Quoting from the VMware official announcement:
VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtual infrastructure software for industry-standard systems, today launched VMware Infrastructure 3, the third generation of the industry-leading infrastructure virtualization software suite that empowers enterprises and small businesses alike to optimize and manage their IT environments through virtualization.
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VMware Infrastructure 3 builds upon the award-winning VMware ESX Server with Virtual SMP and VirtualCenter with VMotion technology used in production at tens of thousands of enterprises worldwide today and incorporates four new groundbreaking products – VMware VMFS, a next generation Distributed File System; VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS); VMware High Availability (HA); and VMware Consolidated Backup.
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VMware Infrastructure 3 incorporates VirtualCenter, the market-leading management product for virtualized environments for more than three years. VirtualCenter can automate and simplify the operations of a virtualized data center with several new capabilities:
- VirtualCenter is designed to handle three times the number of hosts and virtual machines under management compared to previous releases.
- Topology maps and centralized configuration of ESX Server hosts bring drag-and-drop simplicity to the management of enterprise-wide virtualization environments.
- VMware DRS and VMotion technology dynamically aggregate hardware resources into logical resource pools and are designed to optimally allocate them to applications running in virtual machines. When a virtual machine experiences an increased load, VMware DRS automatically allocates additional resources by redistributing virtual machines among the physical servers.
- VMware HA is designed to eliminate single points of hardware failure by automatically relocating and restarting virtual machines. HA is designed to provide uniform high availability across the entire virtualized IT environment without the cost and complexity of failover solutions tied to either operating systems or specific applications.
- VMware Consolidated Backup simplifies data protection by offloading backup to a centralized server. Offloading backup allows ESX Server to run more virtual machines by reducing its load and enables backup to safely occur even during production hours.
- Rich security controls, comprehensive auditing capabilities and administrative roles enable a secure, auditable operations environment where responsibilities may be delegated among different groups without compromising overall security and compliance.
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The rich capabilities of VMware Infrastructure are packaged into three editions targeted for various IT infrastructure environments:
- VMware Infrastructure Starter is an offering designed for easy adoption in small and medium businesses as well as branch and distributed locations within large companies. VMware Infrastructure Starter includes ESX Server with local or NAS storage and full management capabilities through the included VirtualCenter management agent. VMware Infrastructure Starter list price is $1000 per two processors.
- VMware Infrastructure Standard is designed for virtualizing enterprise workloads. In addition to ESX Server, it includes clustered VMFS for enterprise storage connectivity and consolidation, Virtual SMP and the VirtualCenter management agent. VMware Infrastructure Standard list price is $3750 per two processors.
- VMware Infrastructure Enterprise is designed as the core strategic IT infrastructure for the dynamic data center. It is designed to deliver significant cost savings and dramatic IT simplification through its full set of infrastructure virtualization capabilities. It includes ESX Server, VMFS, Virtual SMP, VirtualCenter Management agent, VMotion technology, DRS, HA and Consolidated Backup. VMware Infrastructure Enterprise list price is $5750 per two processors.
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VMware Infrastructure 3 has been in beta since October, 2005 and has had more than 6,400 active participants. VMware Infrastructure 3 will be available this month.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap has been updated accordingly.