WHITE PAPER
Virtualization on Itanium: Intel Enables Choice and
Flexibility for Customers
Sponsored by: Intel
John Humphreys Ken Cayton
November 2007
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
As virtualization is quickly becoming an important technology across all parts of the IT
environment, the technology is rapidly being incorporated in storage, networks, and
client environments. By far the most visible adoption of virtualization technology is
happening in servers — from the largest Unix server to the smallest volume system.
Virtualization software breaks the link between a given software-driven application or
service and the hardware resources of the underlying system and encapsulates and
isolates that stack or service.
Server virtualization has a long history, starting in mainframes in the 1960s. For well
over a decade, high-end RISC-based servers with Unix operating systems (OSs)
have utilized virtualization technologies. The Itanium mix of hardware and software
virtualization capabilities is taking its lead from these platforms to provide similar
capabilities (physical partitioning) and extensive firmware and software support in a
platform for mission-critical applications at volume economics. The inherent
capabilities of virtualization on Itanium are intended to help customers move beyond
simple server consolidation and leverage virtualization capabilities for high availability,
disaster recovery, as well as security and physical isolation purposes for both
business-critical and mission-critical application environments.
Intel is partnering with a host of virtualization providers to deliver customers as much
choice and flexibility as possible on which to run their mission-critical applications.
Key virtualization providers include HP, Hitachi, Fujitsu, NEC, Red Hat, and SWsoft.
By partnering so broadly, Intel believes it is delivering on the customer need for
choice in selecting the right tool for the job. Because virtualization is such a key and
important focal means for IT to return value to the organization, it is critical to have a
deep tool box.
This paper discusses the key attributes for virtualization adoption and highlights the
offerings of the core group of Intel partners leveraging Itanium processor solutions
with Intel for a variety of virtualization solutions.
Global Headquarters: 5 Speen Street Framingham, MA 01701 USA P.508.872.8200 F.508.935.4015 www.idc.com
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