Linux virtual computing
p2pnet.net News:- Virtual Iron Software says it’s developed the only solution that completely separates physical computing hardware from operating systems and applications to allow transparent virtualization of a collection of interconnected physical servers.
“What if you could transform all the physical server hardware in your company into a set of computing building blocks – processors and memory and storage – and then those blocks to create virtual servers?” – it asks in its sales pitch. “What if you could build these servers in any size, from servers that use a fraction of a processor, to large multi-processor servers that actually span physical systems? What if these servers could run your applications and OS without modification? What you could add blocks to a server remove blocks from a server with a few mouse clicks – while the server is running, without touching the hardware, without even rebooting shutting down the application?”
No more, ’What Ifs’ because Virtual Iron’s VFe software creates a dynamic infrastructure from industry-standard platforms, allowing users to implement flexible, adaptable datacenters able to automatically adjust to changing business needs, it told the LinuxWorld conference
“It does this by transforming physical systems in an enterprise datacenter into a set of computing building blocks – processors, memory and storage – and then uses those blocks to create virtual servers,” it says. “These virtual servers, which can range from a fraction of a processor to large-scale multi-processors that actually span physical systems, can be dynamically reconfigured without interruptions.”
With Virtual Iron VFe, off-the-shelf industry standard x86 servers can act as building blocks to create enterprise-wide adaptive virtual computers, freeing customers from proprietary hardware, says the company, going on:
“Since these virtual computers also behave like x86 servers supported by Linux, and they run any Linux application transparently; there is no need to re-write existing applications. VFe’s architecture completely decouples processing from storage, enabling existing storage infrastructures such as storage area networks (SANs) and network attached storage (NAS) to seamlessly map into the virtual computing platforms. VFe leverages the industry standard Infiniband switching fabric as the interconnect technology for maximum performance.”
VFe features specifically designed to enhance Linux for enterprise computing and described by Virtual Iron as “unique” include:
- Dynamic scalability of virtual computers backed by datacenter resources
- Hot-pluggable virtual processors, memory and I/O
- Parallel and scalable I/O for maximum efficiency
- Seamless preventative maintenance of physical servers through hot swappable processors
- N+1 high availability clustering through virtual spares
- Policy driven management capabilities with graphical and web services interfaces
- Reduced complexity via rapid provisioning and deployment of virtual computers
- Fault isolation between virtual computers
- Consolidate and manage up to 128 virtual computers
- Create up to an n-way (16 maximum) SMP virtual computer
- Consolidate and manage up to 10 virtual servers per adaptive virtual computer
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