Best virtualization software on a tight budget?

If you're looking for desktop (development/testing) virtualization there is VMware server which is freely release by VMware. There are also some open-source virtualization platforms that can be used however I do not have any experience with them. If this is more for a production environment I wouldn't make a decision based on what is cheap or free. I would make my decision based on what system performs best in the environment it will be installed. What ever platform you chose I would recommend obtaining an evaluation license and thoroughly testing your particular applications prior to making a decision. If you have any questions please let me know.
Thanks,
Fred Stuck
http://XeeSM.com/FredStuck

citrix would be best suitable solution , with competitive pricing,

As in any core tech acquisition, you need to define the drivers pushing your decisions. Why do you want to virtualize? To save money? To be more flexible? Is this for a limited proof of concept excersize or are you going to bet your business on this?

If you are just looking for something to play with, all of the major virtualization vendors have free hypervisors that you can explore. VMware has VMware Server. Red Hat and CentOS have Xen and KVM. Microsoft has Hyper-V, assuming you have Windows Server 2008.

If you are planning on running your tier 1 production applications on this platform, then you are betting the success of your enterprise on this technology. In that case, you would be better served to ask yourself what the cost would be if this platform were to fail. Bearing that in mind, begin to identify the criticality of your information resources. Which ones need to be absolutely fault tolerant? meaning that they remain available even if underlying hardware were to fail. Fault tolerant resources can preserve in-flight transactions, important to point-of-sale transactions like processing checkout carts. Others may only need to be highly available, which, in the event of a host failing, can be back online in just the time it takes to reboot the virtual guest. Finally, if this is a lab environment, you may not need any of the above and would be happy manually administering the environment.

Depending on your answers, you may find that you need to invest in some form of shared storage, perhaps an improved network with redundant links, or additional servers for clustering. These areas, too, have their low to high-end solutions from NAS, iSCSI, FCoE and FC SANs, to 100MB, 1GB, 10GB and fiber networking. But in every case, ask yourself, "Am I willing to bet my business on this."

Try out Ericom Webconnect alongwith any free hypervisor . It supports 14 different hypervsiors also supports TS in the same product alongwith other protocols like pcover ip... so no eztra investment

There are couple of Virtualization Softwares (VS) are available in the market in different budget line. The VS budget also depends, if the customer already has some other products from same vendor. For example; if the end customer is a Microsoft shop then using Azure make more sense, and they can request for better quote from MS.

Altough with some well know VS, we have had hands-on on most of VS and found best of class as listed below :

1. RHEV (Excellent dashboard with classic functionalities and low bundled price)
2. VMWare (Very good product in terms of features but priced saterately for different componants)
3. HyperV (Being as MS product; user friendly. I do not know whether MS is giving any special price for customers using MS products)
4. BMC (Good for start-ups at fair cost, as they have yet to add lot more features in their next release)

Hope this help !!!

Be careful when considering a bundled product. It may not offer all of the features you need and you may find yourself looking for third-party bolt-on products to provide the missing functionality. Alternatively, you may find yourself having to script or manually perform tasks that other products naturally automate. These additional hard and soft dollar costs add into the total cost of ownership for that bundled product.

It's much more expensive to virtualize inhouse. Outsourcing is the best way - take a look at www.atum.com for plans from $39/mo.

If you already have an IT infrastructure and are actively life-cycling hardware, then virtualizing in-house should be saving you money. I am very leary of outsourcing key components of my infrastructure. In some cases, that may not even be allowed by law or policy.