SWsoft Announces First-Ever Server Consolidation Appliance Line "Magnum-SC"

Business Wire, April 23, 2002

Business Editors/High-Tech Writers

S. SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--April 23, 2002

Virtuozzo 2.0.2 Newly Optimized for Server Consolidation on

Intel-Based Hardware; New Appliance Packages Maximize

Efficiency, Flexibility, Service-Levels, Lead to

70 % Cost Savings in Data Center

SWsoft, Inc., an advanced server and networking software company, today announced the availability of its "Magnum-SC" line of server consolidation appliances (www.magnumsc.com), based on its Virtuozzo OS-virtualization technology and Intel-based servers.

Magnum-SC maximizes the efficiency of an IT infrastructure through consolidating the workload of 10 to 200 physical servers onto a single Magnum-SC appliance, thereby simplifying management and resulting in lower TCO through a 70% reduction in overall system administration costs. Flexibility is dramatically improved due to the scalability of Virtuozzo's dynamic partitioning technology that allows the OS container, or "virtual environment" (VE), in which both an OS and application run to smoothly grow from a fraction of an Intel processor up to 8 processors -- with zero system downtime. This is ideal for large Intel-based servers that currently support 8-way Intel processors partitioned for multiple workgroups.

SWsoft also released Virtuozzo version 2.0.2 today, the power behind the Magnum-SC, with the "vzmc" GUI to allow administrators to manage hundreds of Linux Virtual Environments (VEs) across multiple servers. Administrators can now use the unique "vzmigrate" feature to automatically move an entire OS container to another server for scheduled hardware maintenance or system upgrades -- with only a few seconds of planned downtime.

While SWsoft is the leading pioneer of products for server consolidation on Intel processors, companies like IBM have established Linux server consolidation on S/390 and zSeries mainframes as a standard practice in enterprise IT departments, with the majority of Fortune 1000 companies consolidating Linux servers on IBM mainframes.

"Magnum-SC was inspired by the widespread success of Linux on the mainframe," said Dr. Alexander Tomasov, SWsoft's Chief Scientist and an expert on server consolidation technologies. "Virtuozzo is virtualization software that powers Intel-based processors and is the only technology flexible and scalable enough to meet the needs of both enterprise server consolidation and hosting providers."

Magnum-SC is the first drop-in server consolidation appliance to require no changes to existing software or IT processes, which does not require staff to learn new expertise. Magnum-SC appliances can be deployed by a single administrator in less than half a day, which is due to the advanced dynamic software partitioning capabilities of Virtuozzo. Software partitioning allows for faster and easier server consolidation and is clearly superior to older centralization strategies based on geographic sites and administrative tasks or complex strategies that require extensive changes to existing software.

"Our customers are looking to buy larger servers that give them greater power that let them do more in the data center," added Sean Lee, CEO of Linux infrastructure specialists, eRexi. "Using Virtuozzo's mainframe-like dynamic partitioning in the four-way Magnum-SC (based on the xSeries 250), we are recommending that more customers initially deploy four-way Magnum appliances and run an application like IBM DB2 in a partition. The customer can then easily increase the size of the partition as their need for DB2 transactions arises. This flexibility, scalability and price point make Virtuozzo the only viable choice for consolidation on the xSeries." (To see a white paper surrounding server consolidation, please see http://www.sw-soft.com/r/upload/vz-vmware.pdf)

The Virtuozzo 2.0.2-powered Linux-based Magnum-SC server consolidation appliance (www.magnum-sc.com) models include:

-- M30 - $10,000 - Consolidates up to 50 servers (10 suggested) and includes an
IBM xSeries 330 or a Dell PowerEdge(TM) 1650

-- M130 - $25,000 - Consolidates up to 200 servers (25 suggested) and includes
a Dell PowerEdge(TM) 6650 or an IBM xSeries 360

-- M230 - Consolidates up to 500 servers (50 suggested) and includes a Dell
PowerEdge(TM) 8450 or an IBM xSeries 370

Cliff Hairston, a Linux systems integrator, touts the increased service levels his customers enjoy with the M230 appliance, based on Dell's 8-way PowerEdge(TM) 8450 machine. "My customers can use Virtuozzo to increase security by running one major application, such as sendmail or Apache, per instance of Linux. If a hacker breaks into or launches a DoS attack on a firm's sendmail server, the performance of Apache or DB2 is not compromised and gives me peace of mind."

Magnum-SC is the first phase of a formal effort by SWsoft to become the leader in server consolidation solutions. "Future versions of Virtuozzo and Magnum-SC will feature support for 64GB of memory, 16 CPUs, and IA64," said Craig Oda, SWsoft's VP of business development. "We've enhanced our HSPcomplete (www.hspcomplete.com) solution with server consolidation features and will release both the 'SCcomplete' solution later this year and a Windows solution in the 2nd half of 2003."