On February 5, 2008, Sun shipped the Sun(tm) xVM hypervisor as a part of Solaris(tm) Express Developers Edition 1/08. A big deal? Yes, it is!
With this first release of the xVM hypervisor, Sun is previewing our progress on making our Sun xVM virtualization strategy a reality for customers. What is this strategy? To bring enterprise-class management, security and stability to the virtalization platform. Jonathon Schwartz had plenty to say regarding our xVM stategy launch at Oracle OpenWorld.
So, what's is Sun delivering right now? Several things that you can take advantage of:
So, is the hypervisor we are including the same as the Sun xVM Server software that has been discussed on our _web site? Actually, no it's not, it's a highly important part of this product however. The Sun xVM Server software will utilize the hypervisor that we are delivering in Solaris, but as a part of a standalone, integrated software-based appliance. The xVM Server software product will be able to be installed and used by customers not familiar with Solaris itself. So, what's next? I suggest that you plug into some of the following resources to learn more about the Sun xVM Server and the Sun xVM Ops Center software products.Sun xVM hypervisor for the x86 platform. Derived from the XenCommunity code and running with Solaris as it's control domain, this hypervisor provides the ability to run multiple different operating systems on top of one system at the same time. Management tools. We ship industry standard management tools for the Sun xVM hypervisor, that is, virtman and others. We are looking forward as well to a time where management can be done through a Web browser interface. Utilization of unique Solaris features. For example, the Sun xVM hypervisor can store guest operating system images on the revolutionary Solaris ZFS file system. This provides snapshot, cloning and fault management not easily available on other virtualization platforms. Documentation. As with all things related to Solaris Express, Sun provides full documentation at our Documentation site. See the Sun xVM hypervisor documentation for more details.
The Sun xVM Software Information Center : Complete with demos and videos! OpenxVM : The open source community for Sun's xVM technologies Sun xVM hypervisor DTrace and Predictive Self Healing : Michael Haine's blog on this core technology to Sun's xVM offering The Sun Virtualization & Consolidation Web site : An overview of Sun's virtualization solution set.