Ubuntu Linux Stripped for Virtualized Environments

Canonical announced their release of Ubuntu JeOS (Just Enough Operating System, pronounced "juice") for VMware last week in San Francisco at the VMworld conference. This version will be a more compact and higher-performance base for virtual machine "appliances" that bundle the operating system with higher-level software.

Business Objects, a software maker, unveiled this week a virtual appliance that uses Ubuntu JeOS. This appliance has a pre-installed and pre-configured BI system that runs on VMware's platform for virtualization. At the VMworld conference VMware also announced their VMware ESX Server 3i, a product that can run from flash memory built into a server, without installing it on the hard drive. VMware has partnerships with IBM, Dell, HP, NEC and Fujitsu and VMware representatives are expecting them to integrate ESX Server 3i into their server at this end of this year or the beginning of 2008. This will simplify the deployment and management of virtual infrastructure and the customers will be able to boot up a server or even reap the benefits of virtualization in a matter of minutes.

Virtualization is a a process that permits higher-level software and operating systems to run in compartments called "virtual machines", which can be started, stopped, saved to disk and even moved from one computer to another. The element that stands at the base of virtualization is the hypervisor, or virtual machine monitor. A hypervisor is designed for controlling the resources a particular virtual machine may use, backing up data and moving virtual machines from one real machine to another. This term originates in IBM's CP-370 reimplementation of CP-67 for the System/370, released in 1972 as VM/370. The first hypervisor that provided full virtualization was IBM's CP-40, a research system that began to be used in 1967, transformed into the first version of IBM's CP/CMS operating system.