#3--true, Viridian certainly isn't a true match for ESX's broad support and ecosystem yet... well, heck, it's currently not a competitor at all since it isn't even in beta form, but even when released, it will still be behind in many aspects. Nonetheless, the performance is looking fantastic, and it will put huge price pressure on VMware. From a hypervisor standpoint, there's isn't much to complain about--I don't think many people are clamoring for more than 8 cores in a single VM or other capabilities that Viridian won't support. VMotion won't be there, but the failover capabilities are still very strong, and not everyone really needs VMotion. ESX 3i looks really cool, though.
All in all, I'm really excited. Viridian may not be a better ESX just yet, but Microsoft will have price on their side, I think. (BTW... what's this about Datacenter Edition for only $3k? Is that per-processor or something? If not... man, that's a steal, if only for the unlimited VM licensing....)
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