This is a very geeky post, but very interesting to me, and I thought I'd share my opinions... OK, so some of you have heard me prattle on to no end about 'virtualization', or basically running one computer inside another.

Some reading for the interested: http://www.vmware.com/virtualization/ http://news.zdnet.com/2036-2_22-6058678.html

Anyway... the only real issue with running multiple computers inside one big computer is software licensing costs. Right now, most software companies, like Microsoft, charge 'per installation', meaning that if you run 10 Windows Servers inside of one big VMWare server, you still have to pay for the software/licensing costs of 10 physical servers.

All that just changed. You can now buy Windows Server 2003 Datacenter Edition for one server, and run an UNLIMITED number of Windows virtual machines on one server, for FREE!

This means that if a new big business needed 10 servers to fully operate, they would normally spend ~$100,000, just for the bare boxes and windows alone. With this new revelation, a big business can have the redundancy, stability, and convenience of a virtualized environment and redundant storage for less!