BANGALORE, INDIA: VMware, Inc., a provider of virtualization solutions from desktop to data centre, announced the launch of VMware vSphere 4.

With support for new hardware virtualization assist features and a highly-optimized I/O system, VMware vSphere 4 is touted to be the the industry's first operating system for building the internal cloud. It will enable larger applications such as SAP, Microsoft Exchange together with SQL and Oracle databases, to run on a 100 percent virtualized internal cloud.

Stephen Herrod, chief technology officer, VMware, said: "VMware vSphere 4 will extend scalability limits for servers and virtual machines. This translates into higher consolidation ratios and application performance that meets, and in some cases exceeds, that of physical deployments. VMware vSphere 4 helps take performance objections off the table for even the highest-end applications, allowing the virtualization benefits of higher availability, security, and automation to shine in the cloud."

VMware vSphere 4 also introduces new scalability capabilities. By expanding server resource support to 1 TB of RAM and 64 logical processing cores, some of the very largest and most powerful servers can be leveraged for virtual workloads. With support for up to 256 GB of RAM and eight virtual CPUs per virtual machine, nearly 100 percent of resource-intensive workloads such as high-end databases are suitable for virtualization. VMware vSphere 4 is expected to be available later in Q2 2009.