On Tuesday, VMware pulled a virtual rabbit out of its software hat, announcing agreements to embed its ESX 3i hypervisor in servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM. The four vendors are expected to start shipping VMware-embedded machines within the next 60 days.

Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware, outlined the agreements with representatives from Dell, HP and IBM at Tuesday’s VMworld Europe keynote. Greene said the deal will proliferate virtualization and fast-track customers on the path to a self-managing virtual details center.

With customers able to get VMware configured into a server platform, virtualization came a step closer to fulfilling analyst predictions for installations. IDC has predicted server virtualization will be a $15 billion market worldwide by 2009.

The ESX 3i Advantage

VMware’s ESX 3i is based on its core virtualization technology that more than 100,000 customers are already using. At 32MB, it is the industry’s smallest hypervisor. ESX 3i

is the only OS-independent virtualization platform and, VMware said, the first virtual machine that can operate within minutes of booting a server with optimized configurations.

“ESX 3i is a relatively small piece of cipher. It doesn’t take up an huge amount of space, so it really makes some interesting opportunities for server vendors to use virtualization to improve system performance,” said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT. “From a competitive perspective, it is going to invent room for VMware to have its system on machines months ahead of Microsoft’s own embedded Hyper-V virtualization.”

A Prelude to VI3

Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM servers will additionally include access to an evaluation of the VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) suite, which delivers a fully managed virtual details center. VI3 is VMware’s solution for virtualizing servers, storage, networks, applications and desktops. The technology aims to help construct certain IT services are delivered…

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