Virtual Iron
Encyclopedia
Virtual Iron Software, was located in Lowell, Massachusetts
, sold proprietary software for virtualization and management of a virtual infrastructure. Virtual Iron figured among the first companies to offer virtualization software to fully support Intel VT-x and AMD-V hardware-assisted virtualization.
Oracle Corporation
agreed to acquire Virtual Iron Software, Inc., subject to customary closing conditions. Oracle now declines to offer any updates or patches for current customers, even updates and patches developed before the purchase. On June 19, 2009, The Register
reported that Oracle had killed the Virtual Iron product. It is expected that Virtual Iron code/products will merge other XEN based virtualization technology owned by Oracle / to be owned by Oracle such as Oracle VM, and Sun xVM product suite.
and 64-bit
guest operating system
s with near-native performance. A virtualization manager offered access to control, automate, modify and monitor virtual resources. Virtualization services were automatically deployed on supported hardware without additional software. The platform was based on the open source Xen
hypervisor
.
Virtual Iron, like other virtualization software, provided server consolidation, business continuity and capacity management.
The Virtual Iron platform consisted of a virtualization manager, virtualization servers and a hypervisor
. The virtualization manager (VI-Center), a Java
-based application, allowed for central management of the virtualized servers. A physical server could have many virtualized servers, which ran as unmodified guest operating systems.
Virtual Iron could use both physical-storage or virtual-storage access models. However, the use of a virtual-storage access model leveraged SAN
storage to create a fault-tolerant iSCSI
or Fibre Channel
based cluster of virtual nodes. The VI Center installed on both Windows and Linux. After installation, the administrator had to configure a "management network" for the purpose of communicating with nodes in the cluster. The VI Center used the management network to PXE
boot any server that was connected and correctly configured (for PXE
boot).
The included LiveRecovery tool could configure high availability. Additionally, CPU or power-consumption load-balancing was configurable using the LiveCapicity or LivePower tools respectively. Additional features included disk and virtual machine cloning (snapshots), IPMI/ILO support, etc.
(requiring hardware-assisted virtualization which it called native virtualization) over paravirtualization
. Native virtualization allowed for unmodified guest operating system
s and had the advantage of hardware advances for better performance. Virtual Iron, Inc claimed to have pioneered the implementation of native virtualization.
Virtual Iron discussed paravirtualization and native virtualization in its blog:
Lowell, Massachusetts
Lowell is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, USA. According to the 2010 census, the city's population was 106,519. It is the fourth largest city in the state. Lowell and Cambridge are the county seats of Middlesex County...
, sold proprietary software for virtualization and management of a virtual infrastructure. Virtual Iron figured among the first companies to offer virtualization software to fully support Intel VT-x and AMD-V hardware-assisted virtualization.
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation
Oracle Corporation is an American multinational computer technology corporation that specializes in developing and marketing hardware systems and enterprise software products – particularly database management systems...
agreed to acquire Virtual Iron Software, Inc., subject to customary closing conditions. Oracle now declines to offer any updates or patches for current customers, even updates and patches developed before the purchase. On June 19, 2009, The Register
The Register
The Register is a British technology news and opinion website. It was founded by John Lettice, Mike Magee and Ross Alderson in 1994 as a newsletter called "Chip Connection", initially as an email service...
reported that Oracle had killed the Virtual Iron product. It is expected that Virtual Iron code/products will merge other XEN based virtualization technology owned by Oracle / to be owned by Oracle such as Oracle VM, and Sun xVM product suite.
The Virtual Iron platform
Virtual Iron software ran unmodified 32-bit32-bit
The range of integer values that can be stored in 32 bits is 0 through 4,294,967,295. Hence, a processor with 32-bit memory addresses can directly access 4 GB of byte-addressable memory....
and 64-bit
64-bit
64-bit is a word size that defines certain classes of computer architecture, buses, memory and CPUs, and by extension the software that runs on them. 64-bit CPUs have existed in supercomputers since the 1970s and in RISC-based workstations and servers since the early 1990s...
guest operating system
Operating system
An operating system is a set of programs that manage computer hardware resources and provide common services for application software. The operating system is the most important type of system software in a computer system...
s with near-native performance. A virtualization manager offered access to control, automate, modify and monitor virtual resources. Virtualization services were automatically deployed on supported hardware without additional software. The platform was based on the open source Xen
Xen
Xen is a virtual-machine monitor providing services that allow multiple computer operating systems to execute on the same computer hardware concurrently....
hypervisor
Hypervisor
In computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
.
Virtual Iron, like other virtualization software, provided server consolidation, business continuity and capacity management.
The Virtual Iron platform consisted of a virtualization manager, virtualization servers and a hypervisor
Hypervisor
In computing, a hypervisor, also called virtual machine manager , is one of many hardware virtualization techniques that allow multiple operating systems, termed guests, to run concurrently on a host computer. It is so named because it is conceptually one level higher than a supervisory program...
. The virtualization manager (VI-Center), a Java
Java (programming language)
Java is a programming language originally developed by James Gosling at Sun Microsystems and released in 1995 as a core component of Sun Microsystems' Java platform. The language derives much of its syntax from C and C++ but has a simpler object model and fewer low-level facilities...
-based application, allowed for central management of the virtualized servers. A physical server could have many virtualized servers, which ran as unmodified guest operating systems.
Virtual Iron could use both physical-storage or virtual-storage access models. However, the use of a virtual-storage access model leveraged SAN
Storage area network
A storage area network is a dedicated network that provides access to consolidated, block level data storage. SANs are primarily used to make storage devices, such as disk arrays, tape libraries, and optical jukeboxes, accessible to servers so that the devices appear like locally attached devices...
storage to create a fault-tolerant iSCSI
ISCSI
In computing, iSCSI , is an abbreviation of Internet Small Computer System Interface, an Internet Protocol -based storage networking standard for linking data storage facilities. By carrying SCSI commands over IP networks, iSCSI is used to facilitate data transfers over intranets and to manage...
or Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel
Fibre Channel, or FC, is a gigabit-speed network technology primarily used for storage networking. Fibre Channel is standardized in the T11 Technical Committee of the InterNational Committee for Information Technology Standards , an American National Standards Institute –accredited standards...
based cluster of virtual nodes. The VI Center installed on both Windows and Linux. After installation, the administrator had to configure a "management network" for the purpose of communicating with nodes in the cluster. The VI Center used the management network to PXE
PXE
PXE may stand for:* Peer exchange, a decentralized file-sharing strategy* Preboot Execution Environment, an environment to bootstrap computers using a network interface card* Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a genetic disease...
boot any server that was connected and correctly configured (for PXE
PXE
PXE may stand for:* Peer exchange, a decentralized file-sharing strategy* Preboot Execution Environment, an environment to bootstrap computers using a network interface card* Pseudoxanthoma elasticum, a genetic disease...
boot).
The included LiveRecovery tool could configure high availability. Additionally, CPU or power-consumption load-balancing was configurable using the LiveCapicity or LivePower tools respectively. Additional features included disk and virtual machine cloning (snapshots), IPMI/ILO support, etc.
"Native virtualization"
Virtual Iron had implemented full virtualizationFull virtualization
In computer science, full virtualization is a virtualization technique used to provide a certain kind of virtual machine environment, namely, one that is a complete simulation of the underlying hardware...
(requiring hardware-assisted virtualization which it called native virtualization) over paravirtualization
Paravirtualization
In computing, paravirtualization is a virtualization technique that presents a software interface to virtual machines that is similar but not identical to that of the underlying hardware....
. Native virtualization allowed for unmodified guest operating system
Virtual machine
A virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
s and had the advantage of hardware advances for better performance. Virtual Iron, Inc claimed to have pioneered the implementation of native virtualization.
Virtual Iron discussed paravirtualization and native virtualization in its blog:
Virtual Iron has decided against paravirtualization in favor of "native virtualization." With hardware advances coming out of Intel and AMD, we see native virtualization capable of matching physical hardware performance without any of the complexity and engineering efforts involved in paravirtualizing an OS. From our discussions with a broad range of users, they simply do not want to roll out modified OSs unless the trade-off is heavily in their favor. This Faustian trade-off is no longer necessary.
See also
- Comparison of platform virtual machines for a list of related virtualization software products
- Virtual machineVirtual machineA virtual machine is a "completely isolated guest operating system installation within a normal host operating system". Modern virtual machines are implemented with either software emulation or hardware virtualization or both together.-VM Definitions:A virtual machine is a software...
- Platform virtualization
- x86 virtualizationX86 virtualizationIn computing, x86 virtualization is the facility that allows multiple operating systems to simultaneously share x86 processor resources in a safe and efficient manner, a facility generically known as hardware virtualization...