After one month of beta testing, Virtual Iron is ready to launch 4th generation of its platform.
Based on Xen 3.1 hypervisor (despite XenSource acquisition by Citrix) this new major release sports some remarkable improvements like:
- 64bit hypervisor architecture
- 8-way virtual SMP
- new management GUI
- Support for Windows Vista and 2000 and for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3 guest OSes
- Integration of optimized drivers for Novell SuSE Enterprise Server guest OS
- Integration of PlateSpin products under LiveConvert name
Virtual Iron 4.0 will be available since September 10 at $799 / socket for Extended Enterprise Edition and $499 / socket for Enterprise Edition. Free edition will continue to exist, allowing no more than 12 virtual machines on a single host.
Integrations appearing in this release are particularly important.
First of all Virtual Iron is enforcing its relationship with Novell, which seems more interested than ever in virtualization vendors (they tried to acquired XenSource much before Citrix.
This relationship may also be part of bigger plans: Novell has a unique partnership with Microsoft to improve their hypervisors interoperability, Virtual Iron just joined Microsoft Interop Alliance, and now Novell and Virtual Iron work together on performances improvements.
Secondarily the fact PlateSpin strengthens partnership started one year ago with Virtual Iron means the company is slowly changing its relationship with VMware, from partners to competitors (upcoming VMware Infrastructure 3.5 will deliver intergrated P2V and server consolidation tools).
In this scenario PlateSpin has all interests in enforcing alliances with alternative virtualization vendors, and Virtual Iron surely is a good one.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Roadmap
has been updated accordingly.