OpenVZ Announces Support for IPv6 and Bridged Networking

HERNDON, Va., – For early adopters and advanced technologists who want to test virtualization technology with the IPv6 network protocol, the OpenVZ project (www.openvz.org) today released its operating system-level server virtualization software technology with support for the next-generation Internet Protocol Version 6. In addition, support for bridged networking is now available, which gives OpenVZ virtual servers the ability to run software that relies on special network capabilities such as broadcasts, multicasts, or those having a MAC (media access control) address.

OpenVZ is operating system-level server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates 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.

Most of today's Internet uses IPv4, which is nearly 20 years old, but there are many common Internet applications that already work with IPv6. The next-generation specification fixes a number of issues, such as the limited number of available IP addresses and adds improvements in areas such as routing and network auto-configuration. It is expected that IPv6 will gradually replace IPv4, with the two co-existing during a transition period over a number of years.

“Support for IPv6 was a feature request that came from our user community and a valuable addition to the network virtualization that already exists in OpenVZ. IPv6 support delivers additional value to OpenVZ users and keeps our project current with the very latest technological advances,” said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. “The bridged networking feature further extends OpenVZ networking capabilities and allows a broader range of networked applications to run in virtual servers.”

OpenVZ kernels including support for IPv6 and bridged networking are available for download from http://openvz.org/download/beta/kernel.

“As one of the driving forces behind the request for IPv6 support, I'm pleased to see how seriously OpenVZ takes user input and incorporates that into the project,” said Harald Welte, networking consultant in Berlin, Germany. “The introduction of these networking technologies into OpenVZ unveils the power of virtualization for the early adopters of IPv6.”

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

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 3,000 message posts on its support Forum. The OpenVZ website attracted more than one million hits for the month of April 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 applicationsEach 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.