Version 4 of Virtual Iron debuts

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September 5, 2007 (Techworld.com) -- Virtual Iron Software Inc. has announced the latest version of its eponymous software package. New features include a management interface and ways to migrate workloads around the infrastructure.

Specifically, features new to Version 4 include:

• Integration of the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 kernel and drivers from Novell.


• The most current version of the Xen open-source 3.1 hypervisor. This also helps with symmetric multiprocessing of up to eight Windows CPUs, according to Virtual Iron. Each virtual machine can use from one-tenth of a CPU to all eight CPUs. Hypervisor support also brings dynamic hot-plugging of CPU, network and storage running into virtual machines.


• New physical-to-virtual (P2V) and virtual-to-virtual (V2V) migration powered by PlateSpin Ltd. This allows customers to migrate workloads -- including data, applications and operating systems -- across physical, virtual, blade and image-based infrastructures in any direction.


• A new graphical virtualization management interface for creating new virtual machines (VM) and managing their entire life cycle. Report generators now sport graphical features. The console also includes new graphing and reporting tools for measuring resource utilization and performance, including CPU, memory, disk and network I/O.


• Expanded 32- and 64-bit operating system support for Windows 2000, Vista and Red Hat Enterprise Linux Version 3.

The company's product development strategy entails integrating components from a number of sources, including XenSource Inc., PlateSpin and Novell Inc., and reselling the resulting package at a price far below that of market leader VMware's equivalent product, according to Virtual Iron marketing manager Mike Grandinetti.

The benefits of this approach, according to Grandinetti, is the resulting best-of-class products. "It's good for customers because OS vendors have tested their software against loads of hardware, which means peace of mind," he said. "In contrast, XenSource uses an unsupported Debian distribution."

"We want to reduce cost and complexity," said Grandinetti. "All you have to do is install VI, and it goes out and finds the VMs and makes it all work. With the other two main players, you must physically install on every server by hand. And VMware customers need Linux programming."

All told, the announcement is good news for "small and medium-sized organizations looking at virtualization" that do not need to "sacrifice advanced features for the sake of cost," said Chris Wolf, a senior analyst at Burton Group, in a statement. "Simple deployment, live migration, centralized policy-based management such as VM high-availability and data center load balancing, and comprehensive hardware certification and support should be viewed as requirements for any virtualization deployment, regardless of an organization's size."

Virtual Iron Version 4 will be generally available on Sept. 10.

The packaging has changed, too, with the addition of the Extended Enterprise Edition. Virtual Iron v4 Single Server Edition is free and offers up to 12 virtual servers on one physical server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell, kernel and drivers, and local disk storage. The Enterprise Edition costs $499 per socket and supports unlimited virtual servers, adding Internet SCSI, Fibre Channel storage, virtual symmetrical multiprocessing, virtual LANs, LiveMigration and LiveMaintenance. And finally the Extended Enterprise Edition costs $799 per socket and adds LiveRecovery, LiveCapacity and LiveConvert.

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