GOVERNMENT

Novell and Virtual Iron Software today announced that Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 now supports Virtual Iron's data center virtualization and management platform. Novell is shipping a pre-configured kernel with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server to allow businesses to leverage the Virtual Iron technology for rapid deployment and configuration of enterprise-class computing workloads in the data center. As a result, organizations have the ability to improve overall data center management, reducing operating costs and increasing IT operating flexibility and responsiveness. "The Virtual Iron offering provides an important new alternative for clients looking to virtualize their open source platforms such as Novell's SUSE Linux Enterprise Server," said Juhi Jotwani, director of BladeCenter Solutions, IBM Systems and Technology Group. "IBM BladeCenter customers running Linux will benefit from this integrated system-level virtualization which complements the broad portfolio of IBM virtualization solutions." Virtual Iron is the first paravirtualized solution to be supported on commercial Linux. The software offers enterprise-class data center virtualization and policy-based management solutions that deliver maximum flexibility to production-level applications such as J2EE application servers and databases. The Virtual Iron solution increases resource utilization through pooling and sharing of data center resources, and it improves IT agility via dynamic and flexible infrastructure, rapid provisioning, rapid reconfiguration and capacity-on-demand capabilities. "Our partnership with Virtual Iron is another example of Novell's strategy to deliver choice to our customers," said Hal Bennett, vice president of global alliances for Novell. "With Virtual Iron on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, our support for it and other leading virtualization solutions gives our customers tools to create a flexible and agile data center." Mike Grandinetti, Virtual Iron's chief marketing officer, said, "Transitioning the data center to a more dynamic virtual model is essential to reducing the complexity and improving the responsiveness of today's IT organization. The support for Virtual Iron in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 enables enterprises to leverage the full power of a dynamic data center infrastructure and the dramatic gains it offers in agility, performance and operating expense." Novell fully supports the Virtual Iron solution without affecting existing independent software vendor certifications on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.