Virtual Iron announced new power management capabilities in the latest version of its software, Virtual Iron Version 4.4. This release extends Virtual Iron's virtual infrastructure management capabilities with the addition of LivePower, a new experimental feature that automatically optimizes power usage to deliver cost-savings and environmental benefits across the data center.

LivePower, available with Virtual Iron Version 4.4, optimizes data center power consumption by monitoring resource utilization in the virtual data center. When there is excess CPU capacity, LivePower consolidates virtual machines onto fewer physical servers and shuts down the remaining devices based on pre-defined policies. When the virtual machine load increases beyond pre-defined thresholds, LivePower turns physical servers back on and live migrates virtual machines to rebalance the virtual data center and ensure that resource requirements and service levels are met.

"Power and cooling reduction has always been a strong driver for our server virtualization efforts," said Craig Richard, Director of Information Technology at NaviMedix, a provider of online communication solutions for the healthcare industry. "Virtual Iron's new LivePower is taking those benefits beyond the savings seen from server consolidation by enabling users to automate and optimize their power usage through its management platform."

Virtual Iron also became a server virtualization software provider to announce support for Intel Dynamic Power Node Manager, which will be available with Intel Next Generation Platform (Nehalem-EP). Node Manager utilizes processor and platform level instrumentation, controls, and OS features to monitor, report, and control system power. Node Manager, in combination with Virtual Iron's LivePower, enables users to automatically maintain power budgets, turn servers off and on, and optimize power consumption.

"Efficient power management is critical for today's data centers," said Kirk Skaugen, Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Server Platforms Group. "Virtual Iron's adoption of Intel Virtualization Technologies and the upcoming Intel Node Manager will deliver new levels of virtualization and power management capabilities for IT."

"Virtual Iron is one of only two vendors in the market that provides a true server virtualization solution with the capabilities of our virtual infrastructure management platform," said Tony Asaro, Chief Strategy Officer of Virtual Iron. "Today, we have thousands of customer deployments supporting a wide range of applications--from test and development to mission-critical environments. LivePower is another important capability that exemplifies the depth and value of the Virtual Iron solution."

Industry experts expect server virtualization software sales to grow to as high as $7 billion in 2011. Current penetration of virtualization on installed x86 servers is estimated to be at just 6-8% as user adoption has been hindered by the complexity and high price of established commercial solutions. By delivering comprehensive, easy-to-use and easy-to-afford capabilities, Virtual Iron is addressing a huge gap in the server virtualization market and has quickly positioned itself as the leading solution provider for the untapped mainstream market. The company offers a true server virtualization solution that incorporates comprehensive and intelligent virtual infrastructure control with essential capabilities such as LiveMigrate for virtual server migration, LiveRecovery for disaster recovery and high availability, LiveCapacity for dynamic CPU resource load balancing, and LiveMaintenance for offline server maintenance without downtime.

Virtual Iron Version 4.4 will be generally available later this month with LivePower.