OpenVZ Virtualization Software Available for Sun UltraSPARC T1 Processor

HERNDON, Va. — The OpenVZ project (www.openvz.org) today announced its open source virtualization software is available for servers using Sun's breakthrough UltraSPARC(r) T1 CoolThreads(TM) processor. The operating system-level server virtualization software technology helps increase server utilization rates.

"Now, users of servers powered by Sun's UltraSPARC T1 processor can benefit from our open source virtualization software," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We need to acknowledge Jonathan Kinney from the user community for requesting the port to UltraSPARC T1 and making available a Sun Fire(TM) server, which made it possible to get the work done."

"We're already in production with OpenVZ and believe this project is very promising," said Jonathan Kinney, data systems specialist, Advantagecom Networks, Inc., in Walla Walla, Washington. "At this point, we have already set up several Debian-based virtual environments and they all have worked perfectly."

Kir Kolyshkin said porting OpenVZ software to the the UltraSPARC T1 processor was a simple procedure since 95 percent of the code is platform-independent. OpenVZ is easily portable across different architectures and the project currently supports servers using x86, x86_64, IA64 and Power 64-bit processors.

"Initially, I was very pleased to hear that the platform independence was not compromised with the OpenVZ patch to the kernel source," said Kinney. "Seeing how quickly the software was ported for SPARC has certainly made me a believer."

OpenVZ is operating system-level 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 Sun's UltraSPARC T1 processor, 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.

"Having open source virtualization software for Sun servers, such as the Sun Fire T2000, is great news for our users," said Fadi Azhari, director of marketing, OpenSPARC, Sun Microsystems. "The addition of operating system-level virtualization technology provided by the OpenVZ project provides even greater value by helping to increase utilization rates without impacting performance of SPARC-based servers."

SPARC system users will be able to provision physical servers to run applications on virtual servers, rather than a full physical server. The OpenVZ project makes available templates that allow for almost instant (in many cases about a minute) provisioning of a virtual server.

The OpenVZ software including UltraSPARC T1 support 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.

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.

# # #