Since the expiration of the VMTN subscription in 2007, VMware developers and home lab geeks have had to either buy licenses for the systems in their labs/development environments or
use the 60-day evaluation versions of most VMware products that are downloadable from the VMware site.
Limited-time evaluation versions are a problem in an educational lab environment. Since self, or team, education is a low urgency task, we frequently set up something like the VMware VSA or Site Recovery Manager and then get dragged away from it until the evaluation period ends or would like to store it away to test another potential configuration at another time.
Not all users who need to set up test environments are the same. Here at the DeepStorage/NetworkComputing Real World LAB, we can call Microsoft or VMware’s PR groups, and if we ask real nice, they’ll send us non-production licenses for pretty much anything we want. Similarly, bloggers who make Microsoft or VMware happy can be awarded MVP or vExpert status and given access to software. Even so, we pay for MSDN subscriptions because the convenience of having the software when we need it is worth the relatively low price.
To remain the target of developer’s affections, and therefore products, VMware has to provide low-cost licenses for people before they become prominent enough to be vExperts. The best way is through a revived VMTN subscription.
The good news is the groundswell of support following Laverick’s original post on the VMware community forum addressed to the office of the CTO, which has attracted almost 200 comments and has been noticed by folks inside VMware. Blogger Duncan Epping, a VMware principal architect, reports that VMware’s management is investigating the idea. Comment on Laverick's post and keep the heat on so the investigation shows reinstatement to be a good idea.
Disclaimer: VMware has provided vSphere and other licenses for use in the DeepStorage/NetworkComputing Real-World lab and I expect them to continue that practice regardless of whether we ever get to purchase a VMTN subscription.
