Xen is a lightweight open source hypervisor. Xen on System x servers provides the ability to run multiple operating systems simultaneously in an isolated manner on a single server. This allows sparsely used machines running different operating systems and applications to be consolidated on to a single machine, helping to reduce server hardware and operating costs. Xen supports paravirtualized guest operating systems and unmodified guests in hardware-assisted full virtualization mode using Virtualization Technology designed by Intel® and AMD. In this release, SLES 10 is the only supported guest operating system. Support for other operating system releases are planned for future updates.

Xen provides isolated operating environments for applications by running on independent operating system instances. It reduces the impact of a failure of one application on another, without requiring the use of independent hardware.