Like any new version of software from almost any software vendor, the early adopters are the guinea pigs who find all the problems for the rest of us that take a more conservative approach. I still haven’t deployed Windows Server 2003 SP2 for the same reason (although I will be soon as it has been out for a few months now).

I’ll upgrade to ESX 3.5 when I must have a new feature and only after the initial wave of bug fixes are released and documented and plenty of others in forums have posted resolves and workarounds for problems I might encounter.

My business also relies on Citrix Presentation Server as a core technology and from experience I can tell you that Citrix pushes new versions, upgrades, patches out the door far too quickly as well. I don’t expect the XenServer or XenDesktop initial builds to be any better as both will essentially be v1.0

Unfortunately, almost all software vendors seem to push buggy software out the door these days in an effort to stay competitive.

I have looked at Xen and Hyper-V and I think Xen has a long way to go before catching up with Vmware (they just released shared fiber storage support, vmware customers are already replacing their old SAN, why do you think vmware came-up with svmotion?).

Hyper-V is not even going to get there, do not expect a 28$ product to compete with XEN or Vmware ESX. The only reason it even costs a couple of dollars is to avoid new fines from Neelie Kroes, the European Commissioner for Competition.
MS and Citrix are working closely together on a new combination. Xen being the high-end product, the costly one (like Metaframe) and Hyper-V being the low-end/mid-end solution, almost for free(like Terminal Services).
Hyper-V will only scratch the Xen surface just as TS did/does with Winframe/Metaframe/Presentation server/XenApp. They will make sure there is a market and a price for both of them.

It looks like the vmware focus at the moment is on the management tools for the hosts and the VMs. A good thing, i guess, but they should not become sloppy on their core product.
The fact that more complains are being posted doesnot necessarily mean the product is getting bad. It can also mean that more people are using the product :-)

There are always improvements that can be made in the management side and performance information inside the virtual machines though.

But the ESX server code itself has been very stable and trustworthy.

I’m also amazed at the visionary thinking that VMware (with 10 years of experience) brings to the virtual infrastructure that many companies could not live without these days. Then you just see the others trying to copy their ideas.

It’s too bad, too. I used to be a huge fan.

David

Are you disappointed in version 3.5 of VMware Infrastructure?