As a professional user of VMware‘s Virtual Infrastructure 3 (and thus ESX Server 3, which is the backbone of the VI3 suite) I personally think VMware is the leader in virtualisation right now. But as virtualisation, server consolidation through virtualisation and “Green IT” are hot focus points in the industry at the moment, Microsoft, Citrix and to a lesser extent Parallels are pushing hard to gain market share. Microsoft has released Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V and Citrix is working hard to get their XenServer in there.

VMware had already made their Windows-based VMware Server (formerly GSX Server) free, but last week has done the same with ESX Server 3i. The 3i edition can do everything their flagship product ESX Server 3 can, it just lacks all the frills on the local server (such as local console-based management tools etc.), reducing it to the base hypervisor core which weighs in at a beautifully small 32 MB. They can do this because the management of the server does not need to reside on the server itself: you can use the VMware Infrastructure Client to manage it remotely or join the ESX 3i server in your Virtual Infrastructure 3 environment, handing over management to your VirtualCenter server.

So, if you’re looking for an easy and quickly to deploy virtualisation product, look no further. You can get all the power of ESX Server 3 for nothing by downloading and registering for an ESX3i license for free. Absolute killer.

I think this is a truly smart move by VMware: now they have a free product available in both branches of vrtualisation products types, both OS-based and hypervisor-based (i.e. bare-metal). Sweet.