Application Development Trends (http://www.adtmag.com) published an article called "Server Virtualization is hot in 2006". It is a general article about virtualization.

However, what caught my attention was the last paragraph:

"Not surprisingly, Forrester found, North American companies are ahead of the curve in terms of adopting server virtualization solutions, with EU firms second overall. In spite of VMware’s pioneering track record and dominance in North America, Microsoft not only leads in the EU, it is a favorite among large enterprise customers."

I guess we have some more education to do. As a consultant, I would never even think of suggesting to consolidate servers with Microsoft's Virtual Server. And that has nothing to do with Microsoft's name because I would also not recommend VMware Server (formerly GSX) as a consolidation platform. For me, those two products are good for test and development and that is where I draw the line. Enterprise customers especially should look at VMware ESX as the consolidation platform of choice.

Enterprise customers want a stable, high performance virtualization solution, supported by a respected vendor, with features for high availability, dynamic resource scheduling, disaster recovery and more. Especially ESX 3.0, with features such as DAS, DRS, consolidated backup and improved network and storage handling will fulfill these requirements. Combine the basic feature set of ESX with add-ons from vendors like vizioncore (http://www.vizioncore.com) and others, and you really have the best of the best when it comes to virtualization.