open source

Sun Acquires innotek, VirtualBox Desktop Virtualization To Extend The Sun xVM platform

February 12, 2008 by Robin Wauters 5 Comments

Sun Microsystems has just announced , in a surprising move, the acquisition of German desktop virtualization technology provider innotek , makers of the well-known VirtualBox family.

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is one of the only professional-quality virtualization solutions built on Open Source technology.

The acquisition by Sun, in essence a stock purchase agreement with undisclosed financial details, is a definite winner. With over four million downloads since January 2007, innotek’s VirtualBox product has been quickly established as one of the leading developer desktop virtualization platforms. As part of the Sun xVM portfolio, VirtualBox will have the support of Sun’s global development community, field resources and partners to make VirtualBox “even more compelling to developers and end users, driving greater adoption across a broad set of communities”.

From the press release:

“By enabling developers to more efficiently build, test and run applications on multiple platforms, VirtualBox will extend the Sun xVM platform onto the desktop and strengthen Sun’s leadership in the virtualization market.”

“VirtualBox provides Sun with the perfect complement to our recently announced Sun xVM Server product,” said Rich Green, executive vice president, Sun Software. “Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the datacenter, VirtualBox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment and will align perfectly with Sun’s other developer focused assets such as GlassFish, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and soon MySQL as well as a wide range of community open source projects, enabling developers to quickly develop, test and deploy the next generation of applications.”

The acquisition is also another sign EMEA is marking its territory in virtualization land.

Jonathan Schwartz Boasts About Sun xVM

January 30, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Jonathan Schwartz, CEO of Sun Microsystems, wrote a blog post based on the recent Sun quarter financial announcements. From the post:

“Topping the list was the interest in Sun xVM. xVM is our free, open source virtualization platform, which we unveiled at Oracle Open World, alongside our management platform, xVM Ops Center. xVM will virtualize Windows, Linux or Solaris, on either Dell, HP, IBM or Sun hardware. We’ve seen broad interest from across the world, especially from customers that want to avoid putting a proprietary virtualization technology at the base of large scale open source datacenters (“why go back?” one said to me). Interest in our virtualization story (from xVM to Solaris containers) expands to every industry, and nearly every customer – it’s just about the number one item on the agenda.”

Not sure about you, but reading xVM out loud (ex-VM, get it?) always makes me smile 🙂

Red Hat Isn’t Exhibiting ‘Xen’-Ophobia

March 20, 2006 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Quoting Jason Brooks from eWeek:

Red Hat’s announcement March 14 of its integrated virtualization push, starring Xen, didn’t take anyone by surprise: Red Hat, along with just about everybody else, has been tooting the Xen horn ever since the fledgling open-source virtualization technology began grabbing headlines almost a year ago.
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The trouble is that Xen is somewhat early on in its development, and the high rate of change in Xen’s code base will keep the technology out of the mainstream Linux kernel for some time.

Red Hat has and will continue to chart its own course with respect to the kernel, diverging from the mainstream where and when appropriate, but Xen’s potential will remain somewhat stunted for as long as it remains in heavy flux…

I’d like to see Red Hat add to its virtualization agenda the OpenVZ project—a GPL’d code base born of SWsoft’s 5-year-old commercial Virtuozzo product, which itself is roughly comparable to the containers in Sun Microsystems’ Solaris 10…

OpenVZ, which also is vying for inclusion in the mainstream Linux kernel, would complement Xen well and has impressed me in the initial testing I’ve conducted.

Ultimately, it might make the most sense for Red Hat to deploy both Xen and OpenVZ. The complementary technologies would be a good counterbalance to the Xen/container combo I expect to see eventually in Solaris…

Read the whole article at eWeek.

Red Hat announces Integrated Virtualization

March 15, 2006 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Quoting from the Red Hat official announcement:

Red Hat, the world’s leading provider of open source solutions to the enterprise, today formally announced its ‘Integrated Virtualization’ strategy. During a launch today in San Francisco, company executives detailed plans for creating a Red Hat virtualization environment and working with partners such as AMD, Intel, Network Appliance and XenSource to simplify virtualization deployment for customers.
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Red Hat will tightly integrate virtualization capabilities with its operating system and ensure all aspects of the Red Hat Enterprise Linux platform, from management tools and installation to software management, will enable customers to deploy virtualized environments easily and effectively.
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This month Red Hat will make Fedora Core 5 available, which will contain a preview of Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtualization technology. In the summer of 2006, Red Hat will make Virtualization Migration and Assessment Services available along with an Enterprise Virtualization beta. Red Hat Enterprise Linux v. 5, scheduled for general availability by the end of 2006, will feature fully integrated virtualization…

There also is a 1-hour-long recorded webcast of this press event available here.