Xen.org has released a new version of open source Xen hypervisor software, which leverages new network cards optimised for virtualisation and promises users performance and scalability gains for any level of enterprise or cloud application workload.
The company claims that Xen 4.0 adds significant memory and security optimisations that will drive virtualisation, making it suitable for all workloads, even network intensive and high performance computing applications. It enables virtualisation to be deployed ubiquitously, across every server in a datacentre, bringing ease of management and efficiency to all applications.
According to Xen.org, the new version adds fault tolerance capabilities with support for live transactional synchronisation of VM states between physical servers as a basic component and leverages reliability, availability and serviceability (RAS) features in new Intel Xeon and AMD Opteron processors. It also features new algorithms such as transcendent memory and page sharing to enhance performance and capabilities of the hypervisor memory operations.
In addition, Xen 4.0’s NetChannel2 utilises advancements in networking hardware such as SMART NICs with multi-queue and SR-IOV functionality to provide virtualisation infrastructure with data processing capabilities and implements a new virtual hard disk that delivers VM snapshots and cloning features as well as the ability to do live virtual disk snapshots without stopping a VM process.
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Xen 4.0 supports PVOps in the Domain0 (Dom0) Linux kernel, which allows administrators access to the most recent devices supported by the Linux kernel.
Ian Pratt, founder and chairman of Xen.org, said: “The explosion of cloud computing in the industry and increasing demands from enterprise customers are the driving force behind the continued technology advancement of the Xen community.
“The Xen hypervisor already powers most of the world’s largest clouds and our customer base expects the Xen community to set the pace in virtualisation infrastructure. Xen 4.0 delivers on these expectations.”
