Parallels Server virtualises Windows, Linux, Mac OS X

Stephen Withers
Thursday, 10 January 2008 03:05

Business IT - Technology

SWsoft claims its Parallels Server virtualisation product, now in private beta, is the first of its kind to run on Apple hardware and to run multiple copies of Mac OS X Server.

Where Parallels Desktop relies on a host operating system, Parallels Server gives the option of being installed in "bare metal" mode without a host OS.

Parallels Server supports any combination of more than 50 guest OSes, company officials claim. These may include Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2008, Red Hat Linux, SUSE Enterprise Linux, and Sun Solaris. Mac OS X Server is supported only on Apple hardware such as the Mac Pro and Xserve.

For years, the Mac OS X Server licence required that the software ran directly on Apple hardware. With the growing interest in virtualisation, Apple recently changed the terms to allow multiple licensed copies of the OS under virtualisation on Apple-labeled hardware.

The virtualisation of the normal desktop version of Mac OS X is still not permitted.

Other features of Parallels Server include "experimental support" for Intel's Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d) which should deliver higher levels of performance and reliability, and permit particular hardware I/O resources to be allocated to a specific virtual machine.
 
SWsoft is accepting registrations from potential beta testers of Parallels Server.