The OpenVZ project (http://openvz.org) today announced availability of its operating system (OS) server virtualization software for the upcoming Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 (RHEL5) kernel.

"This provides a great base with solid device support and code stability, which we will use as the basis for future OpenVZ software," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We continue to keep in step with the latest Linux releases to serve users in the open source community."

The RHEL5 kernel is a modified 2.6.18 kernel, with improvements in the following areas:

- driver support and bug fixes, including SATA, SCSI, Ethernet, Infiniband, wireless;

- core subsystem bug fixes and improvements, such as networking, file systems, memory management.

The new OpenVZ kernel software can be downloaded here, http://openvz.org/download/kernel/rhel5. Also, users can access helpful installation instructions from the OpenVZ wiki, http://wiki.openvz.org/Quick_installation. The site serves as a forum to gain and share knowledge about OpenVZ and includes documentation and a knowledge base with helpful advice.

The OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users, promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative, community effort. Supported by SWsoft, the OpenVZ project serves the needs of the community developers, testers, documentation experts, and other technology enthusiasts who wish to participate in and accelerate the technology development process. OpenVZ is open source software that is used as the basis for the SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization software product.

About OpenVZ
OpenVZ is operating system server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates multiple isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server - enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.

With the power of today's processors, hardware is often under utilized. With virtualization technology, the server can effectively be split into many small ones, each running its tasks so that the whole server is utilized more efficiently.

OpenVZ software comes with user tools that help automate management of virtual servers. With its unique architecture that uses a single operating system instance, the virtual servers perform and execute like independent servers with their own memory, configuration files, users and applications. Each can be re-booted independently. Using template-based application deployment provides a simple way to get new virtual servers up and running in minutes and OpenVZ can run several times more virtual servers per CPU than other virtualization technologies. Also, the OpenVZ project maintains a blog site discussing virtualization technology, which can be accessed here, http://blog.openvz.org.