* Customers who are looking beyond VMware for virtualization
Last time, I mentioned how the virtualization market is set to really take off this year. The good news for end users is that VMware is no longer the only game in town. Companies such as Virtual Iron, XenSource and Microsoft are fine-tuning their products, providing some good alternatives to the VMware standard.
As a result, I think it makes sense to start talking with IT professionals who are looking beyond VMware and are bringing in other types of technology to virtualize x86 systems. I’m talking with Saugus Union School District next week, where Xen has been in production since the summer. Last week, I spoke with Gentry Ganote, CIO of Golf and Tennis Pro Shop, which owns PGA Tour SuperStore, a collection of new mega golf retail outlets that offer not only equipment and apparel in the 70,000-square-foot stores, but also driving ranges, putting greens and other course-like amenities.
PGA Tour SuperStore is growing fast. It has eight retail stores active now, two of which opened near Dallas just last week. As a result of its fast growth, the company is doing some data center restructuring to cut costs and improve efficiencies. It is standardizing its mostly Windows-based infrastructure onto HP’s c-Class blades and is relying heavily on virtualization.
Ganote told me that last fall the company did an exhaustive review of the virtualization technologies out there from VMware to Microsoft to the open source Xen hypervisor. It ended up choosing Virtual Iron because of the performance it saw, as well as the cost, Ganote says.
Because Virtual Iron builds its virtualization technology, which includes capabilities such as live migration, on top of Xen, it can keep its costs low. Its virtualization package, which you can download and try for free is priced starting at around $500 per socket for a perpetual license. Virtual Iron officials say that’s about 20% less than what you’d pay for comparable technology from VMware.
To be fair, VMware, which has been kicked around on its high pricing, began offering a tiered pricing scheme when it introduced VMware Infrastructure 3 last June, rolling out a basic product at a starting price of about $1,000. Its enterprise-class technology, however, starts at around $3,000.
Are you looking beyond VMware? Let me know.
