November 15, 2006; 07:15 AM
The OpenVZ project announced availability of its operating system-level server virtualization software in the form of a kernel based on Linux 2.6.9, including for the first-time in a stable branch, fully-tested and performance-tuned live migration and Virtual Ethernet device features. Previously, those features were only available in the development branch of OpenVZ software.
Delivery of the checkpointing and live
migration functionality as part of OpenVZ brings a capability that no
other open source operating system-level virtualization software
offers. It allows system administrators to move virtual servers between
physical servers without end-user disruption or the need for costly
storage capacity.
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 ).
Also, the
Virtual Ethernet device function allows for network devices to be
created inside virtual environments using designated names and hardware
( MAC ) addresses that are different from the actual physical device.
"Now,
the user community can enjoy rock-solid OpenVZ software with advanced
features," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "This
represents months of work on performance tuning and quality testing to
ensure delivery of stable software code."
OpenVZ is operating
system-level server virtualization software technology, built on Linux,
which creates multiple isolated, secure virtual environments on a
single physical server th 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.
The new OpenVZ kernel software can be downloaded here, http://openvz.org/download/kernel/stable. 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.
With
the power of today's processors from Intel, AMD and IBM, 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.
About the OpenVZ Project
The
OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users,
promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative,
community effort. Since going into full production late last year, the
OpenVZ project has been very active with the user community with more
than 8,000 message posts on its support Forum. The OpenVZ website
attracted nearly one million hits last month as more businesses and
individuals explore and contribute to the leading open source operating
system virtualization project.
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.
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. Also, the OpenVZ project
maintains a blog site discussing virtualization technology, which can
be accessed here, http://blog.openvz.org.