Virtualization On Itanium: Intel Enables Choice And Flexibility For Customers

As virtualization is quickly becoming an important technology across all parts of the IT environment, the technology is rapidly being incorporated in storage, networks, and client environments. By far the most visible adoption of virtualization technology is happening in servers - from the largest Unix server to the smallest volume system. Virtualization software breaks the link between a given software-driven application or service and the hardware resources of the underlying system and encapsulates and isolates that stack or service.

Server virtualization has a long history, starting in mainframes in the 1960s. For well over a decade, high-end RISC-based servers with Unix operating systems (OSs) have utilized virtualization technologies. The Itanium mix of hardware and software virtualization capabilities is taking its lead from these platforms to provide similar capabilities (physical partitioning) and extensive firmware and software support in a platform for mission-critical applications at volume economics. The inherent capabilities of virtualization on Itanium are intended to help customers move beyond simple server consolidation and leverage virtualization capabilities for high availability, disaster recovery, as well as security and physical isolation purposes for both business-critical and mission-critical application environments.

Intel is partnering with a host of virtualization providers to deliver customers as much choice and flexibility as possible on which to run their mission-critical applications. Key virtualization providers include HP, Hitachi, Fujitsu, NEC, Red Hat, and SWsoft. By partnering so broadly, Intel believes it is delivering on the customer need for choice in selecting the right tool for the job. Because virtualization is such a key and important focal means for IT to return value to the organization, it is critical to have a deep tool box.

This paper discusses the key attributes for virtualization adoption and highlights the offerings of the core group of Intel partners leveraging Itanium processor solutions with Intel for a variety of virtualization solutions.