Parallels brings bare-metal virtualization to Apple’s Xserve hardware

Parallels, known for its cloud services automation and virtualization software, unveiled its latest virtualization solution for Apple hardware: Parallels Server for Mac Bare Metal Edition. The announcement came during the company’s Parallels Summit ’10 conference, which took place in Miami last week.

Parallels is certainly no stranger to Mac users or Mac hardware. Back in 2006 when the Intel processing platform was introduced to the Mac line, Parallels developed and introduced Parallels Desktop for Mac. The next innovation came in June of 2008 when the company launched Parallels Server for Mac, creating the first hosted server virtualization solution for Intel-powered Apple systems. Now, taking things one step further with this latest announcement, Parallels is bringing a true bare-metal hypervisor offering to Apple hardware.

[ Is your data center fully virtualized yet? Or are you being blocked by one of these top 5 barriers to expanding virtualization? | Keep up with the latest virtualization news with InfoWorld’s virtualization newsletter ]

With the previous hosted version of Parallels Server for Mac, users could operate independent Mac OS X, Linux and Windows virtual machines on top of the same Mac OS X powered Xserve host server. But introduced with this latest product, those same virtual machines can now operate directly on top of the Xserve hardware itself without the need for a Mac OS X operating system installed. Thus, this hypervisor and its virtual machines run on bare-metal with nothing but Parallels installed.

The new bare-metal virtualization technology promises to provide an additional performance boost with less overhead. It also adds other key features such as live migration (the ability to move virtual environments between physical host servers without the need for going offline), built-in backup solutions (offering incremental and full backups of virtual environments to protect data, applications, and configurations), virtual machine templates (to reduce setup and configuration time), virtual environment cloning and snapshots, physical-to-virtual migration utilities, and virtual networking (to include virtual environments in different networks).

When asked, “Why Mac and why now?”, Jack Zubarev, President, Server Provider Division of Parallels responded that Apple has reported a 33 percent year-on-year increase in sales of Macintosh computers. And along with it, there has been a clear demand for Mac OS X-based cloud services. The new Parallels hypervisor will allow those users to capitalize on using Mac OS X server while still having the flexibility and benefit of running Windows and Linux at the same time.

During the Parallels Summit conference, Parallels was pitching its new bare-metal hypervisor as an option for cloud providers to offer Mac OS X Server-based virtual private servers to their customers. An example of this came from Go Daddy, one of today’s top hosting providers, who officially announced its own Mac hosting solution during the conference which leverages Parallels new hypervisor product. It was appropriately called “Cloud Server Powered by Mac OS X.”

“Go Daddy is always looking for ways to enhance our customer experience, and provide simple solutions,” said Go Daddy Chief Operating Officer and President Warren Adelman. “We do this by offering the products our customers want and need. Together with the innovative minds at Parallels and the usability experts at Apple, we have opened the door to a line of Mac OS X hosting products.”

This new bare-metal edition from Parallels will run on any Intel-based Mac hardware that supports Intel VT-x. However, to achieve the maximum benefits, it is recommended for Apple Xserve hardware. To get started, you can download a free trial version.

This story, “Parallels brings bare-metal virtualization to Apple’s Xserve hardware,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in virtualization at InfoWorld.com.