Suse Linux Enterprise Server with Virtualization Interface

Sep 14, 2007

Britta Wülfing

Novell's business Linux, Suse Linux Enterprise Server, will include an integrated Virtual Machine Interface (VMI) in future.

The free VMI interface by virtualization vendor VMware provides an interface between the guest operating system and the hypervisor. This boosts the performance of Linux guest operating systems in virtual environments. VMI is available as a patch for the developer kernel 2.6.21. Novell is now looking to leverage the performance benefits by integrating VMI with the Suse Linux Enterprise kernel.

Virtualization vendors VMware and Xen have also developed a para-virtualization interface dubbed "paravirt_ops" which is included with the Linux kernel. According to the latest reports by Novell at the VMworld Conference in San Francisco both the VMI hypervisor interface and "paravirt_ops" will be included in the next version of Suse Linux Enterprise Server.

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