[NTLUG:Discuss] The insanely cool VMware Player

[Robert Pearson]

On 12/7/05, Burton Strauss <Burton_Strauss at comcast.net> wrote:
> I have legal licenses for both VMware Workstation and MS VPC 2004.  But
> given the choice between renewing the action pack for another year ($250 for
> 10 VPC licenses) or going with 1 Workstation + Players, it's a no-brainer.
> Especially w 5.5 able to run VPC machines.

A reply of interest...
One of the benefits of having the free vmplayer is that I don't have to
buy copies of both Linux and Windows VMware Workstation anymore - I can
build my VMs in Linux, then put copies of the VMs on a Windows PC and
use vmplayer to run them.

This keeps the number of computers at my desk down, because I don't have
to build dual boot or Solaris only PCs anymore - the "exprimental"
Solaris 10 x86 VMs I'm running do exactly what I need them to do, and
the consistency of hardware virtualized for the VMs means I can run
Linux and Solaris on laptop hosts that are not natively supported for
their wireless, video, and audio cards.

> Still, that's not what I think they are up to.  I think they're preparing to
> de-emphasize VMware WORKSTATION.  It will continue as an important product,
> but they're not focused on the $129 license revenue, rather the $50/year
> upgrade market.  And even so it will be second tier...
>
> The GSX/ESX product is what you need for deployment + combine that with a
> blade server and you can roll-out power in whatever increment you need -
> from fractional to multiple CPU chunks.  This is EXACTLY the path big iron
> walked with LPARs and VM/370.
>
> So how do you get people comfortable developing for the uniform model?  Make
> a low-end product available.  i.e. VMware Workstation.  But what would you
> rather focus on selling?  A few 100 $129 products or one $100K+...
>
> So the bundle to get those developers writing code that needs that $100K
> sale?  It's one license of Workstation + as many players as you need per
> department.  Plus enterprise quality support contracts for that workstation
> license...
>
> If you remember back in the day when Borland mattered - their licenses
> allowed you to install the product (say Quattro Pro) on the work machine AND
> at home.  Drove a lot of adoption prior to the suite explosion...

I agree fully with your conclusion.
To me, VMware Player is a big improvement over "LiveCD" versions
of OS's combined with the old "Run Time Monitor" executable concept.
This means, once you get your OS, Apps and personal customization
done, you can "port" THAT! exact version to another machine without
paying for another copy of VMware. At the moment this looks like a
"loss leader" for VMware. But what if they can get market penetration
into the entrenched Enterprise Microsoft environment? A Gold Mine !!!

VMware Player is still a "Beta" release. My guess is it won't be free
after it becomes a "Production" release.

The VMware-VMware Player process is pretty much the same steps
that people who have custom kernels go through.
So it is not "break through" technology.
You build it once to your specs, put it on the Image Server and send
it out to any machine that needs it. There have to be issues to be
resolved with updates, bug fixes, additions and deletions.

Robert