Virtual Iron

Virtual Iron Software, located in Lowell, Massachusetts, provides software for virtualization and management of a virtual infrastructure. Virtual Iron is one of the first companies to offer virtualization software to fully support Intel-VT and AMD-V hardware assisted virtualization. [cite news|url=http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1932575,00.asp|title=Virtual Iron to Support Intel Virtualization Tech|first=Jeffrey|last=Burt|date=March 1, 2006|publisher=eweek.com|accessdate=2007-01-16]

The Virtual Iron platform

Virtual Iron runs unmodified 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems with near-native performance. A Virtualization Manager offers access to control, automate, modify and monitor virtual resources. Virtualization services are automatically deployed on supported hardware without additional software. The platform is based on the open source Xen hypervisor. [cite web|url=http://searchservervirtualization.techtarget.com/originalContent/0,289142,sid94_gci1215072,00.html?track=NL-654&ad=564478&asrc=EM_NLN_565013&uid=521899|title=Xen startup Virtual Iron breaks ranks on paravirtualization|publisher=Search Server Virtualization|date=September 21, 2006|accessdate=2007-04-03] Virtual Iron, like other virtualization software, is commonly used for server consolidation, business continuity and capacity management. Virtualization is also frequently deployed in software development and test labs. [cite news|url=http://www.enterpriseitplanet.com/networking/news/article.php/3648421|title=Luring Virtual Workloads to Virtual Iron|date=December 11, 2006|first=Pedro|last=Hernandez|publisher=enterpriseitplanet.com|accessdate=2007-01-16]

The Virtual Iron platform consists of a virtualization manager, virtualization servers and a hypervisor. The virtualization manager, a Java-based application, allows for central management of the virtualized servers. A physical server can have many virtualized servers, which are run as unmodified guest operating systems.

Native virtualization

Virtual Iron has implemented native virtualization over paravirtualization. Native Virtualization allows for unmodified OSs and takes advantage of hardware advances for better performance. According to Virtual Iron, they are the first to implement native virtualization. [cite journal|url=http://www.processor.com/editorial/article.asp?article=articles%2Fp2823%2F09p23%2F09p23.asp&guid=&searchtype=&WordList=&bJumpTo=True|date=June 9, 2006|volume=28|issue=23|pages=31|title=The Virtually Run Data Center: Run Any Application Anywhere, Anytime|first=Chris A.|last=MacKinnon|journal=Processor|accessdate=2007-01-16] Virtual Iron discusses paravirtualization and native virtualization in their blog:

Virtual Iron has decided against paravirtualization in favor of "native virtualization.". With hardware advances coming out of Intel and AMD, we see native virtualization capable of matching physical hardware performance without any of the complexity and engineering efforts involved in paravirtualizing an OS. From our discussions with a broad range of users, they simply do not want to roll out modified OSs unless the trade-off is heavily in their favor. This Faustian trade-off is no longer necessary. [cite web|url=http://www.virtualiron.com/fusetalk/blog/index.cfm?month=7&year=2006|date=July 7, 2006|title=Paravirtualization is a Dead-End Approach|publisher=virtualiron.com|accessdate=2007-01-16]

See also

* Comparison of virtual machines for a list of related virtualization software products
* Virtual machine
* Virtualization
* x86 virtualization

References

External links

* [http://www.virtualiron.com Virtual Iron Home Page]
* [http://www.dabcc.com/channel.aspx?id=169 Virtual Iron Virtualization News and Support and Training Resources]