VMWare

just a quick blog entry while I'm thinking about it. For any of you technical-types (and maybe you non-techie types), if you're not at least playing around with VMWare, then you're going to be blind-sided by the next big IT wave.

No, it's not that VMWare the product will dominate the industry, but it is what VMWare does - VIRTUALIZATION of PC's, Servers, and Server Appliances. And, don't gimme the "I can't afford it". Many wonderful VMWare products are free from their website. No, not just 60-day trials, I mean FREE.

Here are the few I think you should get (and they're all free).

- VMWare Server - you could think of this as a very basic version of the workstation product VMWare sells called "VM worksation". The biggest difference is that the server version doesn't let you do snap-shots and some other little features. But, if all you want to do is create some virturalized environments (aka: images), this will do the trick.

- VMWare Player - this is a tool that you would put on a PC to run the VMWare images you created. Don't let the name "player" fool you. When you run an image in the Player, you still have the full ability to execute programs and make changes within the image. You just can't adjust parameters outside the image.

- ESXi server - this is a much more advanced (and powerful) version of the VMWare server, unlike the previous server version that could run on a workstation, win2k3 box, or a Linux box, ... ESXi is it's own operating system so therefore requires a dedicated box. Think of this as the thing you would graduate to when you feel limited by the other server program I mentioned.

- VMWare Converter - Honestly, I can't believe they give this tool away for free! It's so powerful. Converter is what you use to take and existing machine (i.e. a running PC or Server) and capture the running OS and convert it into a VMWare image. I won't go into details here, but the ability to do a conversion to a VM image WHILE the source machine is RUNNING, is just sooooo cool to me. And, extremely handy.

Lastly, if anything I said is confusing, it probably means you're over due to play with some virtualization tools. VMWare is not the only game in town. Look around for yourself. This is going to be a huge paradygm shitf in the IT industry because it is central to Cloud Computing. And, if you've not heard of Cloud Computing....

.... it's time to catch up buddy!!! :-)