This post has nothing to do with Michael Jackson, his death, his kids, his Neverland Ranch or anything related to him. It has everything to do with my need for a virtual laboratory where I can test virtual machines, write about them or produce other documentation about them without a significant financial outlay of my own. I call this virtual playground, Neverland, because currently it is a fantasy of mine and the way many see it--it's likely to remain so.

Last week, I posted "My Midsummer Night's Dream of A Virtual Lab" on my Virtualization column at Linux Magazine to which this is sort of a sequel.

My desire is to plead with virtualization vendors to provide a virtual laboratory with which prospective customers, resellers and technical writers may work with their products. Working with the product as the vendor intended, is worth more than even the slightest frustration caused by trying to do it yourself for the first time.

Having a virtual lab would also make it easier to compare live, running systems on a feature by feature basis. The problem with a do it yourself option is that if something doesn't work, then the potential customer becomes frustrated and installs a competitive product. Rarely does anyone blow away a system that's working perfectly to research another.

I am further proposing to call this virtual lab, Neverland. Neverland because the services would never grow old or stale. Vendors could showcase their best and keep it fresh there in that virtual world.

So, how about it, VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, Oracle? You really do want to give us a place to play don't you? What about you, Amazon? How about freeing up some of that EC2 for a poor techie down on his luck?

I know, I know. It's a dream and a far-fetched one at that but it's the dreamers who keep innovation alive.

Write back and tell me what you think of Neverland and the idea of a virtual playground--I mean Lab.