I appreciate your position. I find the free VMWare server immensely useful, particularly for really small non-profits, but an affordable path to infrastructure seems less obvious. VMWare server and an external drive bay with a drive drawer fitted allows a really cheap, simple and robust disaster recovery solution for a one or two server LAN.
I'm accustomed to $200 windows server licenses (TechSoup) and at the moment I'm only using VMWare Server on this platform. I'm planning to take a look at Hypervisor as an alternative to a windows host but I have not found the time yet. I'd love to see VMWare compete with Microsofts generosity to non-profits (although give them full credit for making VMWare server free). D =========================================== David Marsh Chief Technician & System Administrator H.R. MacMillan Space Centre 1100 Chestnut Street, Vancouver, BC V6J 3J9 E sysadmin at hrmacmillanspacecentre.com T (604) 738 7827 ext. 229 C (604) 813 9667 F (604) 736 5665 =========================================== -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:mcn-l-boun...@mcn.edu] On Behalf Of Doron Ben-Avraham Sent: Wednesday, May 20, 2009 3:07 PM To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: [MCN-L] Virtualization woes the subject keeps coming up for obvious reasons, the demonstrated ability of virutalization to cut costs, and insure availability is of great interest to any cultural institution. In the processes of evaluating the museum requirements in an economic climate that requires much prudence. I am wondering if we can attempt to create a common pressure (or a coordinated better deal). if you are considering this, please contact me, perhaps we might gain traction through a common reseller. I am at present considering virtualizing our environment using Microsoft products, I dont think they have achieved the maturity vmware demonstrates, but they are very fast to adapt, and very aggressive in development and pricing (Microsoft offers very generous benefits as you all know). VMware however... is nowhere to be found, and i am under the impression that the pricing and licensing models they offer are designed to obfuscate a very expensive future upgrade path. I am in favor of VMware as my first choice, based on my impressions of the technology, but i really cannot justify such sharp developments, the pricing model i see insures no easy path to upgrade in the future. With a very aggressive competitor (probably the most aggressive out there) behind them, I find it really strange VMware does not even attempt to bend towards cultural institutions and other non profits, its strangely shortsighted. Doron
