Novell has announced significant enhancements in the performance of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server when the Linux operating system is running as a virtual machine guest in a VMware environment. To deliver this improved performance, Novell modified the SUSE Linux Enterprise kernel to support the VMware Virtual Machine Interface (VMI), a communication mechanism between the guest operating system and hypervisor that simplifies the task of virtualisation and makes Linux a more efficient guest operating system when running in VMware environments.

The VMI modifications, along with the paravirt-ops interface, have been accepted by the upstream Linux development community and will be included in upcoming releases of the standard Linux kernel, as well as future versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell.

"As the first enterprise Linux vendor to provide these enhancements for the VMware VMI, Novell continues to demonstrate our commitment to providing enterprise Linux customers benefits through virtualisation and other innovative technologies," said Holger Dyroff, vice president of product management for SUSE Linux Enterprise at Novell.