Somebody asked me the other day, "How do I know when to use which Sun Virtualization Technology and how do I know if I can virtualize my application?" Well it depends on what problem your are trying to solve. The following are a some general rules of thumb that I use and I though I would share them with you.
Bare Metal Machine Running Solaris
* Any Sparc Apps on Sparc Systems
* Any X86 Apps on X86/X64 Systems
* Any Sparc Apps on Sparc Systems w/kernel restrictions
* Any X86 Apps on X86/X64 w/kernel restrictions
* There is only a single Solaris Kernel
* Apps Restricted to user land type Apps
* No Apps that need to talk directly to kernel or devices
* Operating System Solaris 10
* Sparc Branded Zones - Solaris 8, Solaris 9
* X86 Branded Zones - Linux
* Solaris 10 Containers can be run any where Solaris 10 is installed regardless (Bare Metal/LDoms/xVM Server)
* Any Sparc Apps on T1 & T2 Systems
* Solaris Operating System
* There can be multiple Solaris Kernels (each thread can be a kernel)
* Enterprise Grade Level Virtualization (RAS)
* Type I Hypervisor Virtualization
xVM Server X86
* Any X86 Apps on X86/X64
* Multiple Operating Systems (Solaris X86, Windows & Linux)
* Enterprise Grade Level Virtualization (RAS)
* Type I Hypervisor Virtualization
* Any X86 Apps on X86/X64
* Multiple Operating Systems (Solaris X86, Windows & Linux)
* Desktop/Laptop Grade Level virtualization for Software Development
* Type II Hypervisor Virtualization
Also check out blogs for the following Subject Matter Experts:
For Solaris Containers go to Jeff Victor's blog
For xVM LDoms go to Jeff Savit's blog
For xVM X86 go to Bob Netherton's blog