Novell has observed an increase in the performance of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server when the Linux operating system is working in a VMware medium as a virtual machine guest. SUSE Linux Enterprise's kernel was modified to support VMI (Virtual Machine Interface), a communication system between the hypervisor and guest operating system that simplifies the virtualization and enables Linux to be a more efficient guest operating system when running in VMware environments.

The Linux development community accepted the VMI modifications and will be included in the next releases of the standard Linux kernel and in future SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Holger Dyroff, vice president of product management for SUSE Linux Enterprise said: "As the first enterprise Linux vendor to provide these enhancements for the VMware VMI, Novell continues to demonstrate our commitment to providing enterprise Linux customers benefits through virtualization and other innovative technologies. Virtualization is proving its value in the data center, and our collaboration with VMware is part of our multi-pronged virtualization strategy to create additional opportunities for customers to reduce costs and increase efficiency with Linux virtualization."

Dan Chu, VMware vice president of emerging products and markets added: "We are pleased that Novell is delivering enhanced performance for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in VMware virtualized environments. The inclusion of VMware VMI patches into SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is designed to provide customers with increased performance, improved behavior of timing-critical workloads and better interoperability by allowing the same VMI-enabled SUSE Linux Enterprise Server kernel to run on physical machines and on VMware Infrastructure. We look forward to working with Novell on future initiatives to make SUSE Linux Enterprise run even better on VMware Infrastructure."

The enhancements will be previewed this week at VMworld 2007 in San Francisco and the VMI code is available for the customers who participate in Novell's beta program.