VMware has announced that they will be able to completely solve, or at least basically solve, a major problem that Linux has faced since day one: hardware compatibility. If you were lamenting that you missed yesterday's hardware compatibility event, don't worry, all the answers lie in the release of VMware's ESX 3i, an open source virtual machine tool, and the release of a draft specification for a pluggable virtual machine format In draft.
Hardware that supports Linux is very limited, a fact that Linux desktop and server users are all too familiar with. Maybe you buy a new system and load Linux on this system. Later, you may find that one or more important programs cannot run under Linux. Maybe you are just following the trend, and the driver has not yet been compatible with the mainstream kernel. Maybe you're running an enterprise Linux distribution (Distro) that hasn't had its drivers patched yet.
Whatever the reason, this is a serious problem for local desktop users and large-scale organizations. Now, however, VMware's ESX 3i promises to change that. Although ESX 3i is not designed to solve driver problems, it can side-effect hardware support issues when running server instructions. You don't have to know whether Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 4 supports Acme Raid SuperCard, you just need to know that it is supported under ESX 3i.
VMware stated at the press conference that VMware virtual machine tools will be an open source software, which means that any Linux distribution suite that wants to support VMware virtual devices can do so - you no longer need to worry about compiling VMware tools. In the future, what is needed most Linux distributions may be available to you as an application in the VMware virtual machine toolkit.
Not the desktop, but...
Now, all of this is being implemented gradually in the server, but I don't think this will continue. When I interviewed Raghu Raghuram, VMware's vice president of data center and desktop platforms, on Tuesday, he didn't disclose any plans to provide desktop solutions, but it is very likely that in the short term, VMware's hardware-based solutions will extend from the server field to Workstation and desktop areas.
So let's picture what will happen in the near future: You think it's time to upgrade to a new desktop, so you use tools like Acronis or other open source tools to back up your physical machine to a standard virtual machine mode.
Store your desktop operating system or multiple operating systems as virtual machine images on FireWire or USB disks. Then go to Dell, HP or other manufacturers to buy a desktop system. At this time, you no longer have to worry about whether the hardware on the system is compatible.
After you buy the system, you plug in the external drivers and copy the backup virtual machine resources to the new system -- or you can just run them on external storage. You no longer have to worry about hardware compatibility - as far as the virtual system is concerned, the hardware doesn't change unless it discovers more RAM or more CPUs. You don't have to worry about migrating data or anything like that - the same desktop can be instantly generated on the new machine as if nothing has changed.
One virtual machine, multiple hypervisors
How is the pluggable virtual machine format applied? Currently, VMware is leading other virtualization vendors in the chip hypervisor race, but in the near future, VMware will not be leading alone. Microsoft, SWsoft and Citrix/XenSource will all provide solutions with similar functions next year or within the next two years - of course, there are likely to be other vendors.
Not only can users feel confident about hardware support issues, they can also choose hardware with different virtualization technologies or continue to use existing virtual machines.
Maybe this sounds far-fetched now, but consider that just a few years ago, an on-chip hypervisor would have sounded impossible. We believe the future is bright.