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sun microsystems

VirtualBox 2.0 Hits The Wire

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Sun just announced the availability of Sun xVM Virtual Box 2.0.

The biggest change in xVM VirtualBox 2.0 is the new support for 64-bit versions of operating systems like Windows Vista and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, in addition to all other major host operating systems. VirtualBox also offers a new user interface for the Mac platform, improved networking for the Mac OS X and Solaris OS, as well as improved performance, especially on AMD chips.

Customers who purchase an enterprise subscription will also receive a Right-to-Use License, allowing them to deploy the xVM VirtualBox platform using their own software deployment tools.

The following major new features were added:

* 64 bits guest support (64 bits host only)
* New native Leopard user interface on Mac OS X hosts
* The GUI was converted from Qt3 to Qt4 with many visual improvements
* New-version notifier
* Guest property information interface
* Host Interface Networking on Mac OS X hosts
* New Host Interface Networking on Solaris hosts
* Support for Nested Paging on modern AMD CPUs (major performance gain)
* Framework for collecting performance and resource usage data (metrics)
* Added SATA asynchronous IO (NCQ: Native Command Queuing) when accessing raw disks/partitions (major performance gain)
* Clipboard integration for OS/2 Guests
* Created separate SDK component featuring a new Python programming interface on Linux and Solaris hosts
* Support for VHD disk images

BMC Software Launches Virtualization Management Solutions In Partnership with Microsoft, Sun and VMware

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BMC Software today announced nine new, integrated solutions specifically designed to help customers eliminate the rising risk and operational expenses associated with inadequate management of virtualized IT environments.

The new solutions are grounded in a BMC-invented, highly automated set of Closed-Loop Change and Configuration Management (CLCCM) process workflows that reduce the latency, cost and risk associated with change management by as much as 75 percent.

BMC virtualization management solutions give customers a holistic, unified approach to IT planning, control, automation and management for today’s virtualized, multi-vendor IT environments.
BMC has extended its Service Assurance and Service Automation portfolios — key components of its leading Business Service Management (BSM) platform — to deliver virtualization-specific capabilities. The nine new offerings have been optimized to support goals for performance, compliance and enterprise visibility by addressing some of the most pressing challenges created by virtualization.
All of these new offerings are architected to support both virtual and physical infrastructures, further reducing cost and complexity by allowing IT operations organizations to use a single set of management solutions across their entire IT infrastructure.
As part of this new virtualization management offering, BMC has completed full solution integration with long-time partners Microsoft, Sun and VMware.

Sun Microsystems Nearly Doubles Sun Ray Shipments

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Sun Microsystems today announced the company nearly doubled shipments of its Sun Ray thin clients during the fourth quarter of Sun’s 2008 fiscal year, compared to the third quarter of its 2008 fiscal year.

Sun claims that the Sun Ray unit shipments are growing faster than the thin client industry at large, underscoring the increased appeal thin client and desktop virtualization solutions are experiencing among businesses and organizations. Contributing to this growth is strong market demand for Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software 2.0, which now ships on approximately 25% of Sun Ray units since being introduced in March 2008, in addition to enabling customers to display Solaris, Windows or Linux desktops on the same device.

Sun Ray virtual display clients, Sun Ray Sofware and Sun VDI Software 2.0 are key components of Sun’s broad desktop virtualization offering, which are a set of core desktop technologies and solutions within Sun’s xVM virtualization portfolio.

Sun offers a complete desktop-to-datacenter virtualization product portfolio and comprehensive set of virtualization service offerings to help customers deploy new services faster, maximize the utilization of system resources, and more easily monitor and manage virtualized environments. Sun’s virtualization products help to provide unified software management tools and virtualization capabilities across operating systems, servers, storage, desktops and processors.

Sun Microsystems

Sun Offers Early Access to xVM Server, Public Version Coming Soon

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Sun Microsystems has begun an early access program for its xVM Server hypervisor, a key component of its upcoming virtualization product line, and intends to make a publicly downloadable version available within about a month, according to a blog post last week by Steve Wilson, VP of xVM at Sun.

Update: see RedMonk’s Michael Coté review and demo the xVM Server hypervisor.

“Given that we’re getting very close to shipping, it’s time to give everyone an update on progress and do a more in-depth sneak peek at features than I’ve done in the past.  First, a quick reminder about what’s included in the xVM Portfolio so you can see where xVM Server fits.  The picture below shows how this fits together.  We have xVM VirtualBox for small scale desktop virtualization, and VDI as a management layer that scales out to very large-scale desktop consolidation projects. Then, on the server side, we have xVM Server as the software to virtualize a single server, and xVM Ops Center as the management tool for large scale virtual and physical data center.  xVM VirtualBox, xVM Ops Center and VDI are all commercially available today and rapidly being deployed by customers.”

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems Inks Bunch Of New OEM Agreements To Expand xVM VirtualBox Reach

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Sun Microsystems today announced new multi-year OEM agreements with Avanquest Software, Q-layer and Zenith InfoTech to expand the reach of Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Sun xVM VirtualBox is available via the OEM program or in a free, open source version here. Since its release in January 2007, Sun xVM (VirtualBox) has surpassed 5 million downloads, and the company boasts about it being the first free hypervisor to support all major host operating systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Solaris and OpenSolaris.

Sun xVM VirtualBox software, which it acquired through its maker innotek earlier this year, is a key component of Sun’s broader xVM virtualization and management software portfolio, which includes Sun xVM Ops Center, Sun xVM Server and the Sun VDI Software.

Avanquest will produce and publish Sun xVM VirtualBox bundled with OpenSolaris and sell it via retail outlets in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Beginning this fall, Avanquest will provide Mac users with a solution to run the Windows operating system through Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Q-layer is leveraging Sun xVM VirtualBox to deliver complete datacenter virtualization capabilities for its customers.

Zenith InfoTech has built its network attached storage appliance for small and medium-sized businesses using Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Emulex First HBA Vendor to Support Sun’s Solaris Containers

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Emulex recently announced that its LightPulse Fibre Channel host bus adapters (HBAs) now offer Virtual HBA technology within Solaris 10 Operating System environments. Enhanced capabilities such as virtual port management, available via Emulex’s HBAnyware management suite, are designed to enhance the overall functionality of Solaris Containers.

“Once again, Emulex is demonstrating leadership in the area of virtualization by providing enhanced capabilities for virtualized servers within Solaris environments,” said Scott McIntyre, vice president of customer marketing, Emulex Corp. “Emulex pioneered Virtual HBA technology and is the only HBA vendor to support Sun’s Solaris Containers for virtualized server environments.”

Emulex’s family of 4Gb/s and 8Gb/s HBAs support Virtual HBA technology, which allows users to effectively virtualize the HBA functionality so each virtual machine running on a server can independently access its own protected storage. Coupled with Solaris Containers, Emulex Virtual HBA technology, which leverages the NPIV standard, also allows customers to maintain usage of SAN management tools and best practices, such as fabric zoning and LUN mapping/masking.

“Working with Emulex to support its Virtual HBA technology provides Solaris customers with a robust virtualized server solution that delivers the most enhanced capabilities available today,” said Michael Wojnar, Networking Product Line Marketing Manager, Sun Microsystems.

“This collaboration is critical because of the high correlation between virtualized servers and networked storage, and ensures that our customers deploying Solaris Containers now have a superior solution.”

Server virtualization and blade server deployments continue to be a major driver for increased Fibre Channel SAN adoption. Leveraging Emulex HBAs with its next generation management suite, HBAnyware, provides customers with enhanced virtualization features, such as virtual HBA management across all major operating system platforms including Microsoft, VMware, Linux/Xen and Solaris. Further, customers may now leverage the benefits of NPIV management functionality within a centralized single console. Online boot from SAN and enhanced diagnostics features also enable unmatched scalability and efficient management capabilities.

“We looked at the capability of the Emulex Fibre Channel HBAs and management tools and saw features that were not available from other suppliers,” says Steven Ham, Senior Windows System Administrator at Home Interiors & Gifts, Inc. “With the HBA management tools, we get discovery and dynamic configuration capabilities that would otherwise require additional investment in tools running on other SAN components.”

In an effort to educate customers and channel partners on Emulex’s connectivity solutions and enhanced HBAnyware management suite functionality, Emulex is offering a series of whitepapers and webinars.

For details, visit: http://www.emulex.com/solutions/san/index.jsp.

[Source: VMblog]