The OpenVZ project released virtual appliance software for Ubuntu giving users the ability to run the popular Ubuntu 7.10 distribution in a Linux container. Users simply download a file and then can use OpenVZ software to create a virtual server running Ubuntu 7.10 in about one minute.

    The software template can be downloaded at the OpenVZ website. The OpenVZ project freely distributes and offers support to its users, promoting operating system virtualization through a collaborative, community effort. Supported by SWsoft, the OpenVZ project serves the needs of the community developers, testers, documentation experts, and other technology enthusiasts who wish to participate in and accelerate the technology development process.

    "Ubuntu is by far the fastest growing Linux distribution," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We wanted to give our users a fast, easy way to deploy Ubuntu in a virtualized environment." OpenVZ is operating system server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates multiple isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server - enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties.

    "This combination of open source technologies enables someone new to Ubuntu a really easy way to get up and running, while current users have alternative method of running Ubuntu with negligible - if any - impact on their system resources," said Malcolm Yates, ISV alliances manager at Canonical, the commercial sponsor of the Ubuntu project.

    OpenVZ is open source software that is used as the basis for the SWsoft Virtuozzo virtualization software product. Since going into full production late in 2005, the OpenVZ project has been very active with the user community with more than 25,000 message posts on its support Forum. With virtualization technology, the server can effectively be split into many small ones, each running its tasks so that the whole server is utilized more efficiently.

    The OpenVZ website attracts tens of thousands of visitors each month as more businesses and individuals explore and contribute to the leading open source operating system virtualization project. OpenVZ software can be used to help consolidate servers and increase server utilization rates, or for creating "sandboxes" for test and development, or when sharing resources so that every user can have root access while being kept isolated from each other.

    The OpenVZ project is an open source community project supported by SWsoft and is intended to provide access to the code and ultimately for the open source community to test, develop and further the OS virtualization effort. It is also a proving ground for new technology that may evolve into the Virtuozzo product offering.

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