S. San Francisco, Calif., September 24, 2002 – SWsoft, Inc., leader in hosting automation and enterprise server software (www.sw-soft.com), today announced the general availability of Virtuozzo™ 2.5, shown in a comprehensive series of tests to be the most powerful server virtualization software for Intel® Xeon™ processor-based servers. Used for enterprise server consolidation, software development systems, high-security and high availability environments and as the backbone of the HSPcomplete™ hosting automation solution, Virtuozzo 2.5 is proven to have the highest scalability of any x86 server virtualization solution available, up to 64GB RAM and 16 CPUs per Virtual Environment (virtual partition functionally identical to a standalone server) and support for the Intel Hyper-Threading Technology.

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During stress-testing 24/7 on IBM and Dell hardware, Virtuozzo exploited the full potential of Intel Xeon processor-based servers, running 2,500 Virtual Environments (VEs) on a single server, making it the most efficient technology in its class.

“The Virtuozzo 2.5 technology running on Intel Xeon processor-based systems allows SWsoft’s customers to cost effectively host and manage large networked environments,” said Melissa Laird, director of Intel Developer Services. “We are pleased that SWsoft participated in Intel’s Early Access Program to optimize their Virtuozzo software.”

“We designed Virtuozzo to fully utilize all resources of large Intel Xeon processor-based servers,” said Serguei Beloussov, CEO, SWsoft. “Other server virtualization technologies squeeze applications into a single CPU (instead of 16 CPUs for Virtuozzo) and under 4GB of memory (instead of 64GB for Virtuozzo), which compromises system performance.”

High-performance Virtuozzo is used by hosting providers to power Virtual Private Servers (VPS) hosting plans, which increase revenue per customer and per server. “Virtuozzo allows me to support more customers on one server, without sacrificing performance and/or revenues generated per customer,” said Jacky Yung, CEO, OnSmart Network. “With test results of 2,500 VPS per physical server, I’m comfortable putting hundreds of high-load VPS on my IBM xSeries servers.”

Used with hosting providers (HSPs) for years as the core technology behind the HSPcomplete solution, Virtuozzo 2.5 has been vastly improved as a standalone product. “VZMC, Virtuozzo’s multiplatform graphical management console, comes with hundreds of new features,” added Craig Oda, VP, business development, SWsoft. “Virtuozzo is now a complete product, fully usable for both providers and enterprises.”

New features of VZMC include firewall management support, GUI for mass provisioning of applications and operating systems, and graphical performance monitoring of each partition/virtual environment.

New features of Virtuozzo include:

• Improved ‘smart migration’ of VEs (drag and drop) between physical servers with only a few seconds of planned system downtime. Large VEs can now be moved as quickly as small VEs.
• OS template support for Linux (Red Hat 7.1, 7.2, 7.3, SuSE, Debian), FreeBSD
• Performance enhancements: 64GB of memory and 16 CPUs per VE, new support for Intel Hyper-Threading Technology
• 2-level disk quotas – Can manage disk quotas for each VE and setup quotas per user inside a VE
• Improved journaling filesystem support (ext3 and ReiserFS) in addition to ext2
• VzAgent – open and well documented XML-based API

Virtuozzo 2.5 for Hosting Providers
With over 10,000 VPSs in production, Virtuozzo is establishing itself as an industry leader. According to Joshua Beil, VP, Research and Development for analyst firm Tier 1 Research, "Virtuozzo allows enterprises and hosting providers to automate administrative processes at an attractive price point, thereby reducing the TCO of managing server groups. Server virtualization is playing an increasingly important role within the mass market of hosting."

“Virtuozzo is the backbone of my business,” said Joe Shiekron, CEO, Eryxma Networks (http://www.eryxma.com). “Virtuozzo 2.5 provides even more power to my existing hardware, enabling me to make even more money per customer and per server. Virtuozzo supports shared, virtual private server and dedicated hosting, allowing me to charge $60 per VPS with three times as many customers on a server.”

Virtuozzo 2.5 now includes extended support for multiple OS templates on the same physical machine. The following templates ship pre-configured with Virtuozzo 2.5: Red Hat 7.3, 7.2, 7.1, SuSE 8.0, Debian, and FreeBSD. “Additional OS support allows me to broaden my audience and increase revenue, at the same time,” says Tracy Phillips, president, Weberz hosting (www.weberz.com).

SWsoft tested third-party hosting applications like Plesk™, C-Panel™, Sphera™, H-Sphere™, and Confixx™ running inside a Virtuozzo-based VPS.

Virtuozzo 2.5 for Datacenters in Large Organizations
Stanford University uses Virtuozzo within the Electrical Engineering department network at the Gates Computer Science Building for new systems testing and overall service consolidation on secure servers. Virtuozzo allows Stanford to build a single server on Intel hardware that can run numerous virtual environments. Each VE can be created from templates and managed by faculty, staff, and students as their own system with root access, carte blanc access to any package, software, and based on any template of their choosing. Thus, all public accessible services such as web, ftp, and mail, can be maintained uniquely, but from a common base. The ease of mass updates aids in increasing security, by easily keeping all operating systems up to date.

"After evaluating different server virtualization and consolidation technologies, I chose Virtuozzo because it offered the best solution combining security, manageability, performance, and overall scalability," added Joe Little, Computing Information Systems Analyst, Stanford University. “The combination of reducing public exposure of services, limiting workstations to clients on the private network, and granting remote access to all systems make this a sound approach to increasing the over all security of our network.”

VPS Enrollment Program – Increase revenue per-server and per-customer
Mainframe-like technology on Intel-based servers is now available to any business, regardless of budget. SWsoft’s VPS Enrollment Program enables businesses to get started with 2 Virtuozzo servers, each capable of supporting 50-1,000 VEs and VZMC for $3,000.

Under the promotion, SWsoft’s HSPcomplete full business lifecycle hosting automation solution is available in an entry configuration for $5,000.

For more information on the promotion, please visit (http://www.sw-soft.com/vpspromo), contact info@sw-soft.com or call +1 650.875.7185 to see a demo of HSPcomplete.

About SWsoft (www.sw-soft.com)
SWsoft is a leader in hosting automation and enterprise server software (www.sw-soft.com). Since 1999, the company has focused on the development of its patent-pending Virtuozzo™ technology and the HSPcomplete full business lifecycle hosting automation solution. The only end-to-end solutions and services for hosting service providers, e.g. Internet data centers, application service providers, managed hosting providers, SWsoft's products deliver powerful, comprehensive solutions that power data center management, accelerate business and infrastructure operations and provide excellent return on investment.