Intel Activates Xeon Virtualization Technology

Tuesday, 07 February 2006 by Michel Roth

Users with servers powered by Intel's "Paxville" Xeon MP processor can now activate the chip's virtualization capabilities. Speaking at a conference on virtualization, Diane Bryant, vice president and general manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group, said that users can now contact systems makers Dell, Hewlett-Packard and IBM to help them upgrade the BIOS on the chip to enable the activation of the Intel Virtualization Technology.

The technology was in the chip when it started shipping last year, but it was disabled until now. "You can now enable virtualization technology in your servers and start running it in your testing and development environments," Bryant told the conference attendees. She also noted support from Red Hat and Novell's SuSE Linux unit for the open-source Xen virtualization technology, and announced virtualization software vendor VMware's release Feb. 6 of its free VMware Server product.

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