VMware announced on their 64bit blog that VMware ESX 3.0.1 will offer full support for a range of 64 bit gues operating systems. 64 bit computing is set to gain wider acceptance and in some cases become a requirement. The following operating systems will have 64 bit support:
- Microsoft Windows Server 2003 (Standard and Enterprise Server R2)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 64-bit (UP7, UP8)
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 64-bit (UP2, UP3)
- SuSE Linux Server (SLES) 10 64-bit
- Sun Solaris 10 (U2)
Hardware requirements will be as follows:
- AMD: Athlon64 or Opteron Rev E or later
- Intel: must include support for Intel’s Virtualization Technology (needs to be enabled in the BIOS)
64 bit computing will be especially important in the Microsoft world. Microsoft has decided to only release a 64bit edition of Exchange 2007.
WMware ESX is the market leader in enterprise level virtualisation. ESX offers the ability to deploy many virtual machines across a farm of servers with load balancing and disaster recovery while providing a near physical machine level of performance. ESX is a key technology for consolidating servers and making full use of the processing power that otherwise would be underutilised by many of the business applications that are typically deployed.