After days and days of Microsoft going on and on about VMware FUD. It sound like the easiest way to shut M$ up was just to admit defeat, and kill the story…

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/09/day-two-of-the-scott-drummond-vmware-fud-fiasco.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/05/17/vmware-fud-fiasco-part-3.aspx

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/06/12/vmware-fud-fiasco-final.aspx

Meanwhile a more worrying front has opened up which concerns the status of the now so called “free” ESXi. Two things. Recently the Remote CLI tools for “free” ESXi became read-only. This affectively makes the RCLI useless because you can send any configuration data. Initially, I discounted this as a cock-up which would be fixed by swift and early – but it hasn’t. Then a week a so ago, Veeam were asked by VMware to remove its backup system support for the “free” ESXi product.

So where does that leave the “free” ESXi. At best its a product which will always have speech marks around the word “free” from here on in. UNLESS, VMware back-peddles on these recent changes. It is now essential a an evaluation product or a hypervisor with no management capabilities not even those delivered by an enterpernial spirited 3rd party. That’s the part that sticks in my craw somewhat – that VMware should use its “partner” relationship to actually inhibit what another independent company does – especially if it actually reduced choice and free market. Of course, at the same time the new vSphere4 product contains a backup appliance called the VMware Data Recovery… cynics would say that VMware was deliberately abusing the partnership relationship for its commerical ends.

Anyway, I raised this issue with Veeam in a webex this week. Of course they were very circumspect. It’s clear that the VMware Community and my fellow bloggers are not very impressed. But, something tells me that the kind of people who make these kind of anti-competitive decisions within VMware – are precisely kind of folks who really don’t give two hoots what the Community or bloggers like me think…

Finally, this “depreciation” of “free” ESXi either by degrading internal tools or abusing “partner” relationship is hugely damaging to VMware and reduces my ability to counter the real marketing FUD from Microsoft. So when folks say to me “HyperV is free – and VMware is expensive”. I can’t with all concience counter that with “But ESXi is free…” That leads me more exposed to MS attack of the bogus “VMware Tax”

http://blogs.technet.com/virtualization/archive/2009/06/28/Beware-the-VMware-Core-Tax-and-More.aspx

This entry was posted on Friday, July 3rd, 2009 at 2:31 pm and is filed under Other. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.