VMware Unveils Next Generation of Industry-Leading Data Center Products: ESX Server 3 and VirtualCenter 2

VMware, Inc., the
global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard
systems, today unveiled major new releases of its data center products:
VMware ESX Server 3, virtual infrastructure software for partitioning hardware
and consolidating application workloads in mission-critical environments, and
VMware VirtualCenter 2, software for managing virtual infrastructure.
With the next generation releases of VMware ESX Server and VMware
VirtualCenter, VMware offers a powerful enterprise virtualization platform
that is providing the foundation for the industry's next wave of innovative
data center management technologies. VMware and its partner community are now
delivering a comprehensive set of management technologies based on virtual
infrastructure designed to substantially reduce the cost and complexity of
data center environments.
"In the last several years since we first introduced virtual
infrastructure with our ESX Server and VirtualCenter products and enabled the
vast selection of partner solutions built on that platform which have
followed, thousands of customers have been able to substantially improve how
they build and manage their distributed systems through virtualization," said
Karthik Rau, director of product management at VMware. "With the introduction
of ESX Server 3 and VirtualCenter 2, VMware continues to raise the bar by
providing customers with the ability to drive even higher availability and
better flexibility and to apply the benefits of virtualization throughout the
enterprise."
Building on the success of VMotion technology for live migration of
running virtual machines with zero-downtime, VMware is now introducing new
transformative virtual infrastructure management technologies:

-- Distributed Availability Services: Infrastructure-wide high
availability services for critical applications without the cost and
complexity of clustering. Distributed availability services detect
failed virtual machines and automatically restart them on alternate ESX
Server hosts. Distributed availability services select a failover host
that can honor the virtual machine's resource allocations so that
service level guarantees remain intact.
-- Distributed Resource Scheduling: Infrastructure-wide resource
optimization enabling a self-managing, highly efficient compute cluster
with built-in resource and load balancing. Built on top of VMotion
technology and VirtualCenter, distributed resource scheduling
intelligently and continuously balances virtual machine workloads
across ESX Server hosts so users can safely operate at 80% utilization
or higher. Distributed availability services detect when increasing
virtual machine activity saturates an ESX Server host and triggers
automated VMotion live migrations to move running virtual machines to
other ESX Server nodes so that all resource commitments are met.

VMware ESX Server 3 and VMware VirtualCenter 2 provide customers with the
option to deploy virtualization in any environment -- from the smallest branch
office to the largest data center. ESX Server 3 has broader x86 support that
unlocks the power of newer dual-core processor hardware and added NAS and
iSCSI networked storage compatibility. Expanded virtual machine memory limits
and new 4-way Virtual SMP further enable the most memory and
processor-intensive server applications to run in virtual machines.
VirtualCenter 2 scales up to control the biggest infrastructures with
hundreds of hosts and thousands of virtual machines and it provides enhanced
usage reporting and security auditing features to meet enterprise
requirements. In addition, VirtualCenter 2 simplifies management with a
richer unified client and centralized host configuration tools.
"The new features in VMware ESX Server 3 and VMware VirtualCenter 2
support our plans to further expand our virtual infrastructure," said Paul
Poppleton, senior staff engineer for QUALCOMM. "Using ESX Server 3 and
VirtualCenter 2 will allow us to optimize efficiency and resource use across
the infrastructure, while driving down hardware and operational costs. With
distributed availability services, we can bring complete high availability
coverage to many of our production applications at minimal cost. Also with
4-way Virtual SMP and the increased 16GB virtual machine memory limits, we can
migrate more of our physical servers to virtual machines. We are also looking
forward to VirtualCenter's sophisticated control features, including finer
grained access controls and audit trails, as well as the inventory model and
interactive topology views. We'll have an easier time managing our data
center with more servers virtualized."

About VMware ESX Server
Adopted by more than 10,000 enterprises worldwide over the last four
years, VMware ESX Server is the industry-leading virtual infrastructure
platform for x86-based systems used for partitioning hardware and
consolidating application workloads in mission-critical environments. The ESX
Server bare-metal hypervisor architecture delivers a highly scalable virtual
machine platform with advanced resource management capabilities that are used
to guarantee service levels to enterprise workloads. ESX Server supports, in
virtual machines, a wide range of off-the-shelf Windows, Linux and NetWare
operating systems and the application software for those operating systems,
without any modifications required.

About VMware VirtualCenter
VMware VirtualCenter is virtual infrastructure management software that
provides a central and secure point of control for virtual computing
resources. VirtualCenter creates a more responsive data center, enabling
faster reconfiguration and reallocation of applications and services.
VirtualCenter allows for instant provisioning of servers and decreases
user-downtime while optimizing the data center.

Pricing and Availability
VMware ESX Server 3 and VMware VirtualCenter 2 are currently in limited
beta testing. A public beta program will begin later this year and general
release will follow in Q1, 2006.
The current Virtual Infrastructure Node (VIN) for ESX Server combines ESX
Server with Virtual SMP and a VirtualCenter Agent with VMotion technology and
starts at $5,000. Current ESX Server, Virtual SMP, VirtualCenter and VMotion
customers with active Support and Subscription contracts are entitled to the
new upgrades for those products at no cost when the new upgrades are generally
available. The distributed availability services and distributed resource
scheduling will be available as add-on modules when they are generally
available.
VMware data center products are available from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens
Computers, HP, IBM, NEC, Sun, Unisys and the VMware VIP network. VMware Sales
can be reached at sales@vmware.com and 1-877-4VMWARE.

About VMware, Inc.
VMware, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC), is the global leader in virtual
infrastructure software for industry-standard systems. The world's largest
companies use VMware solutions to simplify their IT, fully leverage their
existing computing investments and respond faster to changing business
demands. VMware is based in Palo Alto, California. For more information, visit
http://www.vmware.com or call 650-475-5000.
NOTE: VMware and VMotion are registered trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the
United States and/or various jurisdictions. All other trademarks and names
mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies.

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