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Oracle Gets Sun xVM, Solaris Zones and Virtualbox

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When Oracle announced that it will be acquiring Sun it didn’t just impact the database market. It’s not just the question of what will happen with MySQL, OpenOffice and Java. The impact on the virtualization market is big as well.

At the moment Sun has a very confusing virtualization offering: they have different flavours, different tools and, depending on which Sun representative you talk to, another technology is their next big thing. They indeed cover the 3 big areas: with Solaris Zones they have a nice OS virtualization alternative, with xVM they have a powerful Xen-based Bare metal virtualization technology based on paravirtualization, and with VirtualBox they have a Type II hypervisor ready to tackle the deskop market. A nice set of features indeed.

Oracle on the other hand was really focussing on Xen, and probably will continue to do so, so what will the future hold for Solaris Zones and VirtualBox hold.
Some people already mentioned that VirtualBox could merge up with Hosted Xen .

Now what was Oracle’s Cloud offering again? Sun already has a strategy here, and with the acquisition of Qlayer earlier this year they also have got a solid product line.

Xen just got another really strong vendor backing it’s technology, with both Citrix and Oracle behind it now. We’ll probaly find out soon.

Sun Microsystems Acquires Q-layer To Expand Cloud Offerings

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Sun Microsystems just announced it has acquired Q-layer, a cloud computing company that automates the deployment and management of both public and private clouds. The 35 people from the Q-layer organization, based in Belgium, will become part of Sun’s Cloud Computing business unit, which develops and integrates cloud computing technologies, architectures and services.

With this acquisition Sun logically expands its existing cloud building blocks on top of its xVM Virtualization product range. Let’s not forget Sun already bought MySQL and VirtualBox to that effect last year. Sun keeps doing many cool things with technology, but seems to have a persistent problem to generate meaningful revenue from those acquisitions and development. We are curious to see if time will prove their puzzle just took a bit longer to fall together.

The Sun press release goes on to claim the acquired ‘Q-layer technology simplifies cloud management and allows users to quickly provision and deploy applications, a key component in Sun’s strategy to enable building public and private clouds. As businesses continue to rely more on technology to drive mission-critical processes, the agility of the datacenter determines the flexibility of the entire company. The Q-layer software supports instant provisioning of services such as servers, storage, bandwidth and applications, enabling users to scale their own environments to meet their specific requirements.’

“Sun’s open, network-centric approach coupled with optimized systems, software and services provides the critical building blocks for private and public cloud offerings,” said David Douglas, senior vice president of Cloud Computing and chief sustainability officer, Sun Microsystems. “Q-layer’s technology and expertise will enhance Sun’s offerings, simplifying cloud management and speeding application deployment.”

The terms of the deal were not disclosed as the transaction is not material to Sun.

Disclaimer: Q-Layer is the longest running sponsor of Virtualization.com

Sun Releases xVM VirtualBox 2.1

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Sun Microsystems has introduced an updated to xVM VirtualBox, now at version 2.1 (download here).

The latest release offers several enhancements, including:

  • 3D acceleration graphics adaptor uses Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) to run high-performance graphics applications, including CAM-based imagery software.
  • Better network performance speeds up network-intensive apps like videos.
  • Bridged networking configuration makes it easier to deploy Web stacks like LAMP or SAMP.

Also, xVM VirtualBox 2.1 supports:

  • Sun Storage 7000 unified storage systems
  • Intel’s new Nehalem-based processors
  • Mac OS X on Intel Virtualization Technology
  • VMware’s virtual machine disk (VMDK) and Microsoft’s virtual hard disk (VHN) file formats
  • 64-bit guest OSes on 32-bit host platforms

Sun Announces xVM Server, xVM Ops Center 2.0 — Public Release Coming Soon

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Sun Microsystems today announced the availability of Sun xVM Server software and Sun xVM Ops Center 2.0, key components in its strategy. Sun also announced the addition of comprehensive services and support for Sun xVM Server software and xVM Ops Center 2.0 to its virtualization suite of services . Additionally, Sun launched xVMserver.org, a new open source community, where developers can download the first source code bundle for Sun xVM Server software and contribute to the direction and development of the product.

Sun xVM Server software and xVM Ops Center 2.0 join Sun’s xVM product portfolio, which includes Sun xVM VirtualBox software for desktop virtualization and Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) software for virtual desktop consolidation and management.

Sun offers standalone subscriptions for Sun xVM Server software and Sun xVM Ops Center, as well as additional options that offer the combined benefits of the two products. Commercial subscriptions are priced annually in four-socket increments and provide premium 24X7 support, access to the latest, up-to-the-minute patches and updates, as well as installation and training.

Available pricing options include:

  • Sun xVM Server software: Priced at $500/year per physical server.
  • Sun xVM Infrastructure Enterprise Subscription: Priced at $2000 per physical server per year, the enterprise subscription is designed to simplify the management of large scale virtualized environments and includes advanced features, such as management of live migration and of multiple network storage libraries.
  • Sun xVM Infrastructure Datacenter Subscription: Priced at $3000 per server per year, this option includes all the features in the Sun xVM Infrastructure Enterprise Subscription in addition to physical server monitoring, management and advanced software lifecycle management capabilities.
  • Sun xVM Ops Center: Available from $100 per managed server up to $350 a year, depending on customer selected features, along with a required $10,000 Satellite Server annual subscription for Sun xVM Ops Center.

Good news also for licensing, straight from ‘Virtual’ Steve Wilson’s blog:

“xVM Server is comprised of several open source components, and some have different source licenses, but the bulk of the code specific to xVM Server (including the all-new management UI) is being distributed through xvmserver.org under GPL v3.”

As for actual public availability:

Sun started early access testing with a limited number of customers last month. The company will now be increasing the number in the EA program and selected several additional customers already from those who have registered.  For those who’ve registered for the early access, more details on the program will be informed shortly.  Sun is aiming for a generally available binary EA release from xvmserver.org in about 30 days and a release candidate within 60 days.

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

Should VMWare Watch Out For VirtualBox?

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Or for a lot more?

IT Wire has a good introductory article about VirtualBox.

Sadly their introduction is a bit wrong in the details, as VirtualBox obviously is not “the only professional virtualisation solution that is freely available as open source software under the GNU General Public License (GPL.) Why this matters is because it’s truly free, as in freedom.”

Amongst others Xen is also fully GPL, and given its backing from both Citrix and most of the major Linux vendors it’s also professionally supported.

Also it also isn’t the only one that can run unmodified guests , both KVM and Xen can do this, given the these days standard VT hardware support. VirtualBox however does not need VT support (and neither did Qemu).

However, it’s still a fairly good introduction and keeping these remarks in mind it’s a good read, and it shows that VMWare should watch its back, and not just for VirtualBox