Not that there's any reason on earth to do this, but can you install VMWare inside a virtualised desktop?

^^most pointless, random tangent in the world, and information of absolutely no use to me, but someone try it for me!

VMware didn't respond to MS pricing. They beat them to free. They saw the price war coming and decided they would take away the weapon before MS had a chance to club them over the head and get the marketing machine spun up on their stuff.

This just in: It worked.

Without the profit motive, MS spent dollars in other marketing hype, VMware managed to buy enough time to counter the MS marketing machine and have managed to position themselves as the defacto virtualization platform. Good on 'em for beating MS at their own game.

see http://communities.vmware.com/community/beta/server2.0?view=discussions for some users early takes on this release. It seems VMware in their infinite wisdom has moved to a completely web-based management console. I don't think I'll be moving to v2.x any time soon!

@eddiwrenn - there are some very valid reasons to run VMware virtualization inside an already virtualized guest - such as learning how to use VMware for instance.

When Vi3.5 is released. People will be able get their hands on an embedded version of ESX (ESX3i) which will be dirt cheap. Also with the release of "Foundation" versions which offer SAN/iSCSI connectivity and cheap(er) entry in VirtualCenter. Why would people want to run VMware Server or M$ Virtual Server when they can have super-thin (32mb) hypervisor which will have remote CLI and 32-gui application to manage it. This foundation version of Vi3 is really attractive especially those people who entry-level pricing for stuff like VMware DRS, DPM and HA...

Where does that leave VMware Server. A product for white-box servers?

Regards

Mike Laverick

RTFM Education