As ISVs increasingly find their applications deployed into virtualized environments, the concept of supported Operating System compatibility becomes blurred. For example, if an ISV tests their application on Solaris 10 update 5 on x64 and lists the compatibility on their website, what if the target customer installs it as a guest on a virtualized platform like xVM or VMware? Will the application still be supported and behave as if it was on the actual OS next to the metal?
Sun has just provided a little bit of peace-of-mind in this area by updating the Solaris 10 Binary Application Guarantee Program to include the guarantee for virtualized platform environments. The guarantee has been updated to say:
The Binary Program applies to both Solaris native host operating system environments, as well as Solaris 10 OS running as a guest operating system in a virtualized platform environment.
The list of supported virtual platform environments is kept on the Solaris OS: Hardware Compatibility List. The specific virtual environments that the guarantee applies to are a little hard to find on this big list, but here are the popular ones: LDOMs, xVM, & VMware.
Sun has done a pretty good job over the years (I've been at Sun 21 of those years) at protecting ISV binary compatibility and ensuring forward guarantees as new technology and OS releases (including virtualization) become available and popular.
