VMware has announced deals with almost every major server manufacturer to embed its ultra-thin ESX 3i hypervisor software into blade servers.

The virtualisation firm has announced agreements to embed the OS-independent hypervisor in servers from Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM.

Integrating the hypervisor directly into the blade can help customers deploy VMware's base hypervisor within minutes of powering up a server as it boots directly from the hardware.

This provides greater speed and simplicity for customers new to virtualisation, and increased capacity expansion for customers already using such systems.

Diane Greene, president and chief executive at VMware, said: "Customers can now get VMware pre-integrated and pre-configured for the hardware platform of their choice for immediate standalone server consolidation."

The VMware ESX 3i hypervisor is the industry's smallest with a footprint of just 32MB, and is the only OS-independent virtualisation platform.

Customers can also upgrade from the ESX 3i hypervisor to VMware Infrastructure 3 (VI3) data centre virtualisation and management suite.

This provides the capability for automatic load balancing, business continuity and power management and the ability to move a virtual machine across physical machines to minimise service interruption.

Dell, Fujitsu Siemens Computers, HP and IBM servers with the ESX 3i hypervisor embedded will include an evaluation version of the VI3 suite.

Partners are expected to begin shipping servers embedded with the application within the next 60 days.

VMware has even managed to sign an OEM agreement with Sun Microsystems, which has its own Xen virtualisation platform.

As part of the deal, Sun will offer the VMware Infrastructure suite on hardware systems with full support from Sun.