OpenVZ Announces Support for Latest SuSE Linux Enterprise 10; Releases Patch for Greater Kernel Integration

HERNDON, Va., March 24, 2006 – For early adopters and advanced technologists who want to test virtualization technology on the latest beta build of SuSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES10) and OpenSuSE 10.1, the OpenVZ project (www.openvz.org) today released its operating system level server virtualization software technology, in the form of a kernel build.

In addition, pre-built OpenSuSE 10 Virtual Private Server (VPS) templates are available, which enable real-time provisioning of servers and give users full use of OpenSuSE applications.

OpenVZ software comes with user tools that help automate management of virtual servers. OpenVZ creates isolated, secure virtual private servers on a single physical server – enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers perform and execute like independent servers with their own memory, configuration files, users and applications. Each can be re-booted independently.

The OpenSuSE 10 templates allow for almost instant (in many cases about a minute) provisioning of an OpenVZ virtual server – giving customers with applications running on OpenSuSE the ability to run those applications on a virtual server, rather than a full server.

"We expect to attract many more users in the open source community with our support for SuSE, and the many applications that are running on SuSE," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We intend to support all of the major Linux distributions starting with this release for SuSE.”

"We welcome the efforts of the OpenVZ community in enabling advanced operating system virtualization for the latest SUSE kernel," said Holger Dyroff, vice president of Linux Server product management, Novell. “Novell is committed to bringing the latest advances in virtualization and will evaluate the technology for possible inclusion in a future release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10."

OpenVZ kernels for SLES10 and OpenSuSE 10.1 are available for download from http://openvz.org/download/kernel/suse10. Templates for OpenSuSE 10 are available for download at http://download.openvz.org/template/precreated.


Update to Linux Kernel

The OpenVZ project has also made available beta level software based on the Linux kernel 2.6.16 that was released this week (March 20), keeping in step with the Linux kernel development progress. That OpenVZ software can be downloaded from http://openvz.org/download/beta/kernel.

With the power of modern CPUs from both Intel and AMD (including the latest dual-core offerings), 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
OpenVZ software 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, supported by SWsoft, is a subset of the Virtuozzo virtualization software product. Also, the OpenVZ project maintains a blog site discussing virtualization technology, which can be accessed here, http://blog.openvz.org.

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