Linux in the virtual world

Stephen Shankland CNET News.com

Published: 03 Apr 2006 16:40 BST

...from AMD and Intel means that virtualisation companies today can sidestep some of clever engineering techniques VMware employs. AMD Virtualisation, set to debut in months and formerly known by its code name Pacifica, and Intel's corresponding VT, which started arriving in 2005, permit Xen to run an unmodified operating system. In practice, that means Xen can run Microsoft Windows as well as Linux.

The side effect is that VMware will be getting more direct competition from XenSource and Virtual Iron. But that's not all: Another start-up called Parallels also hopes to give VMware a run for its money.

Its $50 hypervisor-based Parallels Workstation 2.1 product runs on Windows and Linux desktop machines right now, and the company plans to launch a midrange server product in mid-2006 and a high-end server product in late 2006, the firm's marketing Manager Benjamin Rudolph said.

Lining up at LinuxWorld
VMware is looking to sustain its leadership in part by opening up interfaces to control virtual machines and making its basic virtual machine software free. And Monday at LinuxWorld, it plans to announce a related move: the firm is offering its virtual machine disk format specification to all comers for royalty-free use. The format competes with Microsoft's VHD specification and Xen's XVM.

Several announcements on virtualisation moves are expected at LinuxWorld, which has morphed substantially since it began in the 1990s, following the growing impact of open source software. The conference's annual East Coast edition runs Monday through Thursday in Boston.

In addition to exhibitors touting operating system-related technologies, representatives from open source databases and middleware companies are also scheduled to attend. Sessions and keynotes will also cover the impact of open source business models on the software industry overall, including one entitled The Death of the Enterprise Software Business Model.

At LinuxWorld, IBM plans to announce services to help customers design, install and configure virtual machines as a way to consolidate Linux servers. It's a sign that IBM, a virtualisation pioneer with its mainframe servers, is also trying to profit from the technology as it becomes mainstream.

Virtualising at the operating system is one approach, but SWsoft is taking a higher-level approach that divides a single operating system into multiple virtual environments, each with its own independent applications. At the show, SWsoft plans to announce its Datacentre Automation Suite, a...

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