Virtualization comes to Novell's Linux

Novell this week is expected to announce support for a start-up's virtualization and management technology, a first step in making it easier for customers to combine Linux servers into a pool of resources that can be allocated depending on application demand.

SuSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 9 Service Pack 3, which began shipping several weeks ago, is built on a kernel that is preconfigured to support start-up Virtual Iron's software. That means all applications certified to run on SuSE will run in a Virtual Iron environment without modification.

Virtual Iron is a 60-person company whose software lets users slice single physical systems into multiple virtual machines and aggregate multiple servers into a single symmetric multiprocessing system. Its management software provides tools to create these virtual environments and then manage and distribute workloads across physical resources.

In the past, customers could run Virtual Iron on Linux, but only on a Linux kernel modified by Virtual Iron. The open source Xen virtualization technology also requires kernel modification. VMware and Microsoft, on the other hand, do not require changes to the kernel with their virtualization approaches.

In many cases, customers also had to recompile applications to run in a Virtual Iron environment. With SuSE Linux supporting Virtual Iron in the kernel, all applications certified to run on SLES 9 will run in a Virtual Iron environment without modification, says Justin Steinman, manager of worldwide data-center marketing for Novell.

Both Novell and Red Hat are focusing on integrating virtualization into their distributions as the open source operating system moves deeper into the data center. Server virtualization is becoming a key technology for next-generation data centers designed to be flexible to make more efficient use of resources.

Red Hat plans to integrate Xen virtualization technology directly into the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 platform that is expected to be released before year-end, says Brian Stevens, Red Hat's CTO. Red Hat also has close ties with VMware, but has no plans to support Virtual Iron. "We have seen no traction for CPU-aggregation technology such as Virtual Iron's within our customer base," Stevens says.

Novell works closely with VMware and plans to add native support for Xen in SLES 10, which is scheduled for release in May, Steinman says.

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