SGI has combined its expertise in helping enterprises work with massive amounts of data and complex business processes using Oracle applications with that of SWsoft, the world's second largest virtualization software company, to provide a landmark solution for optimizing the Oracle database with negligible data center overhead. Virtuozzo partitions a single Windows or Linux operating system into highly efficient and scalable virtual environments.

    The joint solution will run the databases inside the Virtuozzo virtual environment, moving the data from one physical server to another without losing information or connectivity to the database. Its patented technology enables density of up to hundreds of virtual environments per physical server. Because the solution can split a single server into hundreds of virtual environments, customers need fewer physical servers, resulting in a significant reduction in Total Cost of Ownership.

    Based on industry-standard Intel Itanium and Intel Xeon processors and the Linux operating system, the highly scalable SGI platform offers high bandwidth and low latency to minimize database downtime. The SGI server platform, designed for large scale data management, provides the optimal environment for Virtuozzo to run the Oracle application. Virtuozzo is the first and only virtualization solution to run in an Itanium environment.

    "I/O intensive applications such as databases can be a challenge because they cannot tolerate any performance degradation," said Kurt Daniel, senior vice president, Marketing and Business Development, SWsoft. "The SGI platform combined with the near-zero overhead architecture and scalability of Virtuozzo delivers high performance and provides the ideal solution for provisioning, monitoring and managing virtualized database workloads."

    The demonstration features SWsoft Virtuozzo operating system virtualization software, running on an SGI Altix server and includes a cluster of large Oracle databases. Parallels provide innovative desktop and server virtualization software for Windows, the Macintosh, and Linux. Already used by more than half a million people worldwide, Parallels virtualization technology is revolutionizing the way we use computers. Please visit the Parallels website to learn more about and purchase Parallels award-winning products.

    "Server virtualization is an increasingly important component in optimizing the IT infrastructure to handle massive amounts of data without significantly increasing overhead," said Ken Won, director, Enterprise Data Management, SGI. "Running on the SGI platform, which delivers the performance and reliability needed to support large scale data applications, the Virtuozzo solution helps data center managers make more efficient use of their limited IT resources."