The web provider Host Color announced that its VPS hosting services powered by Parallels Virtuozzo Containers virtualization technology, now features more RAM, and increased disc space and data transfer quotas. The VPS hosting provider has also extended its promotional campaign on VPS Start entry level virtual private server. The VPS Start features 256 MB RAM, 10 GB disc space, 100 GB data transfer, and costs $19.95/mo. Host Color also announced that it has launched a coupon - VPS2009 - that offers 1 free service month with all virtual private servers. The coupon is valid until April 30 2009.

The Host Color's entry level virtual server - VPS Start now offers 256 MB RAM, 10 GB disc space and 100 GB data transfer per month. The previous allocated RAM was 192. The monthly data transfer quota for VPS Start is doubled from 50 GB to 100 GB.

Another virtual private server - VPS Advance - now comes with an increased data transfer quota of 250 GB transfer per month. This resource increase for VPS is less than these that applied to other virtual servers. Host Color however said that it monitors the performance of VPS Advance accounts and will provide a new resource increase if necessary. VPS Advance customers are also eligible to use the coupon VPS2009, that gives then a free service month.

The company's most powerful pre-configured virtual private server - VPS Power - now features 1280 MB RAM, 50 GB disc space and 500 GB data transfer per month. Host Color increase memory for this plan from 1024 to 1280 RAM and data transfer from 350 GB to 500 GB per month.

Host Color also increased the resources for its VPS Custom virtual private server. It now offers 1792 MB RAM, 100GB disc space and 1000 GB monthly data transfer. The price of this VPS is $119.95 per month, and according to Host Color it works for most of company's customers much better than a dedicated server.

All virtual private servers of Host Color are powered by the latest version of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. The web host offers Plesk control panel licenses to VPS customers for only $10/month. The company also offers NextColor ( http://www.hostcolor.com ) web hosting control panel. It is free for all VPS service plans. Although NextColor panel is one of the best Linux server management software on the market, the web host suggests its customers to use Plesk because it is better integrated with Virtuozzo Containers and it is easier to be managed and upgraded.

The web host said that the free period it offers to customer will be the the 6th VPS hosting service month.

One of the popular Virtuozzo VPS Hosting providers - Host Color has announced that it released a coupon - GREEN2009 - to mark St. Patrick's day. The coupon gives company;s customers 1 free VPS services month.

The hosting provider powers its virtual private servers with Virtuozzo Containers, the world's leading OS virtualization technology. Irish VPS customers of Host Color are also eligible to register an .IE Domain name. The company gives them 10 euros credit to any of its Irish customers who wants host a virtual private server under .IE domain name.

Citrix, the producer of paravirtualization technology solution Xen hopes to attract the virtualization industry attention next week when the company is about to release for free XenServer Enterprise Edition. The virtualization software producer however will remove some features from the free software package and move them into Essentials for XenServer, an application positioned in price range $1,500 - $5,000 per server node.

Some features of the former Enterprise Edition which will note be included in the free XenServer edition include Workflow Studio orchestration (used for automating common tasks), and StorageLink. StorageLink is a set of storage integration modules which enable system administrators to provision virtual machine storage directly from the XenServer management console.

Workflow Studio and StorageLink will be added to Essentials for Hyper-V and XenServer.

According to popular media that covers virtualization industry - Virtualization.info at least "three things seem true in the virtualization industry".

The first one according to the media is that it does not matter how many times a vendor repeats that free software doesn’t compete against a feature-rich end-to-end solutions. "It will end up offering a free hypervisor", says Virtualization.info.

Alessandro Perilli, founder of Virtualization.info suggests that "it doesn’t matter how many surprises a vendor can pack for its premier conference, its competitors will do their best to steal the thunder".

The third conclusion of Mr. Perilli is that it "does not matter how many NDAs a vendor puts in place to embargo its most amazing announcement, the news will leak out even before hang up the conference call".

In an article titled "Citrix, Microsoft, and Red Hat or Novell gang up on VMware" Stephen Vaughn-Nichols said that Citrix will announce its free version of XenServer hypervisor during the VMware VMworld Europe 2009 conference.

Citrix is expected to lose some revenue with the release of free XenServer. The company plans to compensate it from increased sales of the Citrix Essentials new management package called. As mentioned above it will be available in 2 editions, which will cost between $1,500 and $5,000 per server. One of them will be for XenServer, the other one for Microsoft Hyper-V.

Industry analysts have already commented that the free version of XenServer will appeal to small and medium-sized businesses, that starting out with virtualization.