Sun Microsystems is close to releasing its latest virtualization product to market: the company's first and anticipated server virtualization hypervisor technology, xVM Server. In a virtual world that is dominated in the media by VMware, Microsoft, and Citrix, other players continue to emerge on the scene. Sun Microsystems is one such player, and it looks like they have begun an early access program for its anticipated xVM Server hypervisor. Without naming names, Sun says they have already signed up companies from sectors such as financial services, manufacturing, high-tech, and government to be the first to start using xVM Server.And according to the recent blog post by Steve Wilson, vice president of xVM at Sun, the company intends to make a publicly downloadable version of the product available within about a month.Once the xVM hypervisor technology ships, it will join Sun’s existing entries already commercially available in the virtualization space: xVM VirtualBox, used for small scale desktop virtualization; VDI, a management layer that scales out to very large-scale desktop consolidation projects; and on the server side, xVM Ops Center, Sun’s management tool for large-scale virtual and physical datacenters. “The core hypervisor that is part of xVM Server has been available as part of Open Solaris for some time. However, xVM Server is really much more than just a naked hypervisor,” Wilson wrote. “Each copy of xVM Server includes an embedded Web server that allows it to be managed remotely via a graphical user interface in a browser (on any OS you choose with no local software installed), or via a Web services API.”The product offers an embedded xVM Server management tool that provides a top-level management view that can show you the hardware view of a single xVM Server. Or, you can choose to use a dedicated server to host the Ops Center management suite and then be presented with a user interface that’s almost identical to the embedded version, but adds powerful grouping and tagging features that instead allow for management of thousands of machine instances. Wilson said that for someone who has used xVM VirtualBox, much of the xVM Server UI will seem familiar. He added, “But you quickly start to see new features such as multi-CPU guests, an intra-guest priority to ensure quality of service, and the ability to manage off-host network-based storage libraries.”If you’d like to receive additional information about the early access program, you can send mail to xvm-server-ea-request@sun.com. Software Development