“Our customers have been using VMware Infrastructure to simplify management, drastically lower costs, better manage IT capacity, and provide greater service levels,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions for VMware. “This new release builds upon our proven virtualization platform to deliver the non-stop virtual infrastructure, higher performance and better management.”

Numerous performance optimizations in ESX Server 3.5 such as support for paravirtualized Linux and large memory pages help bring significant performance gains to many common workloads such as Java applications and Oracle databases.

“The next phase in virtualization growth within the enterprise is resource automation to yield improved data center flexibility and lower administrative costs,” said Chris Wolf, senior analyst for Burton Group. “Streamlining IT operations in what is fast becoming the next generation data center is best achieved by deploying a mature hypervisor combined with transparent storage management, proven high availability, and an intelligent management layer capable of increasing system responsiveness as workload demands fluctuate. Today’s enterprises have high expectations for virtualization platforms and vendors that deliver on those expectations are best positioned for long term success.”

“VMware has once again proven why it is the leader in the virtualization industry with its latest release,” said Larry C. Miller, Jr., system engineer for Southwestern Energy Company, an integrated energy company primarily focused on the exploration and production of natural gas. “Previous versions of ESX server gave us a strong foundation to build our virtual infrastructure, but the new release is rich in new features. Best of all it’s easy:  easy to understand, easy to implement, and easy to administer.”

"We have been using VMware Infrastructure for more than two years because it provides smaller organizations with advanced capabilities, such as disaster recovery and high availability, which would not be possible otherwise due to costs and complexity," said Shane Yoder, enterprise systems manager for TMI Systems Design Corporation, which manufactures laminate casework. "VMware Update Manager is helpful because it simplifies managing and updating ESX Server hosts, and we can use it with VMware DRS (Distributed Resource Scheduler) to automatically move virtual machines for proper allocations that maximize performance."

“We have used the beta version of Storage VMotion in production environments – and it works as advertised.  This feature will save us a lot of time and further increase uptime in our environment,” said Noah Johnson, senior systems engineer for Freightliner, LLC, the largest heavy-duty truck manufacturer in North America. “Previously, when migrating from one storage device to another, we’d have to take servers down, set up maintenance windows, migrate storage disks, and set everything back up. It was not easy and very time consuming. We are planning to upgrade to ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 as soon as it is available. There’s no better way to run an enterprise than VMware Infrastructure.”

VMware ESX Server 3.5 and VirtualCenter 2.5 provides the following new features:

• Virtualization platform enhancements help deliver significant performance gains for the most memory and I/O intensive workloads:
• Large memory pages for both ESX Server as well as guest operating systems improve memory processing for memory intensive workloads such as databases
• Support for TCP Segmentation Offload and jumbo frames reduces the CPU overhead associated with processing network i/o, and benefits workloads such as Citrix and Windows Terminal Services
• Support for paravirtualized Linux improves the performance of Linux workloads
• VMware Storage VMotion enables live migration of virtual machine disks from one data storage system to another with little to no disruption or downtime. Administrators can dynamically balance storage workloads and address performance bottlenecks by migrating virtual machine disks to the best available storage resource, minimizing service disruptions.
• VMware Update Manager automates patch and update management for VMware ESX Server hosts and virtual machines by tracking certain patch levels and manually applying the latest security/bug fixes. Patching of offline virtual machines enforces higher levels of patch standards compliance than physical environments. Integration with VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) enables zero-downtime VMware ESX Server host patching capabilities.
• VMware Guided Consolidation, a feature of VMware VirtualCenter enables smaller companies to easily and quickly get started with server consolidation in a step-by-step tutorial fashion. A wizard discovers physical servers, identifies consolidation candidates, converts them to virtual machines, and intelligently places them onto the optimal VMware ESX Server or VMware Server hosts.
• VMware Distributed Power Management is an experimental feature that reduces power consumption in the data center through intelligent workload balancing. Working in conjunction with VMware DRS, Distributed Power Management is designed to automatically power off servers not currently needed in order to meet service levels, and automatically power on servers as demand for compute resources increases.

Availability, Packaging and Pricing (in USD)
VMware Infrastructure is available for purchase in the following editions: 

• VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation (previously called “Starter”) will include VMware  ESX Server or  VMware ESX Server 3i, VMware Consolidated Backup and the new VMware Update Manager. VMware Infrastructure Foundation list price will be $995 per 2 processors.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard will include the capabilities in VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation plus VMware HA which provides automated restart of virtual machines affected by hardware failure.  VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard list price will be $2,995 per 2 processors.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise includes the capabilities in VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard, plus VMware VMotion, VMware Storage VMotion, and VMware DRS with Distributed Power Management (DPM). VMware Infrastructure 3 Enterprise list price will be $5,750 per 2 processors.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation Acceleration Kit: Three 2-processor licenses of VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation as well as VMware VirtualCenter Foundation Server, which includes VMware Guided Consolidation and the ability to manage up to three VMware Infrastructure server hosts. List price is $2,995.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard High Availability Acceleration Kit: Two 2-processor licenses of VMware Infrastructure 3 Standard, which includes the above features of the VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation Acceleration Kit plus VMware High Availability (HA). List price is $5,995.
• VMware Infrastructure 3 Midsize Acceleration Kit: Three 2-processor licenses of VMware Infrastructure Enterprise as well as flexible training and consulting credits that can be applied to classes to learn how to deploy and use VMware Infrastructure 3, such as the “VMware Infrastructure 3: Install and Configuration” course. List price is $14,495.
• VMware VMotion, Storage VMotion and DRS with DPM will also be available for standalone purchase with VMware Infrastructure 3 Foundation and Standard.
• Existing VMware Infrastructure customers with valid support and subscription contracts will receive the new products and features included in each edition at no additional cost.
• VMware supports VMware Infrastructure 3 in all main operating system locales and is expected to release Japanese, simplified Chinese and German versions in the first half of 2008.

For more information, please visit http://www.vmware.com/products/vi/whatsnew.html.