VMware does U-turn on recent, unloved price hike

VMware has cancelled out the 10 per cent price hike it applied to its virtualisation products back in August thanks to a more favourable exchange rate in the European and Asian markets. However, the move has upset some channel players, who have recently adjusted the VMware products they sell to the new price list the company …

[Jon Green]

ESXi? Woo. Hoo.

We took a look at ESXi recently. Big fail. The only hardware it runs on is too expensive to be worth it. And yet ESX, the paid-for version, runs on much cheaper and older hardware that can be bought on eBay for a small fraction of the price. VMWare's generosity has underwhelmed me.

We're evaluating VirtualIron now - much cheaper than ESX, and runnable on any CPU with virtual support, so more-or-less any desktop with an Intel Core processor will do.

With VirtualIron on servers, and Sun's VirtualBox on desktops, VMWare's starting to look a bit expensive at all levels.