Virtualisation Toolkit

SWsoft teams up with Novell on virtualisation

Stephen Shankland CNET News

Published: 15 Mar 2007 09:14 GMT

SWsoft, seller of the Virtuozzo virtualisation software, has begun a partnership to bundle its product with Novell's Suse Linux operating system, the companies plan to announce on Thursday.

Virtuozzo and the OpenVZ open-source project on which it's based let a single version of Linux be subdivided into several largely independent containers. It's a lighter-weight alternative to virtualisation such as Xen or VMware that runs multiple operating systems, but at present the SWsoft approach isn't built into mainstream versions of Linux.

The Novell partnership brings SWsoft closer to customers. In it, SWsoft will integrate the two products, the company said.

"By creating a bundle with Virtuozzo to deliver through the SWsoft channel, we see this as an opportunity to expand our customer base," said Holger Dyroff, vice president of product management for Novell's Suse Linux Enterprise.

Virtualisation holds the promise of more efficiently used servers, but a key issue is ensuring that the software people want to run on their computers won't be affected by the changes required to the underlying operating system. With the Novell-SWsoft partnership, SLES software certification carries over to the Virtuozzo foundation, and Novell still supports the software, an SWsoft representative said.

SWsoft also announced that Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 customers can download a new operating system kernel to use Virtuozzo on the new Red Hat product announced Wednesday.