This Collaborative Product Evaluation compares the functional capabilities of several leading virtual machine platforms for servers based on x86 and x86-64 processors, including:

Virtual Server 2005 R2, Microsoft's virtual machine option for its Windows Server 2003 operating system. The evaluation covers the newest capabilities introduced in Service Pack 1 for Virtual Server 2005 R2.

VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware's infrastructure virtualization software based on its ESX Server virtual machine platform.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL 5), which includes virtual machine functions based on the Xen virtual machine monitor.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10), which includes virtual machine functions based on the Xen virtual machine monitor. The evaluation covers the newest capabilities introduced in SLES 10 Service Pack 1.

NOTE: Click here for updated evaluation including Microsoft Hyper-V and Citrix XenServer 5.0.

The chart above shows summary ratings for the evaluated products, based on an average of their ratings in the five key functional areas below.

To see how the products compare in each functional area, click on one of the links below:

	Performance & Scalability (61 ratings)
	Availability (24 ratings)
	Storage Integration (16 ratings)
	Manageability (20 ratings)
	Deployment Considerations (44 ratings)