VMware Server

~ the goodbye ~

VMware Server was a hypervisor that sat on top of an operating system you already had. Point it at a Windows or Linux machine with spare memory and it ran virtual machines inside that machine, with a console you opened from your own desk. Version 1.0 shipped on 12 July 2006, and the news was the price. It was free, where the same product under its old name, GSX Server, had been sold since 2001.

Giving it away was defensive. Xen was turning up in Linux distributions and Microsoft had made Virtual Server 2005 R2 free that spring, so the entry level stopped being worth charging for. Version 2.0 followed in September 2008 and moved the console into the browser, a decision administrators complained about for years. The last maintenance release, 2.0.2, build 203138, came out on 26 October 2009.

Three months later VMware withdrew the product. By then it had shipped free ESXi, which installed on bare metal with no host operating system underneath, and that was what anyone running real servers wanted. ESXi had been free since 2008, and VMware Server's premise of a hypervisor as an application had no answer to it.

~ the chronicle ~

~ the lifecycle table ~

There is no shutdown announcement for a product that dies like this. The death is a row in a support matrix, and VMware's own General Support page, captured in June 2011, carries it: VMware Server, general availability 2008/09/23, end of general support 2011/06/30, with the 1.x line above reading 2006/07/12 and 2010/03/23. An asterisk under the table says the product was declared End Of Availability in January 2010 and that support until the end date would be technical guidance only. Fifteen months of answering questions and shipping nothing, then a date.

~ a second machine you did not have ~

Free virtualization in 2006 meant a second computer without buying one. I had TTNet broadband at home by then and, like most people I knew, one machine that had to do everything. Hardware was the expensive part in Turkey in those years, so the move was to run the other operating system inside the one you had, rather than put another box on the desk. VMware Server was the version of that you could download with no license key and no expiry, which made it the default for anyone who needed a spare machine more than a fast one.

@}-->--

              )
             (_)
            .-'-.
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
            |   |
          __|   |__   .-.
       .-'  |   |  `-:   :
      :     `---'     :-'
       `-._       _.-'
           '""""""

« previous  ·  random  ·  next »