Parallels announced it is collaborating with HP to offer Parallels Virtuozzo Containers to HP Integrity server customers who want to virtualize business-critical Windows and Linux workloads.

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers has been validated to run on HP Integrity servers, including the largest 64-processor HP Integrity Superdome servers, addressing the needs of customers who require Windows and Linux-based Itanium virtualization.

"Container virtualization is increasingly popular for virtualizing high performance, production workloads. This makes our technology a perfect fit with HP Integrity servers," said Serguei Beloussov, CEO of Parallels. "We are excited to continue to build on recent customer momentum for Parallels Containers through this collaboration with HP."

With Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, users can run simultaneous, isolated workloads in virtual servers or "containers." These containers scale to the full resources of the underlying hardware, and dynamic workload capabilities enable users to allocate system resources to each container on-the-fly. This means HP Integrity servers can be virtualized for greater utilization, enabling users to get a higher return on investment from their hardware, and making container virtualization a truly valuable approach for consolidating performance-sensitive Windows and Linux workloads in the enterprise.

"Customers can reduce costs by maximizing resource utilization of their technology environments through the HP portfolio of virtualization capabilities," said Michelle Weiss, vice president, marketing, Business Critical Systems, HP. "The combination of HP Integrity servers and the containers-based virtualization solution from Parallels delivers an efficient business-critical technology infrastructure that is highly scalable and available."

"Virtualization is one of the most transformative technologies driving IT innovation today. We are very excited to see Parallels offer container virtualization to Itanium processor-based HP Integrity server customers," said Boyd Davis, GM Server Platforms Group Marketing, Intel Corporation. "This combination delivers a compelling solution for enterprise customers looking to deploy advanced virtualization features on Itanium-processor based systems for their most mission critical Windows and Linux workloads."

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers supports both Windows and Linux clustering, enabling customers to deploy multiple passive cluster containers on a single back-up hardware node. By deploying the technology in a cluster consolidation project, customers can achieve higher ROI on their hardware investment.

"Running the most demanding workloads on Itanium-based systems delivers outstanding value to customers due to the built-in reliability, availability and scalability of the Itanium architecture," said Joan Jacobs, executive director, Itanium Solutions Alliance. "Containers-based Linux and Windows virtualization from Parallels extends the value of Itanium even further. As members of the alliance, HP and Parallels help customers benefit from powerful Itanium-based Linux and Windows virtualization solutions for performance-sensitive computing requirements."