Xen and the Art of Linux Management

. . . keeping an eye on the penguin

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Mar. 14, 2006

If you listen to the CIOs and CTOs of enterprises, the word you'll hear the most these days is "virtualization."

It's this year's hot tech word. Unlike such previous contenders as "Web services," "network computers," and "tablet," however, this one will have staying power. Businesses want to get the most work out of their hunky new servers, and that means virtualization.

As Brian Stevens, Red Hat Inc.'s CTO, pointed out, "conservative estimates show that servers typically operate at between 15 and 25 percent of CPU capacity, but with virtualization that could [be] improved to 80 percent."

The Linux companies have seen this trend coming for over a year now. As a result, both Novell and Red Hat have been pushing forward with Xen for some time.

Xen is a hypervisor. This is a kind of VM (virtual machine) software that enables multiple operating systems, or multiple instances of a single operating system to share a computer's hardware resources.

Xen 3.01 supports 32-processor systems and offers more than 4GB of memory in 32-bit computing environments and up to 8TB in 64-bit situations. It also supports Intel Inc.'s on-chip Virtualization Technology.

The Linux companies aren't the only ones that have figured out that virtualization is a quick path to companies' 2006-2007 IT budgets. The VM field is a competitive one, with powerful vendors such as VMware Inc., SWsoft Inc., and Scalent Systems Inc. already in place.

Red Hat has decided, though, that it's not going to let competition slow it down.

On March 14th, Red Hat made it official with its announcement of its "Integrated Virtualization" strategy. As first reported by eWEEK's Peter Galli, Red Hat has partnered with Intel and AMD to deliver a Linux that has extremely effective x86-compatible virtualization technology.

Red Hat will make Fedora Core 5, which will contain a preview of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) virtualization technology, available in March. In the summer of 2006, Red Hat plans to make Virtualization Migration and Assessment Services available along with an Enterprise Virtualization beta.

If all goes well, the next release of Red Hat's enterprise Linux, RHEL 5, will arrive by the end of 2006, complete with fully integrated virtualization.

Let the other virtualization companies beware. The Linux companies are moving in, and Red Hat, in particular, is planning on getting a lion's share of this new business-IT market.

-- Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols

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Use of this site is governed by our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Except where otherwise specified, the contents of this site are copyright © 1999-2008 Ziff Davis Enterprise Holdings Inc. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Ziff Davis Enterprise is prohibited. Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds. All other marks are the property of their respective owners.