Virtual Iron Releases Version 3.1 with Windows Support and Delivers Free Enterprise-Ready Alternative to VMware
Company Establishes Price/Value Leadership and Makes Production-Ready Virtualization Free for Everyone to Drive Mainstream Adoption
Lowell, MA, December 11, 2006 – Virtual Iron Software (www.virtualiron.com), a provider of server virtualization and virtual infrastructure management software solutions, today announced the general availability of Version 3.1 of its enterprise-class virtualization platform with full support for both unmodified Windows and Linux. The release offers the first commercial alternative to VMware and targets mainstream user adoption for both enterprise and small to medium business users. At $499 per socket on a perpetual license basis, Virtual Iron establishes the clear price/value leadership position in the market, with comparable capabilities to VMware’s most comprehensive offering for less than 20 percent of the cost.
The company also announced the immediate availability of free, production-ready offerings of the software via download. This is the first time that a true enterprise–class virtualization solution with advanced management capabilities has been made available for free.
In separate announcements, Virtual Iron also highlighted two new customers, Mobius Management Systems and The Charlotte Observer. Both are deploying Virtual Iron Version 3.1 to replace VMware.
Market Perspective
"Application development and testing is one of our most important business processes," said Mitchell Gross, president and CEO of Mobius Management Systems, Inc., a global provider of enterprise archiving and records management software. "We must continually innovate to maintain our world-class capabilities. After a rigorous review of alternative offerings, we have chosen Virtual Iron to replace VMware for optimizing our software development, testing and staging processes. Virtual Iron's advanced capabilities and attractive price/value position will enable us to reduce server procurement costs and related power and cooling expenses while improving our team's productivity."
"Virtualization has the potential to deliver huge advantages in data center cost savings and reduced complexity," said Geoff Shorter, IT Infrastructure Manager, at The Charlotte Observer. "However, cost-savings alone are not enough. Virtual Iron's enterprise-class solution delivers this and more at less than 20 percent of the cost of alternative solutions."
The benefits of server virtualization are compelling and well documented but, until now, the cost of proprietary solutions has prevented the broad–based deployment of virtualization. According to IDC, adoption of server virtualization is currently only 6 percent and the single biggest hurdle to future adoption is cost. The leading proprietary solutions today generally cost more than the price of an industry-standard server.
"Server virtualization is quickly becoming a key area of investment for IT organizations worldwide. The clear return on investment combined with a broadening set of use cases has opened the door for mainstream customer adoption,” said John Humphreys, Program Director of IDC's Enterprise Virtualization program. "As organizations look to invest in virtualization 2.0, there is a clear role for competition in the market. Virtual Iron is providing the advanced features and functions, including virtual infrastructure management, to meet customer requirements while lowering the barrier of cost."
“Virtual Ngenuity has seen explosive growth around virtualization, with the market more than doubling every quarter,” said Steven Reed, CTO of virtualization solution provider and reseller Virtual Ngenuity. “Virtual Iron Version 3.1 enables us to revisit previously closed opportunities that were seeking more cost-effective virtualization options and at the time could not afford a VMware deployment. Virtual Iron also allows us to introduce new market segments to more cost-effective options for enterprise-class virtualization.”
Virtual Iron is targeting the price/value gap by bringing all the benefits of production-class virtualization to the mainstream market - from large enterprises to small and medium-sized businesses. Version 3.1 delivers comparable functionality to VMware’s most comprehensive offering for less than 20 percent of the price. The software is designed for all primary virtualization use cases including server consolidation, development/test/staging environments, the deployment of virtual appliances, rapid provisioning of virtual infrastructure, high availability/ business continuity and dynamic capacity management. Virtual Iron expects the new price point to remove a significant barrier to mainstream customer adoption.
Free Enterprise-Class Virtualization and Management
To accelerate deployment of its software and make it as easy as possible for any user to compare Virtual Iron 3.1 to their existing solution, the company has made production-ready offerings of Version 3.1 available absolutely free at http://www.virtualiron.com/free. Users can choose from two different free offerings of Virtual Iron’s full-featured 3.1 Enterprise Edition software package:
- Free Single-Server Virtualization and Management – Free Perpetual License up to 4 sockets, unlimited cores. Users can consolidate up to 80 Linux and Windows servers, run 32 or 64 bit workloads up to 8 CPUs each, create and deploy virtual appliances, and quickly and easily template and clone virtual servers. This is the only free enterprise-class offering that allows users to unlock the full capability of their server investment.
- Free Multi-Server Virtual Infrastructure Management - Free 30-Day Evaluation License. Users get all the capabilities of the single-server offering above plus all of Virtual Iron’s advanced virtualization management and policy-based automation capabilities for use in an unlimited multi-server environment.
Virtual Iron is the only solution provider leveraging the open source hypervisor to provide a free enterprise-class version of the software to users.
“Virtual Iron’s open source economics combined with the industry leading price performance of the Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5300 series makes enterprise-class virtualization technology affordable to all customers,” said Diane Bryant, Vice President and General Manager of Intel’s Server Platforms Group. “Intel is committed to working with Virtual Iron to develop virtualization solutions that address the most demanding customer requirements while maintaining the price/performance leadership that Intel customers have come to expect.”
“The cost of server virtualization should not exceed the price of an industry-standard server,” said John C. Thibault, President and CEO at Virtual Iron. “We will drive broad adoption with an aggressively-priced solution that does not sacrifice the capabilities, performance and reliability required to deploy enterprise applications. Version 3.1 provides an enterprise-ready solution that enables the full benefits of server virtualization at a fraction of the cost. Virtual Iron is also the first and only company to fulfill the market promise of the open source hypervisor project.”
New Version 3.1 Features
| Version 3.1 Feature | Use Case | User Benefits |
| Full support for new Quad-Core Intel® Xeon® processor 5300 series with Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel® VT). Full support for AMD hardware-assisted virtualization (AMD-V®). | Enterprise-Class Virtualization | Superior price performance Best price per watt hardware |
| Support for Windows and 32- and 64-bit Linux Up to 80 virtual servers per physical server Virtual disk files to improve storage efficiency and flexibility | Server Consolidation | Large savings in server reduction and power, space and cooling |
| Support for industry standard virtual hard disk file format Advanced templating and cloning of virtual servers | On Demand Deployment and Rapid Provisioning | Hardware storage independence Easy provisioning of new virtual servers from “golden” images saves time |
| Local hard disk support | Development & Test | Reduced cost for less critical applications |
| Integrated virtual server import/export | Virtual Appliances Archival and Backup | Build and share virtual servers Improved business continuity |
Version 3.1 also takes full advantage of Virtual Iron’s existing capabilities including the open source hypervisor with unmodified guest operating support, large memory (up to 96 GB of RAM), and support for hundreds of virtual servers on a single machine. The platform provides fully integrated virtual infrastructure management and policy-based automation capabilities. Virtual Iron is the only virtualization platform that does not require manual installation or management of software on physical servers. This dramatically simplifies deployment, installations, data center operations and reduces costs.
Broad Industry Support
“The software partitioning market for Intel servers is maturing and becoming more competitive. The price for virtualization software will drop.”
Tom Bittman, VP and Distinguished Analyst
Gartner IT Symposium Presentation - Virtualization: Taking Charge of Your Servers
"Emulex is working closely with Virtual Iron to further expand the adoption of server virtualization within the enterprise data center. Our joint collaborations simplify storage administration and lower cost of ownership for our mutual customers, while ensuring SAN management best practices, such as zoning and LUN mapping, through the deployment of enterprise-class Emulex LightPulse Virtual HBAs."
Mike Smith, Executive Vice President of Worldwide Marketing
Emulex
“We believe the AMD Opteron™ processor has made significant strides in advancing performance-per-watt and x86 virtualization leadership, thereby greatly enhancing the flexibility, scalability and compelling economics of hardware virtualization. Virtual Iron’s technology represents a natural and valuable extension of these benefits for users deploying enterprise-class virtualization applications.”
Margaret Lewis, Director, Commercial Solutions
AMD
“As virtualization technology expands its reach into every type of organization, from the smallest businesses to the largest enterprises, companies are positioning themselves to realize the well-documented benefits of virtualization. As a global independent virtualization specialist, the vacademy welcomes the launch of Virtual Iron’s latest release of its server virtualization and management product. It is positioned to bring highly capable and affordable server virtualization solution to the mainstream market, in turn giving users a greater choice.“
Andy Conoops, Operations Director
The Virtualization Academy (vacademy) - A global virtualization centre of excellence dedicated to the advancement and adoption of virtualisation technologies.
“QLogic customers in Global 2000 corporations are consolidating Linux and Windows infrastructure for better utilization. With support for popular Windows Server 2003, SANbox switches, and SANblade HBAs, Virtual Iron 3.1 allows customers to consolidate Linux and Windows server and SAN infrastructure quickly and cost effectively.”
Frank Berry, Vice President of Marketing
QLogic Corp.
“Virtual Iron helps differentiate our offerings with an excellent virtualization solution that is priced at less than 20 percent of the cost of VMware. In addition, Virtual Iron will offer a growing marketing opportunity for all channel partners with no channel conflict.”
Zoran Jovanovic, Founder
Austria-based Prosper Intelligence GmbH
“Virtualization integration and support services will be delivered by key vendors, including IBM, HP and Microsoft, with packaging and services for Linux by Red Hat and Novell and automation tools by third party solution suppliers, e.g. Virtual Iron.”
George Weiss, VP and Distinguished Analyst
Gartner IT Symposium Presentation - Windows vs. Linux vs. Everything Else
"PlateSpin’s broad multi-platform support for today’s leading virtualization platforms provides flexibility and customer choice in enterprise virtualization solutions. Utilizing new capabilities in Virtual Iron 3.1, PlateSpin PowerRecon™ and PowerConvert™ help customers comprehensively analyze and optimize their data center infrastructure, providing operational advantages and capital expense reduction."
Stephen Pollack, CEO
PlateSpin Ltd.
“As one of the UK’s leading data center virtualization specialists, we are pleased to be a launch partner for Virtual Iron. This new and highly capable product set broadens the choice for end users in the server virtualization space.”
Julian Box, Managing Director
VirtualizeIT
"As a leading UK data center efficiency specialist, NewDatum's ultimate goal is the virtualisation of the production data center. With Virtual Iron 3.1, our customers can now leverage the full capacity of their entire computing infrastructure from development to stress test to production. This brrings an entirely new level of flexibility we can deliver to our customers' data centers."
Dermot Reynolds, Managing Director
NewDatum
About Virtual Iron Software, Inc.
Virtual Iron provides enterprise-class software solutions for creating and managing virtual infrastructure. Its software enables companies to dramatically reduce the complexity and cost of managing and operating their enterprise data center. Virtual Iron delivers advanced virtualization capabilities that exploit industry standards, open source economics and built-in hardware-assisted acceleration. Organizations use Virtual Iron’s software for consolidation, rapid provisioning, business continuity, capacity management and policy-based automation to deliver significant improvements in utilization, manageability and agility. Virtual Iron is privately held and based in Lowell, Massachusetts. For more information, visit http://www.virtualiron.com or email info@virtualiron.com.
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