SMB customers purchasing 3 licenses of VMware ESX. I thought a quick head-to-head comparison with XenEnterprise v4 might help to convince you what a steal this deal really is, and remind you to keep your hands on your wallet.

First, the deal offers 3 ESX licenses with Virtual Center thrown in for free. But the Virtual Center version they offer is limited so that it can only connect to 3 ESX servers. And the ESX servers are just ESX servers recycled from their VI3 Starter package, already priced at $1000 per host today, and with a severely hobbled feature set.

Of course, when you want to buy your 4th ESX Starter server it will cost you $6,000. That’s $5,000 for a full version of Virtual Center plus another $1,000 for an additional ESX Starter license. And here’s what that ESX starter license won’t offer you:

· No SMP support for VMs (1 CPU per VM)
· Limited to using 8GB of host memory
· Limited to 4 sockets per host
· No resource pooling, VMFS cluster file system, VMotion or other fancy features


Head-butting continues, so I see. Read on...

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