We announced today that Virtual Iron 3.1 has been released. Among all of the excitement that surrounds any product release, there are three items that are particularly exciting:

- Virtual Iron 3.1 provides full support for Windows XP and 2003. We're not just Linux anymore.

- Virtual Iron 3.1 Enterprise Edition is just $499 per socket -- that's less than 20% of the cost of VMware. Virtualization software that costs less than a server? That's the way it should be!

- Two free versions of Virtual Iron 3.1 are available to make it as easy as possible for you to evaluate and compare to VMware. Click here to learn more about these free versions.

We're extremely proud of this release and hope that you'll take the time to try Virtual Iron 3.1.

Network World, Computerworld and InfoWorld, that is.

These three publications, as well as CIO and others, all featured yesterday's Virtual Iron 3.1 release. See what they had to say:

Network World: "Virtual Iron bolsters server virtualization package, Company claims 20% cost advantage over VMware"

Computerworld: "VMware for the common man: Virtual Iron offers enterprise-class virtualization suite for less"

InfoWorld: Exclusive: Virtual enlightenment through Xen, Virtual Iron taps promising open source virtualization standard"

CIO: "Virtual Iron, XenSource Challenge VMware Lead"

Visit our In the News page for more...

Virtual Iron's CTO, Alex Vasilevsky, wrote Making Sense of Virtualization for Enterprise Open Source Magazine.

This article is a fantastic read for anybody interested in virtualization technologies. Here is a short excerpt:

"Companies are finding it increasingly difficult to manage their enterprise data centers as they become highly complex, expensive to build out, and difficult to reconfigure as needs change. In an effort to address these challenges, many IT professionals are turning to virtualization technologies.

"Virtualization addresses a number of these issues and offers a variety of benefits including hardware utilization, operational efficiency, and data center agility. However, many customers and their technology partners are becoming increasingly frustrated with the proprietary and expensive nature of the available virtualization software solutions. Luckily, a new wave of virtualization-related technologies is emerging to address these challenges and improve the economics of virtualization."

Click here to read the full article at Enterprise Open Source Magazine.

One of our customers forwarded me a FUD e-mail that VMware has been sending to their customers comparing Virtual Iron 3.1 with VMware. This e-mail came to my attention right after our new version 3.1 announcement. It is a fascinating piece of e-mail.

I am not going to bother you with the entire e-mail. It is full of errors and mistakes...an obvious rush job. However, I will share some of the most egregious parts.

Back in October, Virtual Iron's own Chris Barclay wrote an article for Network World: New Approach to Virtualizing x86s.

This article discusses native virtualization in detail and how this new hardware-assisted capability is now available in the latest processors from both Intel and AMD.

Click here for the full article and be sure to check out this graphic that shows how native virtualization works, also presented here:

Did you know that you can easily convert your VMware virtual hard disk images (VMDK files) into Microsoft's VMD format? Using the VMDK to VHD Converter, I was able to do this in just 4 steps!

Once you download the converter (they do ask you to register), all you have to do is open the vmdk2vhd.exe files and:

1. Select your source VMware virtual hard disk image (a VMDK file).
2. Choose a location to save the converted VHD file to.
3. Click 'convert' and let the converter run.
4. Import the VHD file into Virtual Iron. You're done!

Here is a screen shot of the converter (steps 1 to 3 above):

And a screenshot of Virtual Iron Virtualization Manager where you import the VHD file (step 4):

When evaluating partitioning options, most companies tend to choose either hardware or software partitioning (software partitioning = server virtualization). At Virtual Iron, we think you should have the option of both hardware and software partitioning in one fairly inexpensive system. Of course, hardware with "sort-of" software partitioning has been an expensive undertaking for most companies. Not anymore.

Earlier this month, we announced Virtual Iron 3.1 - at a fraction of the cost (1/5 to be more precise, that engineer in me always comes out) of VMware with comparable features. Just this morning, we announced a partnership with Fabric7, who designs and builds really cool enterprise-class servers with hardware partitioning. Our combined offering optimizes both your physical and virtual infrastructure, reducing your data center costs and complexity. Now, you can have both enterprise-class hardware and enterprise-class virtualization at a fraction of what you would expect to pay.

For more information, check out our press release.

Virtual Iron and one of our customers, The Charlotte Observer, is profiled in the cover story of the current issue of InformationWeek. The story, How Virtualization is Revolutionizing Business Data Centers, illustrates the need to reduce strain on data centers through virtualization.

InformationWeek begins the article by describing how The Charlotte Observer is using Virtual Iron to cut power and cooling costs in half and will be shrinking the size of their data center by more than half.

Click here to read the full article. Virtual Iron is profiled along with the article here.

As you can imagine, we're very excited to have this coverage. It's not often an emerging business like us is featured in such a prominent publication. And this is just the start.

It's been widely discussed how server virtualization can help cut costs, improve performance, etc. Less discussed are the security benefits that virtualization offers, such as a cost effective way to implement disaster recovery (see this page) or business continuity (this page).

Virtualization, of course, also allows you to install applications in a clean, stable environment (this feature is also used extensively in development and testing of software). Installing a new version of an application on a virtual server can save you some headaches down the line and allow you to discover potential security risks before implementing in a live environment.

Another great security feature is the ability to "replace" a server quickly. Simply create a template for your virtual server (everything installed and ready to go). If, for example, a server catches a virus, you can easily delete the infected virtual server and clone your template to recover quickly.

While sitting at my desk yesterday, I was creating many virtual machines to push our virtualization to its limits and realized how bad virtualization has been for my health.

There's no longer a need to get up from my desk and run to the server room (you could say "virtually" never). I just point my browser to the virtualization manager and create virtual infrastructure from the comfort of my chair with a click of a mouse. I never have to get up and go to the server room (Yupiee!).

Now, if you are like me, you desk is stocked with snacks. And when you're at your desk, it's Cheeto here and Dorito there, washed down with some soda. The more I'm at my desk, the more Cheetos I eat. Since I'm at my desk more often thanks to virtualization and walking to the server room less, that can't be good for me. My doctor will probably tell me, "you need to cut back on your virtualization."

Ah, well. Maybe it's a good thing. I pass the kitchen on my way to the server room and there are always snacks there (especially at this time of year), which I now avoid. I'm going to assume it all balances out.

What a year for virtualization! I was just chatting with one of our developers in the hallway (how was the long weekend? what are you doing for New Year's Eve?) when we got to talking about this past year.

It's been an immensely exciting year for Virtual Iron. We both agree that we're most proud of being the world's first virtualization software to fully support both Intel-VT and AMD-V hardware-assisted virtualization.

Other companies do bits and pieces of what we do but only Virtual Iron is running unmodified 32-bit and 64-bit guest operating systems (Windows, RedHat and Suse) with near native performance. And the best part? The virtualization stack is completely open source and free.

It's been a lot of work but it's worth it. The reaction has been unbelievable. If you were one of our thousands and thousands of downloaders, thank you!

Have a happy and healthy New Year!

If you haven't already seen it, Virtual Strategy Magazine has a podcast up about Virtual Iron 3.1.

My colleague Mike Grandinetti sat down with VSM to discuss our latest release and more.

Click here to listen and let me know what you think.

Virtual Iron's virtual infrastructure lets you quickly and easily virtualize, optimize and manage your IT resources with high-performance, open source virtualization:

I was reading some predictions from IDC:

- The use of Linux paravirtualization will be mostly sizzle -- not steak. Few users are going to substitute their current kernel with a paravirtualized kernel.

- Windows Vista will not uplift the operating system or PC market spending dramatically, but there will be a meaningful shift of adoption favoring premium Windows Vista SKUs.

- Virtualization and security will become focal points for vendors, who will do more to add support for virtualization and managing virtual environments to their service management offerings.

- Software appliances will become a household word in 2007. The convergence of virtual machine technology and an initiative by tool vendors is giving birth to this new form of software packaging.

I thought it would be fun to come up with some predictions of my own...so, here are my top ten predictions for virtualization in 2007: