Sun xVM

Infobox Software
name = Sun xVM



caption =
developer = Sun Microsystems
released = February 2008
latest release version =
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operating system = Solaris, Linux, Windows
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genre = Virtual machine monitor
license = GNU General Public License version 3
website = http://sun.com/xvm

Sun xVM is a family of four technologies from Sun Microsystems that address desktop and server virtualization, as well as datacenter automation. Sun announced the product family in October 2007. [cite web
url = http://sun.com/featured-articles/2007-1005/feature/
title = Sun Previews its Approach to Server Virtualization & Management
accessdate = 2007-12-09
date = October 5, 2007
publisher = Sun Microsystems] The first release of the management component, Sun xVM Ops Center, was available in February 2008. [cite web|url=http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-02/sunflash.20080219.1.xml|title=Sun Announces Availability of Sun xVM Ops Center, Delivers on Sun's Virtualization Strategy| date=2008-02-19|publisher=Sun Microsystems]

Products

Sun xVM Server

The xVM Server uses a bare-metal hypervisor based on the open source Xen under a Solaris environment on x86-64 systems. On SPARC systems, xVM is based on Sun's Logical Domains and Solaris. Sun plans to support Microsoft Windows (on x86-64 systems only), Linux, and Solaris as guest operating systems.

Sun xVM Server provides various features from Sun's OpenSolaris underlying the guest OS, including Predictive Self Healing, ZFS, DTrace, advanced network bandwidth management (from the OpenSolaris Crossbow project) as well as security enhancements. [ [http://blogs.sun.com/vsarathy/entry/virtualbox_and_sun_xvm VirtualBox and Sun xVM : Veritable Vijay ] ]

Instead of having its own disk image format, Sun xVM Server will import/export VMDK [ [http://www.sun.com/software/products/xvm/xvm_whitepaper.pdf Sun xVM Virtualization Portfolio: Virtualizing the Dynamic Datacenter] ] and VHD images to facilitate interoperation with VMware ESX Server and Microsoft's Hyper-V.

On September 10, 2008, Sun announced [ [http://www.sun.com/aboutsun/pr/2008-09/sunflash.20080910.1.xml] ] the availability of xVM server source code on its project page [ [http://xvmserver.org/] ] .

Sun xVM VirtualBox

VirtualBox is x86 virtualization software installed on an existing host operating system such as Solaris, Windows, Linux or Mac OS X; it allows running additional operating systems, each known as a "Guest OS", each with its own virtual environment.

VirtualBox inside the xVM product line is intended to be the starting point for developers to create and test their virtual machines before deploying them on the xVM Server environment, allowing them to be created on any of the supported "Host OSes". Also, since version 1.6.0, VirtualBox can run under the constrains of a Solaris Container, expanding the number of operating systems that can be run inside each Container and manage the resources from each OS individually through the Container. Further integration is expected to arrive at a later version integrating better with the Crossbow project [http://opensolaris.org/os/project/crossbow/] , enhancing the networking capabilities of the VirtualBox Container. [ [http://blogs.sun.com/tpm/entry/combining_virtualization_technologies Combining Virtualization Technologies : OS Technology ] ]

VirtualBox can also be used in a standalone fashion, allowing users of an operating system to use and develop software for other OSes by virtualizing. In this way, VirtualBox is comparable to Microsoft's Virtual PC, VMware Workstation and Parallels Workstation.

Sun xVM Ops Center

The Sun xVM Ops Center is a datacenter automation tool that simplifies discovery and management of physical and virtualized assets. Among its features it can: [ [http://blogs.sun.com/vsarathy/entry/virtualbox_and_sun_xvm VirtualBox and Sun xVM : Veritable Vijay ] ]

*Provide a single console for the management of both the physical and virtual infrastructure in a virtualized environment

*Allow discovery of any existing infrastructure, including hardware that has just been unpacked and plugged in but has not been switched on

*Power everything up and then provision this hardware with firmware, operating system hypervisors and other applications as required

*Once operational, ensure that all the software on the servers, both physical and virtualized, can be automatically updated and patched

*Enable custom reports to be generated for operational as well as compliance purposes.

The upcoming release includes a browser-based, platform-independent interface that uses AJAX for its rich interactivity.

Sun VDI software

Sun VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) software is a connection broker that provides desktop virtualization to replace fully featured machines with virtual images on a server that are controlled remotely on a thin client such as Sun's Sun Ray, or any other computer with Java. [ [http://blogs.sun.com/proponere/entry/sun_virtual_desktop_infrastructure_software Proponere : Weblog ] ] . Sun VDI supports lifecycle management and the ability to monitor resource usage and dynamically turn themhuh off for each assigned virtual machine (guest OSes).

It can be used with Sun's thin clients using the Appliance Link Protocol (ALP) as its display protocol. ALP is comparable to Citrix's XenDesktop (previously known as Presentation Server) and Microsoft's Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP). [ [http://blogs.sun.com/ThinGuy/entry/sun_ray_bandwidth Sun Ray Bandwidth vs. Citrix - The S Word Blog ] ] . In 2008 VMware announced a similar integrated solution consisting of VMware VDI and Sun Ray Software solution. [ [http://virtualization.com/news/2008/05/19/vmware-combines-vdi-with-sun-microsystems-sun-ray-software-adds-certification-program-for-thin-clients-and-professional-services-suite/ VMware Combines VDI with Sun Microsystems' Sun Ray Software, Adds Certification Program For Thin Clients And Professional Services Suite | Virtualization.com ] ]

VMware Infrastructure 3 Server (VI3) is supported, with plans for integration with Sun xVM Server. [ [http://www.virtualization.info/techtalk/2008/01/sun-virtualization-strategy.html virtualization.info TechTalk: The Sun virtualization strategy ] ]

OpenxVM

At this moment, OpenxVM consists of two core projects [cite web|url=http://openxvm.org/learn.html|title=openxVM Tecnology] :

* xVM Server
* xVM VirtualBox

Source code for the "Common Agent Container" component is available from the OpenxVM.org community. Sun plans to release the rest of the Sun xVM Ops Center source code under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3).

References

External links

* [http://www.sun.com/software/products/xvm Sun xVM homepage]
* [http://wikis.sun.com/display/xVM/Sun+xVM Sun xVM Ops Center documentation]
* [http://blogs.sun.com/xvmblog/ Sun xVM blog]
* [http://forum.java.sun.com/forum.jspa?forumID=907&start=0 Sun xVM Ops Center developer forum]
* [http://openxvm.org open source project homepage]
* [http://openxvm.org/ openxvm: Home]
* [http://www.sun.com/blueprints/1107/820-3073.html Solaris Operating System Hardware Virtualization Product Architecture]
* [http://opensolaris.org/os/community/xen Xen at OpenSolaris.org]
* [http://wikis.sun.com/download/attachments/21725411/820-3089.pdf Understanding the Sun xVM Hypervisor Architecture]