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Who could ever believe and see VMWare releasing their ESX for free. Last night I read small post on my Windows Mobile device.

What is VMware ESXi 3.5?
VMware ESXi 3.5 is the industry’s first, thin hypervisor integrated into server hardware. With its next-generation architecture embedded in hardware, VMware ESXi enables a plug-and-play data center with greater security, reliability and manageability. Requiring no installation and minimal configuration, VMware ESXi accelerates server deployment—IT organizations can take servers from boot-up to running production applications in virtual
machines in minutes.

List of features is amazing and now we all get them for free. Check the full list here, but these are which I like:

• Bare-metal architecture
• Small Footprint with only 32MB
• Virtualization for storage and support for iSCSI
• VLAN tagging support
• Wake-on LAN
• 64bit support

Basically all features I missed with VMWare Server and now getting them for free with ESX3i version.

Why is VMware making ESXi free? VMware is making its standalone ESXi hypervisor available at no cost in order to help companies of all sizes experience the benefits of virtualization. Customers have shown tremendous interest in ESXi due to its innovative architecture, simple setup, and high performance. Allowing IT administrators to obtain VMware ESXi for free enables everyone to gain access to VMware’s datacenter technology and prove its value in their own companies.

I have nothing more to add than just go download the VMware ESXi data sheet for more information and get a free copy of VMware ESXi and try it for yourself. I am running couple of production host servers with VMWare Server  and will upgrade them very soon.

If you are curios and interested like I am than the latest VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta is definitely something to download and install on your system.

Why Participate in a VMware Beta Program?

Here are a few reasons why you should participate in VMware beta programs.

• Exposure to the next generation features helps you grow your technical skills and understand the direction of the virtualization industry.
• Ability to prove that the product will work properly in your environment and report areas where it doesn’t.
• Prototype your solution during the beta program and be ready for deployment when we reach General Availability.
• Help shape today’s product and tomorrow’s features.
• Ability to work with VMware engineers on some programs.
• Problems encountered have a higher probability of being fixed by GA.

Join the new beta program for Workstation 6.5 here.

New Features in VMware Workstation 6.5:

• Seamless integration of guest and host applications with Unity
• Enhanced advanced VM Record and Replay
• Support for Smart Cards & Smart Card Readers
• Link state propagation networking
• Enhanced ACE authoring capabilities
• Easy Install Option’s support for Linux
• Improved 3D graphics Support
• Release 91182 supports ESX 3.5 and 3i installations

For me personally I would like to explore Unity and ESX in virtual machine support features. I like to keep my system as clean as possible and right now I can have one virtual machines hosting all my applications which I use occasionally. I don’t want to install Adobe Photoshop, Paintshop,  Visual Studio and many others on my host system; with Unity I can bring all those application to my host system. Definitely  something I will use quite often.

Since the release of ESX 3.5 and 3i I have been waiting to have a working installation of those products into VMWare Workstation. Thanks to Eric from NTPRo.nl who is confirming that ESX is up and running in the latest release of VMWare Workstation 6.5 beta.