VMware unveils ESX Server 4.0

VMware has unveiled its next generation hypervisor, ESX Server 4.0, as well as related tools for managing it. This suite is now called vSphere rather than Virtual Infrastructure as it was known in the past. The name vSphere was apparently selected by an internal vote at VMware.

ESX Server 4.0 has a host of improvements: Each VM can support up to eight, with each VM having up to 256 GB of memory allocated to it. In addition, network bandwidth has risen to 40 Gb/sec, with a single hypervisor able to cope with more than 200,000 IOPS of disk bandwidth.

The idea behind vSphere is that a company can put up to 32 servers--or 2048 processor cores--together to function as a private cloud. Fault tolerance can be achieved by simply clicking a box in order to protect a virtual machine. To achieve this, a shadow copy will be created on another physical host, which will transparently take over in the event of a failure.

John Gilmartin, director of product marketing at VMware argues that this is even better than Microsoft's cloud OS, Azure, since vSphere will host a lot of other operating systems other than Windows. VSphere will be available in the second quarter in six editions, starting at $995 for three physical servers for small offices.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at The Register
- check out this article at ZDNet

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