Free Virtualization Tools

It’s not uncommon for large organizations to have embraced virtualization, both in the testing environment and for production use.  Many vendors have offerings that make it easier for smaller organizations, or individuals, to take advantage of virtualization too.  In fact, all the major vendors offer free or personal versions of their flagship products.  And you know a software technology has gone mainstream when both Microsoft (with Hyper-V) and Oracle (with VirtualBox) have offerings in the space.

So, why would an organization consider free virtualization?  There is certainly a stigma attached to “free” or “trial” software.  However, for virtualization, the primary reasons to consider taking advantage of free software are:

• Lowers the risk for the first time virtualization user.  Think of it as getting your feet wet for free.
• Reduces the need to have an extra server or workstation.
• Makes it easy for an organization to evaluate or pilot software by using virtual machines.
• Enables the use of or testing on multiple operating systems.
• Speeds the testing of new versions of production software or developing new software.

One of the most popular vendors is VMware, and VMware was one of the pioneers of virtualization.  VMware offers a free server solution, VMware Server.  This solution is very popular in the SMB market and many of Razorleaf’s clients take advantage of this platform.  VMware Server requires a host OS (operating system) like Microsoft Windows Server or Linux, but can support many different virtual machines, both server and client.

Microsoft virtualization products are making some noise in the virtual market.  Hyper-V Server is the free offering and like VMware Server, requires a host operating system.  For clients who adhere closely to Microsoft products, Hyper-V Server should not disappoint.

Oracle VirtualBox (formerly Sun VirtualBox) is the only Open Source solution available under the GPL license model.  It is responsive and very easy to use.  It could easily be the perfect personal or home solution for virtualization.  It might also be the answer for your IT department, especially if Open Source and Linux variants are embraced by your organization.

Citrix XenServer is another free virtualization server and appears to have the most features in its free offering.  It is also based on Open Source code, and so represents another virtualization tool coming out of OSI efforts.

At some point, your use of virtualization will outgrow the free offering, whether due to production use (meaning your company’s operations depend on it), or because you want to run in a bare metal environment (meaning running the virtual environment without a host OS).  By that time, the benefits of virtualization for you or your company will be well established.

So, if you happen to be a Microsoft house; there’s a product for that.  If you’re an Open Source house; there’s a product for that.  And if you’re somewhere in between, you can find what you need to get started using virtualization.  If you need help taking the first step, please contact us – we’ve been successfully leveraging virtualization technologies for more than five years and it is now essential to our business.  And if virtualization is working for you and you’d care to leave a brief description of your success, please leave us a comment below.

Tags: Microsoft, Microsoft Windows Server, Open Source, technology, virtualization, VMWare