There is lots of news this year. We will go into it and explain some of the implications we see.

Be sure to check out the new free VMWare Player. This is based on the Adobe Acrobat Reader model: you create VMs on any of the full products, and run them with VMWare Player on another machine for free.

64 Bit Computing, Virtualization Enhancements

The virtualization support from AMD (Pacifica) and Intel (Vanderpool) will allow for more performance and more security by adding support for common instructions. The upcoming Hypervisors will be aware of VT-enabled CPUs, and allow execution accordingly.

AMD64, EM64T, and the upcoming Pacifica/Vanderpool (Intel/AMD) enhancements, will all help drive 64 bit environments into more widespread use. The upcoming 64 bit version of ESX will support both 64 bit and 32 bit VMs, while the Pacifica/Vanderpool enhancements will allow 64 bit VMs to run on 32 bit virtual infrastructure hosts.

Pacifica/VT servers make VMs to run directly on the CPU hardware, bypassing the Hypervisor layer in a secure way. More performance will be available due to this, without any cost to stability and security, since the Hypervisor will still be aware that bypassing is occurring and will organize workloads accordingly. 64 bit support will also enable a much larger memory base without memory translation table hassles, ensuring better performance.

These technologies will all assist testing activities, to make sure the implementation of 64 bit goes smoothly. With Pacifica/Vanderpool, you can avoid problems due to limited 64 bit driver availability by running a 32 bit host and 64 bit VMs.