Oracle has released a new version of VM server virtualisation software, which it claims to enable customers to accelerate deployment and simplify management of enterprise applications, and to run their data centres in the environmentally-sustainable manner.
According to Oracle, the VM 2.2 features the latest Xen 3.4 hypervisor, and provides performance enhancements for customers running Intel Xeon processor 5500 series based on Intel microarchitecture, codenamed Nehalem, as well as Six-Core AMD Opteron processors. It features new CPU power management, memory management, and direct disk I/O capabilities.
In addition, the new release delivers on the initial integration of Oracle VM and Virtual Iron technology, including the ability for customers to migrate Virtual Iron virtual machines to Oracle VM images.
By leveraging the latest Xen 3.4 hypervisor and a newer dom0 kernel based on Oracle Enterprise Linux 5.3, the Oracle VM 2.2 helps provide broader hardware support, and better performance, scalability and security for both hardware virtualised and paravirtualised guests, the company claims.
The company said that the new release provides updated support for the Oracle Cluster File System (OCFS2) 1.4 to leverage features such as sparse file support to enable faster virtual machine provisioning and cloning, and also adds direct support for multipath storage devices that can be assigned to virtual machines and enhance performance of clustered applications.
In addition, resource management has been enhanced in Oracle VM 2.2 by allowing users to set the scheduling priority for virtual CPUs in virtual machines and cap the maximum percentage of CPU time each individual VM can access.
Wim Coekaerts, vice president of Linux and virtualisation engineering at Oracle, said: “The release of Oracle VM 2.2 enables customers to capitalize on the latest advancements in server virtualisation technology to better manage their virtual environments and reduce both cost and power consumption in the data centre. Additionally, this release further delivers on Oracle’s virtualisation roadmap by providing existing Virtual Iron customers the first phase of a migration path to Oracle VM.”
