Server maker gets into x86 virtualization at last.
Sun Microsystems is preparing to launch a Xen-based hypervisor in an attempt to catch up in the virtualization market.
The server maker plans to release a first preview of its xVM server in January, followed by a release in the second quarter of 2008. A management application called xVM Ops Center will be released in December.
Virtualization is currently primarily used to consolidate infrastructure applications such as email, print and file servers on a single physical server. The technology's greatest promise however lies in the ability to move workloads to a different server in case of a hardware failure or to allow for maintenance without system downtime.
The automation of such live migrations however requires management software that is able to detect when a server is about to suffer a hardware failure, argued Marc Hamilton, vice president of Solaris Marketing.
"The business agility benefits are more a feature of the management platform than of the actual virtualization platform. As a systems company, we believe the real benefits are in tying together the management of not only the virtual layer, but the physical layer as well," Hamilton said in a meeting with reporters and analysts in San Francisco.
The xVM server is essentially a tweaked version of Solaris in combination with the open source Xen hypervisor. It supports Linux, Windows and Solaris operating systems running as a guest.
Hamilton declined to discuss the licensing structure for the software. Xen is governed by the General Public Licence (GPL), where Solaris falls under the Common Distribution and Development Licence (CDDL). Pointing to Sun's strategy of releasing all its software under an open source licence, Hamilton suggested that the xVM Server would fall under either the CDDL or the GPL.
Sun is late to the x86 virtualization game. Its Logical Domains virtualization technology is supported in Sparc processors only, but isn't supported by AMD or Intel chips. Solaris also offers containers, a technology that allows applications to run in an isolated compartment but without requiring a separate operating system.
The virtualization market however has clearly gathered around hypervisor based virtualization on x86 servers. VMware is currently valued at US$34bn (AUD$38.3bn), nearly 80 per cent more than Sun's market capitalization of US$19bn (AUD$21.4bn).
Hamilton denied however that Sun has missed the boat on virtualization, arguing that the market is still in its early stages.
"There is still a tremendous amount of opportunity in the market," Hamilton said.
"A lot of times, using a proprietary custom built solution, you can get time of market advantages. The open source community through Xen and other open source projects are now going in and bringing products to market based on open source alternatives."
"We think that there is room for multiple virtualization companies."