VMware, XenSource Push Out Beta Virtualization Products

Published: November 8, 2006

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Server and workstation virtualization software specialist VMware is hosting its VMworld 2006 customer event this week, and one of the products it plans to roll out is called VMware Lab Manager, a tool for assisting in the development and testing of applications that it got through acquisition the acquisition of Akimbi Systems back in June. And, to be somewhat of a spoiler, this is also when rival XenSource will launch support for Microsoft's Windows platform in the XenEnterprise collection of hypervisor and management tools that competes with VMware's ESX Server and related Infrastructure 3 management tools.

While VMware's customer and partner event is sure to draw a big crowd because of the popularity of server virtualization these days, the company has not yet divulged any big product announcements for this week. VMware Lab Manager 2.4 is a rebranded version of the Akimbi Slingshot quality assurance and testing tool. With the 2.4 release, which went into private beta during the third quarter and which is now in a general public beta as of this week, VMware is integrating the Slingshot tools into the Infrastructure 3 hypervisor and virtualization management tools as well as into the VMware Workstation product that developers like to use to host multiple operating systems on their machines for development and testing. VMware Workstation had some pretty sophisticated capability in terms of creating multiple images, but the Akimbi product creates what amounts to a virtual machine recording and jukebox system that allows coders to create lots and lots of virtual machines and different software stacks within them and deploy them rapidly to test application code.

VMware Lab Manager will be generally available by the end of the year. The software will cost $15,000, plus $500 for each additional CPU that it manages virtual machines upon. This is a very pricey product, and that explains why VMware wanted to acquire Akimbi to be able to sell it.

XenSource has already announced that it was shipping its XenEnterprise mix environment hypervisor and tools in August to support Linux variants, and today it will announce that support for Windows Server 2003 and Windows XP is available in the product. The Windows support requires hardware that support Intel's VT or Advanced Micro Devices' AMD-V hardware-assisted virtualization electronics within the processors that support XenEnterprise. XenSource says that Windows support is available for beta and paid pilots, and will be generally available in December. Virtualization support for Windows 2000 guests on the Xen 3.0.3 hypervisor within XenEnterprise in the first quarter of 2007. XenEnterprise costs $488 for an annual subscription on a two-socket server and $750 for a perpetual license.

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