[clue-talk] Vmware ESX / VI, WTF?

[David L. Willson]

...

> Anyone with more than four or five servers to manage is going to be a 
> lot more pragmatic, and find a $99 copy of XP Home and "get on with it", 
> because they have work to do.

I guess you mean "Anyone except David Willson", because I manage about 60 servers and I
only use Linux to manage them.  I don't use or recommend products that force me to start
my XP VM.  In fact, I recommend strongly against them.

...

> Give 'em an economic reason to support Linux desktops, and they will, 
> but you'll have to be a shop making them a LOT more than one server 
> managed under their system to have that kind of clout.

Well, like I said, I manage about 60 overall, and I have a pretty fair amount of control
over what happens with them, and the 500 or so workstations they serve.  At this point,
the Vmware Servers ~won't~ go to ESX and no Vmware Server support contracts will be
renewed or purchased, and if they don't get their shit together, I'll find something
else to use and recommend, and I'll start replacing the Vmware I have out.

> I doubt losing you by yourself will be enough to swing them over to 
> wanting to manage the costs of re-writing the client cross-platform.

Right, but it's not just me.  It's me, my clients, and the folks involved in that thread
you link to below, which I've skimmed.  Two years.  I'll do some very loud screaming,
and then I'll move on.  And off.  From a product line I otherwise really liked.

> This isn't exactly news either...
> 
> <http://servervirtualization.blogs.techtarget.com/2008/05/16/still-no-linux-
> vmware-vi-client/>
> 
> That was posted in May of '08.  A quarter has gone by and VMWare's 
> earnings haven't dropped -- so the larger Linux-only shops must have 
> just loaded Windows and moved on.  There's no sign that VMWare's 
> earnings numbers were hurt by this.

Are you saying, "Why try?" because that's what it sounds like, and I hate that attitude.
 I didn't choose Linux because I thought I could single-handedly muscle the world into
line.  I did it for the same reason I started this thread on CLUE-talk, because my
friends and I ~can~ make a small difference, by working together.

> Ultimately, that's going to be the only thing that will "swing" their 
> opinion, since the UI is written in .Net and re-writing it for 
> cross-platform support probably isn't even in the cards for them.

.NET's not impossible to port, and not even unusually difficult, thanks to the guys on
the MONO project.  There is a guy on the web volunteering to do the work.

Anyway, if I were into downhill fights, I'd use Microsoft's stuph; they're winning
90-something to less-than-one so far.  But I don't use or recommend Microsoft's stuph, I
use and recommend our stuph.