At the LinuxWorld Conference & Expo in San Francisco, the OpenVZ project released its operating system-level server virtualization software in the form of a kernel build for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 ( RHEL4 ), plus enhancements that provide users with additional flexibility.
For example, now OpenVZ virtual environments can be called by designated names, rather than simply numeric IDs. Also, it is now possible to set the number of processors available to specific virtual environments to more finely-tune performance.

The RHEL4 kernel build provides a stable, secure base for the OpenVZ software with improved hardware support, such as the latest gigabit Ethernet and SCSI adapters. The OpenVZ software release includes:

-- Checkpointing and live migration where the state of a virtual environment is frozen and the image stored on disk – and restored on another server.

-- Virtual Ethernet device support so that network devices can be created inside virtual environments using designated names and hardware addresses that are different from the actual physical device.

"We continue to set a fast pace of software delivery to make available better and better technology with more and more capabilities," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "Within the past two weeks, we announced OpenVZ as part of the Debian distribution and now we’re providing an update with more value for the user community."

The new OpenVZ kernel software can be downloaded here, http://openvz.org/download/kernel/rhel4/. Also, users can access helpful installation instructions from the OpenVZ wiki, http://wiki.openvz.org/Quick_installation. The site serves as a forum to gain and share knowledge about OpenVZ and includes documentation and a knowledge base with helpful advice.

OpenVZ is operating system-level server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server – enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.

With the power of modern CPUs from both Intel and AMD ( including the latest dual-core offerings ), hardware is often under utilized. With virtualization technology, the server can effectively be split into many small ones, each running its tasks so that the whole server is utilized more efficiently.