VMware Unveils Workstation 6

PALO ALTO, Calif. -- VMware, Inc., the global leader in software for industry-standard virtualized desktops and servers, today announced that it is supporting cross-platform paravirtualization with the open-interface standard paravirt-ops in VMware Workstation 6, the sixth generation of its desktop virtualization software product. VMware Workstation 6 became generally available today and is the first commercially available product to support paravirt-ops.

Paravirtualized Linux operating systems are modified operating systems specifically optimized to run in a virtual environment. Unlike current paravirtualization technologies, paravirt-ops enables transparent paravirtualization, which allows users to run the same Linux kernel in paravirtualized mode on a hypervisor as well as on native hardware. As a result, organizations have to support and maintain fewer Linux kernels, saving management costs and simplifying application development.

Paravirt-ops is an open interface developed through a community process that included collaboration from the Linux community as well commercial vendors IBM, Red Hat, VMware and XenSource. Paravirt-ops was included in the latest version of the Linux kernel (version 2.6.20) and includes support for the VMware VMI interface, which provides a hypervisor-agnostic paravirtualization interface.

"Interoperability and open interfaces are a major focus for VMware," said Dan Chu, vice president of emerging products and markets at VMware. "VMware support for paravirtualization through the paravirt-ops interface demonstrates our commitment to working with open communities such as Linux and with other leading vendors to achieve open interoperability and optimizations for end users."

VMware Inc.