SWsoft launches server and Ubuntu VM betas

Virtualisation software maker SWsoft has announced the public beta of Parallels Server and a version of its open source operating system (OS) virtualisation project, OpenVZ for Ubuntu.

Parallels Server is a hypervisor-powered server virtualisation system designed to run on Apple hardware, and the first to run multiple copies of Mac OS X Server v10.5 Leopard on a single Apple computer. It also runs on any x86 or 64-bit Windows or Linux-based server.

The beta server release complements the vendor's Parallels software existing Parallels virtual machine software product that allows users to run multiple operating systems (OS) on a Mac computer.

The company, which is soon to rebrand itself as Parallels, said the server product can be installed using the Parallels lightweight hypervisor, in which virtual machines run in tandem with a primary OS, or 'bare metal,' in which virtual machines run independently and are not dependent on a host OS to function properly.

It also claimed an industry first in being the first to offer experimental support for Intel second-generation virtualisation technology, Intel Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (Intel VT-d), to enable performance and reliability benefits. It also said users can directly assign hardware resources such as a second graphics or network card to a virtual machine.

Parallels Server joins SWsoft's Virtuozzo Container products as an additional server virtualisation technology that it said would soon be further extended by a combined management tool for both Virtuozzo Containers and Parallels virtual machines.

The company also said it had made its virtual appliance software (that is used as the basis for the SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization software product) available for users to create multiple images of the open source Ubuntu OS.

The OpenVZ project released allows users to run the Ubuntu 7.10 distribution in a Linux container. The software template can be downloaded at the OpenVZ website.

"Ubuntu is by far the fastest growing Linux distribution," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We wanted to give our users a fast, easy way to deploy Ubuntu in a virtualised environment."

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