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HP Integrity gets Parallel virtualisation
For 'flexible' OSes

By Colin Barker

Published: Thursday 03 July 2008

HP has said it will offer technology from virtualisation company Parallels to those customers who wish to virtualise Microsoft Windows and Linux workloads on HP Integrity servers.

The deal, announced on Tuesday, will see Parallels Virtuozzo Containers running on HP Integrity servers, including the largest, 64-processor HP Integrity Superdome servers. HP's Integrity range of systems runs on the Intel Itanium line of processors.

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HP and Parallels (formerly SWsoft) are coming into a highly competitive market dominated by hypervisor-based vitualisation from companies like market leaders VMware and Citrix, with its XenServer.

Parallels' Containers partition an operating system into different operating environments, rather than following the VMware/XenServer model of virtualised operating systems sitting on top of a hypervisor software layer. Parallels said its model should allow for a more flexible operating environment.

Serguei Beloussov, chief executive of Parallels, said: "Container virtualisation is increasingly popular for virtualising high-performance, production workloads. This makes our technology a perfect fit with HP Integrity servers."

James Governor, an analyst with RedMonk, said the deal was "a nice win" for Parallels and would take the company into the high-end of HP computing. "Parallels is good software with a pretty good reputation, because it just works," Governor told silicon.com sister site ZDNet.co.uk. "HP, meanwhile, is happy to see multiple virtualisation technologies in the market. [It is] divide and rule - the age old imperial strategy."

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers on the HP Integrity server is available now for $4,500 to utilise two processors.