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Parallels Releases Server 1.0

June 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Parallels announced today that Parallels Server for Mac, the former SWSoft’s hypervisor solution for server virtualization, is now available. Parallels Server for Mac can run on any Intel-powered Apple hardware, including the Xserve and Mac Pro, running OS X Leopard Server and comes to market after a worldwide beta testing program involving Mac, Windows and Linux server professionals.

Parallels logo

“Parallels Server for Mac opens the door for virtualization on Apple servers and represents an important step in delivering on our ‘Optimized Computing’ vision by adding hypervisor-based server virtualization,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. “Parallels Server for Mac will be a catalyst in driving Mac server adoption in the enterprise, as it is the first product ever to enable IT professionals and developers to capitalize on the power of OS X Server while keeping the flexibility to run Windows and Linux workloads.”

Parallels Server for Mac includes support for OS X Leopard Server as a guest OS in a virtual machine. Running OS X Leopard Server in a virtual machine enables Mac server administrators to run multiple, isolated workloads on a single OS X Leopard Server-powered Xserve, providing the ability to test and sandbox with more agility than ever before.

Parallels Server includes the following features:

  • 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. 2-way SMP is also supported, giving users an unsurpassed level of virtual machine customization.
  • The inclusion of key next-generation technologies such as an ACPI BIOS, and support for up to 32GB of physical RAM.
  • Support for Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel VT-x) technologies to take full advantage of hardware-assisted acceleration.
  • A fully Scriptable Multi-client Parallels Management Console that lets users manages virtual and physical servers locally and remotely. The Parallels Management Console’s APIs are completely open and scriptable with Python, enabling administrators to automate common server tasks straight from the command line.
  • An Integrated Toolset that enhances and simplifies the user experience.The toolset includes: Parallels Tools, a set of helpful utilities that make working with virtual servers easier and more productive; Parallels Transporter, a built-in, assistant driven physical to virtual (P2V) and virtual to virtual (V2V) migration tool; and the Parallels Image Tool, which lets users modify settings of their virtual hard disk.
  • The ability to run any combination of more than 50 different x86 (32-bit) and x64 (64-bit) guest operating systems, including the just released Windows Server 2008 in secure, high-performing virtual machines.
  • A Powerful SDK that enables third party vendors to integrate Parallels Server support into their products. The SDK is the same one used by Parallels engineers to build the Parallels Management Console.

A full list of features and specifications is available here. This version is priced $999 for an unlimited number of cores.

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Apple, Leopard Server, Mac, Mac OS X, Mac Pro, OS X Leopard Server, Parallels, Parallels Server, Parallels Server 1.0, Parallels Server for Mac, Parallels Server for Mac 1.0, Serguei Beloussov, swsoft, virtualisation, virtualization, XServe

Parallels Named Red Herring 100 Award Finalist

April 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Server virtualization firm Parallels has been named a finalist in the Red Herring 100 Awards‘ selection of the most innovative private technology companies based in North America.

Red Herring

In preparation for the formal announcement of its Top 100 Award, the Red Herring editorial board surveyed the entrepreneurial scene throughout the North American region and identified the top 200 out of more than 800 closely evaluated companies that are “leading the next wave of innovation”.

Evaluations were made on both quantitative and qualitative criteria such as financial performance, innovation, management, strategy, and ecosystem integration.

Joel Dreyfuss, Editor-in-Chief of Red Herring noted:

”We can see the exciting evolution of the technology sector reflected in the quality and variety of exceptional companies that we had to choose from in putting our list together. It was tough to choose just 200 finalists from such a large list of excellent contenders, and we are very happy with the quality of the companies we selected as finalists.”

According to Red Herring, Parallels is on the list due to its innovative and entrepreneurial achievements. The 100 winning companies will be announced at the Red Herring North America event, May 12-14, in San Jose.

[Source: The Hosting News]

Filed Under: News, Partnerships Tagged With: awards, Parallels, Red Herring, Red Herring 100, Red Herring 100 Awards, server virtualization, swsoft, virtualisation, virtualization

Sun Microsystems To Acquire Parallels For $ 205 Million (Updated)

April 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters 23 Comments

Looks like that Parallels IPO won’t be happening after all. Sun Microsystems has today announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Parallels (formerly SWsoft) and all of its assets for a whopping $ 205 million. The major acquisition had been rumoured to be imminent throughout the course of 2007, but never actually went through, which led mosts analysts to believe the Herndon, VA-based company was heading towards an IPO following in VMware’s footsteps rather than being picked up by one of the big boys.

Needless to say, the acquisition is a pretty bold one, which is bound to serve as wake-up call for the entire virtualization industry. Both companies had been on a buying spree the past few months: Sun picked up innotek / VirtualBox, while Parallels recently acknowledged its January acquisition of ModernGigabyte. The acquisition is expected to be finalized by June, around the time Sun also plans to ship xVM Server.

“With the acquisition of Parallels, Sun’s ready to become the only true leader in virtualization technology,” said Brian Sutphin, Executive Vice President Corporate Development & Alliances for Sun Microsystems. “With Parallels’ strong desktop position, we will be able to cater both Windows/Linux and Mac users with our state-of-the-art virtualization offering.”

Sergei Beloussov, Board Chairman and CEO of Parallels, added:”We’re extremely excited about the opportunities this merger will bring for our many customers and partners. We’re looking forward to effectively integrating our server product line with Sun’s sparc systems.”

Parallels, former SWsoft, has been making waves ever since it was founded in 1999. The virtualization technology company today counts more than 900 employees worldwide and has more than doubled revenues every year for the past eight years, while its products have been giving VMware a run for its money, especially in the small- and medium-business marketplace. The company was backed in 2005 by Intel Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Insight Venture Partners.

While VMware has been more than struggling to consolidate its splashing entry on the public market, Parallels has effectively become the second largest virtualization seller, with both containers and hypervisor plays in its portfolio. Sun’s bold move is logical in this regard, be it quite late, as this acquisition would have made more sense if it had happened around this time last year.

We’re still scrambling to get some official comments on the news from market insiders, we’ll update this post as they come in!

Update: obviously, this was an April Fool (we’re in based in Europe, so it’s April 1 earlier than over in the US).

On any other day, what would you think about this announcement? Would it have surprised you that much? Do you think it would be a fair valuation and a good synergy? Let us know in comments!

(also: check some classic April Fools’ Day jokes here)

Update 2: kudos to Parallels for their sense of humour, thanks to Brian, Dan and Tarry for linking and to the person who dugg the story 😉

Update 3: check out our follow-up post

Filed Under: Acquisitions, Featured, News Tagged With: acquisition, Featured, innotek, ModernGigabyte, Parallels, sun, sun microsystems, swsoft, VirtualBox, virtualisation, virtualization, vmware

Keep It Quiet, But Parallels Acquired ModernGigabyte

March 26, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

The Register sure has some pretty observant readers. Apparently one of them noticed an early preview of a deal which has been forged two months ago but was only to be announced tomorrow: Parallels acquired ModernGigabyte, the makers of billing software ModernBill and other automation solutions for the hosting provider market.

virtualization-moderngigabyte-modernbill.jpg

From the website section about the deal, which is supposed to be shared with the press starting tomorrow:

 

What is Parallels announcing?

Parallels is announcing the acquisition of ModernGigabyte, the creators of the ModernBill automated billing system.

 

What is Parallels acquiring?

Parallels is acquiring all of the assets of ModernGigabyte, including its products, services, intellectual property, and its existing staff. ModernGigabyte products include:

  • ModernBill, a billing system for hosting and service providers
  • ModernAuthorize, a real-time payment and credit card processing service
  • SSL Factory, an automated delivery system for SSL cetificates
  • ModernDNS, an automated domain registration service
  • FraudGuardian, a real-time fraud checking service for online ordering

Why did Parallels acquire ModernGigabyte?

Parallels believes that customers will benefit from this acquisition. ModernBill is already integrated with many of the Parallels family of hosting products and now small hosting providers will be able to purchase both control panels and a billing solution from the same company.

Dedicated hosting providers can offer ModernBill along with Plesk to create a complete reseller package.

Parallels ISV partners which have adopted the Application Packaging Standard (APS) will benefit by having a ready to deliver solution for hosting companies to sell their products.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed, and the deal between the two private firms was actually approved by both companies on January 11 of this year. Note that Parallels plans to maintain the current prices on the ModernBill website.

 

 

Filed Under: Acquisitions, News Tagged With: FraudGuardian, ModernAuthorize, ModernBill, ModernDNS, ModernGigabyte, Parallels, Parallels Virtuozzo, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, SSL Factory, swsoft, virtualisation, virtualization, Virtuozzo

The Current State of Open Source Virtualization

March 26, 2008 by Kris Buytaert 6 Comments

We’ve started by looking back at a decade of Open Source virtualization, and in this second part of the series we’ll tackle today’s landscape (last updated in March 2008).

The least you can say about the current state of Open Source virtualization is that the field is extremely diverse: different approaches in the virtualization area are all represented, with paravirtualization, OS virtualization and hardware-assisted virtualization in various colors and flavours.

Let’s start with paravirtualization:

Xenmaster Ian Pratt released the 1.0 version of Xen somewhere in September 2003, it wasn’t till the Xen 2.0 release (around December 2005) that Xen adoption really started to accelerate. Ian announced the 2.0 release in November 2004 with support for both Linux 2.4, 2.6, FreeBSD and Live Migration support.

Xen pioneered Paravirtualization, giving it both a giant performance boost but also an argument for the naysayers who claimed it was impossible to run Windows on the platform. The fact that the Cambridge lab had access to the Windows source code and even had it running on Xen wasn’t really an argument since they were unable to redistribute it.

Different Linux distributions adopted quickly making Xen the de facto Linux virtualization solution. Also: the Open Solaris project was working on Xen support, first only as a guest but later also as a host operating system.

Then came the VT capabilities, and once again Xen was leading the pack, bringing out a Xen version that supported hardware-assisted virtualization. So the Open Source Xen version was beating the competition on different levels – speed, flexibility, etc. – but had one key element missing: the management layer, a GUI, the part that people actually spend money on …

Meanwhile, the company XenSource Inc. had been founded by the original developers of Xen and they started to work on a set of management tools and bang, next thing we know is Citrix announcing the acquisition of XenSource for $ 500 million USD in the summer of 2007.

While the discussion between Xen and VMware was still going on to see what infrastructure was needed in the kernel to support virtualization, KVM (Kernel Based Virtual Machine) had come out of nowhere: a lightweight kernel module that enabled the VT Capabilities of the new generation of CPUs and that ended up in the mainstream kernel in no time. KVM was ultimately included in the 2.6.20 release of the Linux kernel after merely a couple of months of development.

KVM enabled Qemu to benefit from the VT features and a new team was born. KVM is the lean and mean, small virtual machine, and the fact that it was so small only made it easier to adopt in the main tree. KVM is maintained by Avi Kivity who is working at Qumranet, with Moshe Bar amongst its founders about to launch a product called Solid ICE, aiming for the desktop virtualization market. KVM however is not doing all the work, a modified Qemu version acts as the user space part that enables the full power of KVM.

Today different distributions support both KVM and Xen and are working towards a single tool set to manage them both.

Qemu started to pop up everywhere in the virtualization arena in 2007, e.g. within the VirtualBox project from innotek, a German software company located in Stuttgart.

VirtualBox is one of the most important open source solutions if you want to run other operating systems on your desktop. It’s free, it’s open and it has all the features you would expect from its commercial counterparts! Sometimes these commercial counterparts, facilitate ‘match making’ events, which outcomes are not intended. For example at VMworld in New York in September ’07, Achim Hasenmueller, co-founder and kernel wizard at innotek was introduced to the Sun Microsystems management and less than four months later they announced their ‘marriage’ (Sun acquired innotek for an undisclosed amount in February 2007). As VirtualBox was already running on a multitude of Operating Systems such as Windows, Linux and OS/X, they evidently also added Sun’s Solaris to this impressive list. VirtualBox also supports a large number of guest platforms, including common Windows flavors (NT 4.0, 2000, XP, Server 2003, Vista).

We’ve been talking mostly about paravirtualisation and hardware-assisted virtualization with KVM, Xen and VirtualBox, but of course there is much more out there. Let’s have a look at the players on the Operating System Level virtualisation are, an identical copy of one kernel providing a secured container where user space programs can run. Today, there are 2 main players in this area (VServer and OpenVZ). VServer was started by Jacques Gelinas and is currently lead by Herbert Pötzl from Austria. The Linux-VServer started July 2001 as BSD Jail reimplementation for Linux. In 2004, it was rewritten from scratch for the 2.6 kernel.

Not much of a surprise, people tend to think that Linux-VServer and OpenVZ have a lot in common, and some people even think OpenVZ was once based on a fork of Linux-VServer. According to Herbert Pötzl that isn’t true today: the projects do not share any code, although they provide roughly similar functionality in often quite different ways … In 2003 however , Linux-VServer was forked into FreeVPS by Alex Lyashkov and soon after that, it was integrated into the H-Sphere product, maintained by Positive Software.

SWsoft was founded back in 1999 and released their commercial Virtuozzo product in 2001, as a proprietary virtualization solution for Linux and later also supporting Windows. When SWsoft acquired Plesk in 2003, a proprietary framework to manage hosted solution, evidently virtualization fitted nicely in this picture since the OS level virtualization OpenVZ uses is a perfect match for web hosting.

SWsoft then went on to buy Parallels and managed to keep it a secret for almost 3 years. In late 2007, they finally decided that their Parallels brand was better known than their Virtuozzo or Plesk brands and decided to change the company name into Parallels alltogether. Having a single kernel for each virtual machine that runs in your environment is both the advantage and the disadvantage of OpenVZ and Linux-VServer. Its advantage of being a lightweight solution that can scale easily to hundreds of machines with no significant penalty is also its biggest disadvantage – what if something goes wrong with that kernel? Other approaches such as Xen and KVM allow you to run different kernels , or even different operating systems, which of course requires much more memory for each instance.

If you are into Hot Motorcycles you’ll remember the 1999 Virtual Iron company, a company that manufactered a CD that helped people create a customized bike. Fast forward to 2004, where a domain-squatter was using the site, and in February 2005 a company that looks like the Virtual Iron company we know now, started using the domain. Virtual Iron had a product called Virtual Iron VFE in store, which they presented at Linux World and later also more in depth at OLS. They claimed to have developed a Virtual Machine Monitor that was also Clustered. The Virtual Iron VFe product transparently created a shared memory multi-processor out of number of servers.

Yes, this sounds familiar, it sounds like an SSI implementation, it sounds like openMosix or OpenSSI, and that’s exactly what some people thought it was. Rumors on the net claimed that Virtual Iron was indeed violating the GPL while reusing and modifying openMosix code while not redistributing it’s changes, true or false, we’ll probably never know. In August 2005 Virtual Iron started shifting as they announced they were working on having their software manage other platforms too. Today, their product is based on an open-source Hypervisor, which name you can most likely already guess (yes, indeed, they use Xen). What happened with the SSI alike technology is unclear.

The final player in this area we need to point to is Paul Rusty Russel’s Lguest, formerly known as Lhype, almost known as Rustyvisor or Wonkavisor. It is an experimental Hypervisor developed by Rusty intended as proof of concept for the paravirt ops. Redhat has been working on it also, but who knows what the future will bring?

Which brings us to the final part: where to put your money? That kinda depends on your needs:

  • If I’m talking to a hoster who needs to run lots and lots of similar machines with easy management, I’ll be pointing him to Linux-Vserver
  • If someone is looking at bare metal hardware virtualisation for his Linux machines, it’s Xen all the way
  • If he needs a platform to test different distributions and operating systems on his desktop I’ll probably be pointing to VirtualBox
  • If someone really wants to head into placing his desktops virtualized in the data center, KVM would be my bet

What if someone wants to do nothing else but use Linux as a base framework to run Windows virtual machines?

In that case the commercial Xen offerings such as the one from XenSource, Suse and Redhat would be best as they can provide you also with adapted drivers for the guest operating system. But ask me again in 6 months and I’ll probably tell you otherwise.

Watch out for the third part of this article series, with more on Xen!

Filed Under: Featured, Guest Posts, News Tagged With: citrix, Ian Pratt, kvm, Linux-VServer, open source virtualization, openvz, Parallels, qemu, qumranet, sun microsystems, swsoft, Virtual Iron, VirtualBox, virtualisation, virtualization, Virtuozzo, vmware, VServer, Xen, xensource

Parallels Packages Virtuozzo Containers 4 Software With Novell’s SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10

March 13, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Parallels (formerly SWsoft) today announced availability of its Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0 server virtualization software packaged with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 from Novell. This provides customers with another choice for virtualization, which can effectively handle performance-sensitive workloads such as databases as well as support for servers using Itanium processors.

virtualization-parallels-server-beta1.png

Parallels uses the standard distribution of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, an interoperable open platform for mission-critical computing, and adds its recently released version of virtualization software to deliver an integrated solution to customers.

From the press release:

“Customers can improve server utilization rates and realize the manageability benefits of containers-based virtualization in combination with one of the most popular enterprise-class Linux distributions in the world,” said Kurt Daniel, senior vice president of marketing and online, Parallels. “Importantly, we’re giving customers one place to turn for support with this integrated virtualization solution.”

“Novell remains committed to providing a variety of virtualization choices,” said Holger Dyroff, vice president of product management for SUSE Linux Enterprise. “We view this solution as an opportunity to expand our customer base for SUSE Linux Enterprise.”

Filed Under: News, Partnerships Tagged With: Novell, Parallels, Parallels Virtuozzo, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers 4.0, SUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10, swsoft, virtualisation, virtualization, Virtuozzo

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