"The server virtualization market is red hot and gaining rapid adoption as organizations strive to achieve physical server consolidation, maximize resource utilization and deploy disaster recovery solutions," said Mark Bowker, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Open-E has announced that Open-E Data Storage Server (DSS) has been certified for use with Virtual Iron's server virtualization software. Environments deploying both Virtual Iron and Open-E Data Storage Server (DSS) will benefit from streamlined virtual infrastructure, improved server and storage utilization and robust business continuity.

Virtual Iron provides enterprise-class server virtualization capabilities on a next-generation architecture. The platform combines the open source hypervisor with advanced virtualization services and policy-based automation capabilities such as LiveMigrate for easy movement of workloads, LiveRecovery for automated virtual machine failover, LiveCapacity for dynamic workload balancing, and LiveSnapshot for hot backup and patch management. These capabilities enable offloaded, space efficient and no-downtime backups on live virtual machines running in production environments. Virtual Iron also takes advantage of the latest hardware virtualization extensions from Intel and AMD to deliver near native performance.

Smooth integration of Open-E DSS with Virtual Iron provides simple and efficient storage consolidation that supports capital and operational cost reduction throughout the IT environment. DSS brings enterprise-class functionality, manageability and reliability to small and medium businesses that depend on server/storage infrastructure for continued business operations. As a result, companies have an avenue toward advanced IT to strengthen their competitive advantage.