Last week VMware announced an impressive 50% discount for its vSphere Essentials edition to SMB customers, which means companies that want to consolidate no more than 15 physical servers.
The vSphere Essentials edition, which includes VMware vCenter and Update Manager (VUM), supports up to 3 ESX/ESXi hosts, each with up to 2 CPUs, and with no more than 6 cores per processor. Each virtual machine can have up to 4 vCPUs.
The promotion, valid till June 15, includes 1 year software subscription but no support.
This lowers the entry price of vSphere to $495 (plus 15% VAT if you are a European Union customer) and it’s probably one of the most aggressive moves ever taken by VMware to win the SMB market.
Rumors report that vSphere 4.1 currently is in private beta. While it’s unlikely that the new platform will be released before June, any SMB buying this offering should get it for free.