This is some great news for virtualization fans. Parallels has made the beta 2 version of their server software public.
Parallels announced today that it was going to open up its Beta 2 program for its Parallels Server product to the general public. Parallels Server is the first server virtualization platform to come out of Parallels, now famous for their desktop virtualization software on the Mac. The company announced the first round of beta testing only 2 months ago. And I knew back then that it wouldn’t be long until the beta reached the general public.
Looks like it has some great new features too:
- A Full Bare-metal Hypervisor that allows users to run multiple virtual machines directly on the host physical machine’s hardware. The company has been promising a bare-metal platform for some time now, and they are finally about to deliver on that promise.
- An Integrated Toolset that enhances and simplifies the user experience. The toolset includes: Parallels Tools, a set of helpful add-ons that make working with virtual servers easier and more productive: Parallels Transporter, a built-in, wizard driven migration tool that can move the entire contents of a real machine to a virtual machine: and an integrated, single-click backup utility. Tools like this will be important to help further adoption of the platform.
- Virtual Support for 4-way Symmetric Multi-processing (SMP), which lets users assign up to 4 virtual cores to a virtual machine for exceptional performance under heavy workloads. Long ago seems the day when we only had support for a single virtual processor in a virtual machine.
- Experimental Support for Intel VT-d, enabling users to leverage full hardware-acceleration technologies for faster, more stable virtual machines and better resource management. Using VT-d, users can also directly assign hardware resources such as graphics and network cards to virtual machines, giving them native access to that hardware for optimal service levels.
Worth taking a look at. More information and a download link can be found on their Parallels Server product page.
This entry was posted
by Bret Mette
on Thursday, March 6th, 2008 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Software.
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