oVirt, a free platform virtualization management web application software developed by Red Hat, has now received widespread industry support by companies such as Canonical, Cisco, IBM, Intel, NetApp, Red Hat and SUSE.
These companies have partnered together and aim to create a new open source community that would develop open virtualization platforms, including virtual management tools for managing Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor. With the progress made in the oVirt project, the industry now has a new open source, openly governed virtualization stack.
To drive the establishment of an active community around oVirt, the project board leaders held an open community project launch and workshop last month in San Jose, California, at the Cisco campus to officially kick off the project and community. Mark Baker, server product manager at Canonical said, “It is important for us to be involved in the oVirt project, which enables users to more easily deploy virtualized solutions using open source software. Having a robust management stack around KVM is key to enabling organizations to use open source virtualization solutions in their datacenters. Increasing the number of enterprise-class virtualization solutions available can only be a good thing for the industry.”
“We are excited to be a part of the oVirt project,” said Jean Staten Healy, director of Linux at IBM. “Our clients are looking for open alternatives to traditional virtualization technology, both for the hypervisor and virtualization management. This project and the work of the Open Virtualization Alliance are important steps forward in making open virtualization a reality for businesses around the world.”
“NetApp views the ecosystem of solutions around KVM to be important to our customers and to the industry,” said Jon Benedict, reference architect, VMware Engineering at NetApp. “Our participation as a strategic member of oVirt.org demonstrates our commitment to open source, industry cooperation and leadership in storage for virtualized environments.”
“The establishment of the oVirt project as an open source community around virtualization management technology and open virtualization management for KVM as a whole will help drive innovation and the evolution of open virtualization alternatives,” said Carl Trieloff, technical director at Red Hat. “This is another proof point in Red Hat’s commitment to the open source community and open development model. The kickoff workshop in November was oversubscribed, showing the interest in open virtualization alternatives.”
“We are very excited to see open source virtualization extend into the management of enterprise workloads thanks to the oVirt initiative. SUSE has been embracing open source virtualization for a long time now, as the first company to deliver open source virtualization in an enterprise product and as a steady long-term contributor to the KVM hypervisor technology. oVirt has the building blocks that will help bring KVM virtualization management to a broader customer base,” said Alexander Graf, virtualization lead engineer and oVirt board member at SUSE.