OpenVZ Project Releases Software for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Plus Additional Capabilities

LINUXWORLD CONFERENCE & EXPO, SAN FRANCISCO, August 18, 2006 — The OpenVZ project (www.openvz.org) today released its operating system-level server virtualization software in the form of a kernel build for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (RHEL4), plus enhancements that provide users with additional flexibility.

For example, now OpenVZ virtual environments can be called by designated names, rather than simply numeric IDs. Also, it is now possible to set the number of processors available to specific virtual environments to more finely-tune performance.

The RHEL4 kernel build provides a stable, secure base for the OpenVZ software with improved hardware support, such as the latest gigabit Ethernet and SCSI adapters. The OpenVZ software release includes:

— Checkpointing and live migration where the state of a virtual environment is frozen and the image stored on disk – and restored on another server.

— Virtual Ethernet device support so that network devices can be created inside virtual environments using designated names and hardware addresses that are different from the actual physical device.

"We continue to set a fast pace of software delivery to make available better and better technology with more and more capabilities," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "Within the past two weeks, we announced OpenVZ as part of the Debian distribution and now we’re providing an update with more value for the user community."

The new OpenVZ kernel software can be downloaded here, http://openvz.org/download/kernel/rhel4/. 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.

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.

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 5,000 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 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.