Mandriva and the OpenVZ project have announced that the OpenVZ operating system virtualization software will be included as part of the Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0.

OpenVZ is operating system level server virtualization software technology, built on Linux, which creates isolated, secure virtual environments on a single physical server -- enabling greater server utilization and superior availability with fewer performance penalties. The virtual servers ensure that applications do not conflict and can be re-booted independently.

Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0 is the foundation for a stable and cost-effective open source infrastructure for organizations building on Linux.

"The OpenVZ technology is a perfect match for our next Mandriva Corporate Server release 4.0. It provides our customers with a proven virtualization layer to deliver flexible and efficient solutions. We are pleased to offer OpenVZ as a standard component in the Mandriva Corporate Server 4.0 toolbox to simplify production management and maximize hardware usage," said David Barth, CTO at Mandriva.

"Embedding the OpenVZ technology directly into the Mandriva kernel will give Mandriva customers unparalleled virtualization functionality," said Kir Kolyshkin, manager of the OpenVZ project. "We're very pleased to work with Mandriva and make our technology widely available via the popular Linux distribution."

"OpenVZ is also an excellent open source project. By making it available more widely and easily as part of Mandriva Linux, we hope to widen the user community and help improve the integration of virtualization technologies into a standard Linux kernel," added Klara Mika, ISV Manager at Mandriva.

With the power of modern CPUs from both Intel and AMD (including the latest dual-core offerings), hardware is often under utilized. 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.