It is a technology which allows you to run a complete Operating System on top of another Operating system. So, if you are running Windows XP, you can launch a process which is a complete instance of Windows 2000 or LINUX, for example. The HOST operating system sees the GUEST operating system as if it is a program running locally while the GUEST OS "thinks" it has it's won hardware available. The ESX server product is an Enterprise version of this capability which dedicates and optimizations a multi CPU server, i.e. 4 or 8 way Pentium, as a platform for running multiple instances of operating systems. This is very useful for test environments and for consolidate many servers into less hardware. Many of our clients, for example, end up with 10 or 20 servers that are doing very small tasks such as DHCP, licensing, hosting a specific database or application, middleware, etc. In reality they end up maintaining these 10 or 20 servers when they may only use a few % of their resources. For application compatibility reasons, OS version requirements, etc. you often cannot combine these roles. So you use VMWare ESX as a way to run all of those functions on one server which the ability to assign RAM and PROCESSOR to each session as needed. In a Citrix context, it is a way to build a complete multi-server farm functionally while maintaining much less hardware. In some cases the overhead is not worth it, in others the simplification of hardware and resource allocation outweighs any loss in raw performance. Regards, Steve Greenberg Thin Client Computing 34522 N. Scottsdale Rd. suite D8453 Scottsdale, AZ 85262 (602) 432-8649 (602) 296-0411 fax steveg@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx -----Original Message----- From: thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:thin-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Luchette, Jon Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2003 1:37 PM To: thin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Subject: [THIN] VMWare ESX Hey, Can somebody give me a high level overview of what VMWare is all about? We have been looking at moving towards a Blade server platform for our 10 Citrix servers specifically, and I am trying to see if VMWare is something we should look into or not. Is it extremely expensive? What exactly does it allow us as administrators to do? Is it to be used in conjunction with Blade servers or as an alternative? The brochures and white papers on their website are confusing the hell out of me! Any help will be greatly appreciated. Thanks guys, /jL