February 16, 2007; 05:47 AM The open source project, OpenVZ ( www.openvz.org ) announces the availability of features in its operating system server virtualization software that include:
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Delivery of checkpointing and live migration support for IA64
processors, which brings a capability that no other open source
operating system virtualization software offers. This allows system
administrators to move virtual servers between physical servers without
end-user disruption or the need for costly storage capacity.
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Network file system ( NFS ) support, which makes it possible to access
network disk files from within OpenVZ virtual environments.
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VLAN ( IEEE802.1Q ) network standard support in virtual environments,
so that every network packet can be tagged to some distinct network.
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Filesystem in userspace ( FUSE ) support, which allows, for example,
for an FTP or SSH server to be presented like a file system within a
virtual environment.
- I/O accounting for each virtual
environment to be followed with a new per-VE I/O scheduling feature
added soon. This solves the problem of distributing I/O throughput (
which can be a performance bottleneck ) across all virtual
environments. The scheduling feature will make it possible to set
priorities so that some VEs can be set as "high priority" for disk
access, and others as "low priority".
"We intend to continue
bringing our users more advanced technology throughout the year," said
Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We're off and running in
2007 delivering users with new features in OpenVZ software."
With
checkpointing and live migration, the state of a running virtual
environment is frozen and the image stored on disk then restored on
another server. The function executes between any two servers on a
network, so the capability works for any server and any application.
OpenVZ delivers this capability without additional requirements, such
as a storage area network ( SAN ). The IA64 support is added to
previously available OpenVZ support for servers using x86 and x86_64
processors.
The new OpenVZ kernel software can be downloaded here, http://openvz.org/download/kernel/devel. Also, users can access helpful installation instructions from the OpenVZ wiki, http://wiki.openvz.org/Quick_installation.
The site serves as a forum to gain and share knowledge about OpenVZ and
includes documentation and a knowledge base with helpful advice.
The
OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users,
promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative,
community effort. Supported by SWsoft, the OpenVZ project serves the
needs of the community developers, testers, documentation experts, and
other technology enthusiasts who wish to participate in and accelerate
the technology development process. OpenVZ is open source software that
is used as the basis for the SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization software
product.
About OpenVZ
OpenVZ is operating system server
virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates
multiple isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical
server – enabling greater server utilization and superior availability
with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that
applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.
With
the power of today's processors, hardware is often under utilized. With
virtualization technology, the server can effectively be split into
many small ones, each running its tasks so that the whole server is
utilized more efficiently.
OpenVZ software comes with user tools
that help automate management of virtual servers. With its unique
architecture that uses a single operating system instance, the virtual
servers perform and execute like independent servers with their own
memory, configuration files, users and applications. Each can be
re-booted independently. Using template-based application deployment
provides a simple way to get new virtual servers up and running in
minutes and OpenVZ can run several times more virtual servers per CPU
than other virtualization technologies. Also, the OpenVZ project
maintains a blog site discussing virtualization technology, which can
be accessed here, http://blog.openvz.org.
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