News

VMWare Unveils Virtual Machine for NT/W2K

• By Scott Bekker
• 07/24/2001

GSX Server is positioned as a step-up from VMWare’s entry-level Workstation product. Both applications allow IT organizations to deploy virtual machine "guest" operating systems (OS) on "host" OSes such as Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000 or any of several flavours of Linux. But while VMWare Workstation is designed to function as standalone tool, GSX Server is optimized for hosting multiple, concurrent virtual machine environments.

Susan Thomas, vice president of marketing with VMWare, says that her company is positioning GSX Server as a tool for server consolidation.

"More and more, IT groups are dedicating individual servers to single applications to ensure that those applications are stable and reliable," she argues, noting that the proliferation of multiple, standalone servers can present a management burden. "Our products allow customers to consolidate multiple servers and server applications on a single server."

VMWare shipped a version of GSX Server for Linux environments in January. Since that time, Thomas says, the company has received a variety of requests for a Windows version of the product.

"We've found since we shipped the Linux version of the product, about 75 percent of the requests we've had for it are for people interested in the Windows version of our product," she comments.

Whether they deploy GSX Server on Linux or on Windows NT 4.0/2000, IT organizations can host any of a variety of guest operating systems, including almost any flavor of Linux, BSD, Windows 9x or Windows NT 4.0/2000.

Thomas says that GSX Server can support up to four virtual machines per server processor. Stephen Swoyer