VMWare ESXi Will Be Free

Right on the heels of releasing their Q2 earnings, VMWare has announced that they will be offering their ESXi virtualization software for free. This is the bare metal, 32MB-footprint version of their popular ESX hypervisor virtualization platform, previously priced at about $500. This should better position them in the fight against Microsoft’s recently released, ultra low cost, Hyper-V virtualization platform. This likely won’t hurt VMWare earnings because advanced features like VMotion and DRS will still require licensing of their Virtual Infrastructure product.

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