Sun’s Virtualization Strategy Includes xVM

Sun Microsystems unveiled its virtualization platform which includes a hypervisor and management tool combination called Sun xVM which the company hopes to deliver in December.

The technology will first be included in the company’s management stack – xVM Ops Center. According to Sun, combining xVM and Ops Center will help the company to provide its customers with a turnkey virtualization environment. The company also said the new technology will span across its server, storage and networking product lines.

A second xVM Ops Center version is expected to ship sometime around the middle of 2008. Sun said that these initial versions will first operate on Linux and Solaris based systems and that they would later add support for Windows down the line. The company already has an agreement in place with Microsoft to ensure that Windows will ultimately work smoothly on the platform once implemented.

The xVM type-one hypervisor is based on the open source Xen hypervisor, but has a Solaris-based kernel instead of Linux. Included in the technology will be support for ZFS file systems and predictive self healing, a technology where Sun predicts and warns of component failure.

Also announced in the new Ops Center software management package is a set of management tools that will be capable of managing both physical and virtual hardware as well as software. Sun also said that the software will include discovery and inventory, application provisioning, software lifecycle automation, hardware and software monitoring and compliance reporting.

Is Sun too late to the x86 virtualization game? Well, if the reports that state that only 6% of today’s servers are currently being virtualized, then maybe not. Sun seems confident that there is still more room for yet another player in this strong market.