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Goodbye VMWare Server 2, Hello Exchange ‘14’

I have had a love/hate relationship with the VMWare Server 2 beta for the last couple of months and today, I’m sorry to say we have parted ways. First up, my quarrel is not with VMWare products as a whole (I still love Workstation and ESX) but frankly with the poor interaction you get with VMWare in their own beta programs. It really is a far, far cry from the type of interaction and feedback you get in the Microsoft beta programs…

I would have been able to live with the lack of interaction if I weren’t having any major problems with the product. But as such things go, I ran into one showstopping problem… It turns out that on my hardware (which is a big, tricked out server that cost a small fortune and which I am not replacing) VMWare Server 2 had major issues correctly virtualizing Windows Server 2008 x64. Just that one OS. Everything else worked fine: Windows 2003 x86 & x64, even Windows 2008 x86 ran without a hitch. It has to be said that this is not a generic problem, since most others either don’t run into the problem (on a HP nx6325 laptop I also have no issues whatsoever), or they just don’t understand why things are breaking. But I’m certainly not the only one, judging from the replies and the 300+ views on the thread I posted in the VMWare Server 2 beta 2 community.

Now, I could manage without Windows 2008 x64 servers for a good while, since Exchange 2007 also runs on Windows 2003 (or if you’re really nuts like me, you can hack the x86 version on Windows 2008 into production :-) ). But now that I’m participating in the Exchange ‘14’ TAP, I just have to have a Windows 2008 x64 machine. Either that or just don’t bother at all.

In my experience with Microsoft Technology Adoption Programs, Microsoft usually goes above and beyond to help their customers if they run into a blocking problem with the product, even if you are the only customer experiencing the problem. The experience with VMWare was pretty much the opposite, unfortunately. I have filed not one but two Support Requests and never have gotten more interaction than the support engineer asking me to run their support-info-gathering script (vm-support.vbs) and attaching the output to the Support Request. After that, either the support engineers go deaf or they just can’t help me anymore :-(

So now I have grown tired of waiting for information that won’t come and I have decided to uninstall VMWare Server 2 and install VMWare Workstation 6 instead. I would’ve installed Hyper-V, but alas my 1st gen AMD Opterons don’t support the CPU Virtualization extensions needed for Hyper-V…

I’m actually quite sad to see VMWare Server 2 go, because I really liked the way you could manage VMWare Server 2 via the standard VMWare Virtual Infrastructure Client, even over the internet. I liked where VMWare Server 2 was going but it seems it was just to immature for my bleeding-edge needs…

Anyway, Workstation 6 has taken over now and my first Exchange ‘14’ server is (virtually) buzzing with a large grin :-)

That’s a dozen more mailboxes to add to the running-Exchange-‘14’-in-production-count, DavidEsp!

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