Virtual Iron Intros Platform

LOWELL, Mass. -- Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), the leading provider of server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management solutions derived from the Xen open source project, today announced the latest version of its enterprise-class software platform. Version 4 establishes new ease-of-use standards for creating, provisioning and managing the complete lifecycle of virtual machines across large numbers of physical servers. The new release provides comparable capabilities to the industrys most comprehensive offering and is available at just a fraction of the cost. Version 4 is packaged and priced for mainstream market adoption and extends Virtual Iron’s lead over XenSource by delivering the most advanced capabilities available in a highly reliable, cost-effective and easy-to-deploy server virtualization platform.

Version 4 is designed to support all primary virtualization use cases and builds on Virtual Iron’s robust virtualization services, live workload migration and automated policy-based management capabilities currently deployed in hundreds of customer environments worldwide. The release also adds important new production capabilities including: integration of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 kernel and drivers from Novell; new physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) migration powered by PlateSpin; a new graphical virtualization management interface; the most current version of the Xen open source 3.1 hypervisor; expanded 32 and 64 bit OS support; and multi-processor (SMP) Windows support. By embedding the Novell SLES 10 kernel and drivers in its platform, Virtual Iron addresses the reliability, support and security requirements of data center managers using virtualization in production environments. Version 4 also leverages the latest multi-core technology and hardware virtualization advancements from Intel.

“With Version 4, Virtual Iron continues to add important new capabilities for advanced virtual infrastructure management and distance its solution from other Xen-based solutions,” said Phillip Huber, chief operating officer for XCalibre Communications Ltd., a hosted solutions provider based in the UK. “We have evaluated the different offerings on the market very closely and Virtual Iron is the only server virtualization platform that could turn our vision for a flexible and dynamic IT infrastructure into reality. This latest version will deliver improved operational efficiencies, increase service levels and will thus make our new FlexiScale hosted services platform even more attractive.”

In a separate release:

LOWELL, Mass. -- Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of enterprise-class server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software, today announced its support for the latest Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® Processor 7300 series platforms. With the launch of its latest release, Virtual Iron is among the very first virtualization software solutions to commercially support the new Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7300 series. This enables Virtual Iron users to gain improved virtualization performance with less overhead for the most demanding workloads on the new Intel platform.Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7300 series bring the energy-efficient virtualization performance of Intel® Core Architecture to MP server platforms. This platform delivered up to 167% virtualization performance improvement on Virtual Iron Version 4.0 software based on the vConsolidate performance benchmark, a methodology to accurately and consistently measure performance in a virtualized environment. The results were remarkable. The Quad-Core Intel Xeon processor 7300 series-based server utilizing Virtual Iron 4.0 was able to run twice as many Consolidated Stack Units (CSUs) relative to Intel’s previous dual core MP platforms. This unprecedented scalability translates into increased virtualization performance, more VM capacity and higher consolidation ratios improving even further the benefits of virtualization for enterprise data centers.

Virtualization performance of this platform is further enhanced with new Intel® Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT) extensions. Virtual Iron is among the first to provide a server virtualization solution supporting these new capabilities, greatly improving the performance of SMP 32-bit guests running the most common and demanding workloads.

“Virtual Iron’s version 4 takes full advantage of Intel’s latest performance advancements in our Quad-Core processors and will deliver end-users the benefits from continuous innovations present on Intel platforms including the new extensions of Intel® Virtualization Technology” said Diane Bryant, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Server Platforms Group. “Intel is committed to working with Virtual Iron to deliver solutions that address the requirements that our combined customers have come to expect.”

Virtual Iron Software Inc.