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thewayneVMWare is a virtualization product that allows IT departments to buy humongoid computers and run lots of smaller servers on them virtually. It's really cool stuff. If I need a server to test some new stuff on it, I can literally spin up a new one in a matter of minutes, do my testing on it, then erase it. Very convenient stuff. And it didn't run just Windows Server, it could run a number of operating systems, all inside one box!
IT departments have been using virtualization, and VMWare for years. It's really solid tech. Sadly, they sold out to Broadcom. And things have gone downhill from there. Downhill as in many, MANY corporations and companies are looking everywhere for alternatives to VMWare to get away from the horrible things that Broadcom is doing to the licensing that used to be a very good deal and quite stable.
The latest change that Broadcom has made is with Dell. Dell is a fairly reputable computer vendor, and it used to be that you could buy a humongoid computer from them pre-equipped with VMWare and you could reach out to Dell right off the bat if you had any problems with said software. If Dell couldn't fix it, they could escalate the call to VMWare. Well, those days are over. Dell will no longer be providing VMWare on its boxes, and presumably Dell will no longer be providing support on older installs, though that might be a slow deprecation as existing licenses expire, I don't know and the article doesn't discuss that.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/30/dell_terminates_vmware_distribution_agreement/
IT departments have been using virtualization, and VMWare for years. It's really solid tech. Sadly, they sold out to Broadcom. And things have gone downhill from there. Downhill as in many, MANY corporations and companies are looking everywhere for alternatives to VMWare to get away from the horrible things that Broadcom is doing to the licensing that used to be a very good deal and quite stable.
The latest change that Broadcom has made is with Dell. Dell is a fairly reputable computer vendor, and it used to be that you could buy a humongoid computer from them pre-equipped with VMWare and you could reach out to Dell right off the bat if you had any problems with said software. If Dell couldn't fix it, they could escalate the call to VMWare. Well, those days are over. Dell will no longer be providing VMWare on its boxes, and presumably Dell will no longer be providing support on older installs, though that might be a slow deprecation as existing licenses expire, I don't know and the article doesn't discuss that.
https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/30/dell_terminates_vmware_distribution_agreement/
no subject
Date: 2024-01-31 06:47 pm (UTC)Is Citrix' offering - and its open source sibling - still around? I was happy with that a decade or so ago, but OTOH most of my VMs were running FreeBSD; I've no idea how it handles Windows or Linux. And I've no idea what the licensing was like; I was a Citrix employee at the time. But I could get rack-mount servers pre-installed with Xen, which was convenient.
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Date: 2024-01-31 08:00 pm (UTC)I couldn't tell you, no idea. I haven't worked in formal IT in a decade. I was planning on buying VMWare for my Mac to virtualize Windows, but now I might have to go back to Parallels or VirtualBox.
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Date: 2024-02-01 01:38 am (UTC)Are there many/any alternatives?
Hugs, Jon
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Date: 2024-02-01 03:20 am (UTC)I do not know. I know there are other virtualization systems, but I don't keep up with the tech
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Date: 2024-02-02 07:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2024-02-02 02:50 pm (UTC)It seems like they're utterly gutting any intangible and real value in VMWare through their moves with the product. They're going to end up with very little of value in a few years. Not unlike Twitter.
no subject
Date: 2024-02-02 04:43 pm (UTC)Which would suck, to be clear, but seems like the pathway these things go down.