VMware has hiked the price of both its vSphere Essentials Plus bundle and the Standard edition of its updated vSphere 4.1 product and will for the first time allow customers of these entry-level editions the ability to move virtual machines between physical hosts.
The vendor's vMotion technology - which allows for the transfer of live virtual machines between physical hosts for maintenance, backup or disaster recovery purposes, was previously only available on the more expensive Enterprise Plus, Enterprise and Advanced editions of vSphere.
The vendor said that vMotion is already used by 70 percent of vSphere customers.
The price of VMware Essentials Plus bundle - which offers virtualisation across three machines (or six processors) - has gone up 15 percent from US$2995 to US$3495, but now includes the vMotion capability.
The Standard Edition, which was US$795 per processor (limited to six cores), has gone up 20 percent to US$995 per processor.
The 4.1 update, VMware's first update since it announced vSphere 4 in mid-2009, offers stacks of new features for enterprise users [see related story], and allows VMware to draw some of its more dated innovations down into its SMB-focused products.
"A lot of focus is on SMB," said Michael Warrilow, product marketing manager for vSphere and vCenter at VMware Australia. "We are adding 150 functions for the high end editions and bringing functions down to the low end."
The price of the entry-level vSphere Essentials kit was reduced to US$495 as a promotion in May, will remain at the discounted price point, with compulsory support pegged at US$116 per year.
The prices of all other editions should remain the same as vSphere 4.0.
All VMware users should notice some performance improvements in vSphere 4.1, Warrilow said, as vMotion is promised to work at five times faster than on vSphere 4.0.
Further, vSphere 4.1 supports up to eight concurrent vMotions between two physical servers. This means that users attempting to migrate or back-up virtual machines won't have to wait as long for the process to complete.
The vSphere 4.1 product is available as a free upgrade for those users buying support for vSphere 4.0 and will be available as a download as of today. Customers that have purchased support for the Standard Edition of vSphere 4.0, for example, will be able to use vMotion at no extra cost.
