OpenVZ Virtualization Software Available for Power Processors [LWN.net]

From:		Sharon Smith <linuxpr-AT-yahoo.com>
To:		linuxpr-AT-yahoo.com
Subject:		News Item: OpenVZ Virtualization Software Available for Power
Date:		Fri, 13 Oct 2006 05:50:35 -0700 (PDT)

  http://openvz.org/news/announcements/power-20061013
   
  OpenVZ Virtualization Software Available for Power
  Users Can Benefit from Operating System-Level Virtualization Technology
   
  HERNDON, Va., October 13, 2006 -- The OpenVZ project (www.openvz.org) today
announced its operating system-level server virtualization software
technology has been ported and is available for systems using Power 64-bit
processors giving users full access to OpenVZ software, which helps increase
server utilization rates.
   
  "This turned out to be a simple procedure to port our code to the Power 64
processor, which demonstrates the portability of OpenVZ software," said Kir
Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "Unlike hypervisor-based
virtualization technology, OpenVZ is extremely easily portable across
different architectures, since 95 percent of the code is
platform-independent. With the port to Power, we've opened the door for
another segment of the user community to benefit from our open source
virtualization software."
   
  "POWER architecture servers like our IBM System p5 and BladeCenter JS21
make a great platform for Linux and open source applications," said Jeff
Howard, Director, IBM System p Marketing. "The OpenVZ project provides
clients even greater value by helping to drive up utilization rates without
impacting performance of the servers." 
   
  Kir Kolyshkin said the OpenVZ project will support additional processor
architectures, which only requires having access to hardware for development
and testing. Currently, OpenVZ supports x86, x86_64, and IA64 processors.
   
  OpenVZ is operating system-level server virtualization software technology,
built on Linux, which creates isolated, secure virtual environments on a
single physical server Â 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 IBM's Power processors, 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.
   
  Power 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 Power support can be downloaded here,
http://openvz.org/download.
   
  
 
  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 6,000 message
posts on its support Forum. The OpenVZ website attracted more than one
million hits for the month of August 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.
   
     


 		
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to post comments

OpenVZ Virtualization Software Available for Power Processors

Posted Oct 13, 2006 21:43 UTC (Fri) by bronson (subscriber, #4806) [Link] (1 responses)

FWIW, linux-vserver runs on PPC too (as well as a bunch of other Linux archs, including Xen and UML). So... this doesn't seem like too big a deal to me.

I wouldn't even mention this except that this press release is so smarmy. "a simple procedure to port our code to the Power 64 processor, which demonstrates the portability of OpenVZ software..." Um, guys, Linux gives you must of that for free. As long as OpenVZ doesn't screw up too bad, it should be every bit as portable as the kernel source it was built upon! So don't pat yourself on the back too hard. :)

OpenVZ Virtualization Software Available for Power Processors

Posted Oct 16, 2006 8:06 UTC (Mon) by k001 (guest, #23495) [Link]

What we did want to say is OpenVZ (as well as any other OS-level virtualization software) is pretty portable, with 95% of code being arch-independent — in contrast to, say, Xen, which is very arch-dependent and thus hard to port.