Sun claims that xVM is its first virtualization technology based on a hypervisor. With hypervisor technology, a physical server can be partitioned into multiple virtual servers that could include an operating system and more than one application. xVM includes Sun xVM Server, a virtualization hypervisor, and Sun xVM Ops Center, a virtualization management tool.
Sun claims that xVM Sun will be able to virtualize different datacenter assets, including network, storage, applications and hardware. xVM uses hypervisor technology from the Xen community, and virtualizes and manages mixed environments running on Java, OpenSolaris, Linux, and Windows, and is compatible with HP, Dell, IBM and Sun hardware.
In a similar move, Oracle unveiled its own virtualization product, Oracle VM in November 2007, which similar to xVM server, is based on the open source Xen hypervisor project.
xVM server can host Windows, Solaris and Linux operating systems, and provide features such as ZFS and predictive self-healing. According to Sun, other companies endorsing xVM include AMD, Intel, mySQL, Symantec, Quest Software and Red Hat.
The company has also launched openxvm.org, an open source community for building next-generation datacenter virtualization and management technologies.
Prior to the launch of xVM, Sun offered hardware virtualization based on logically partitioning its processors into smaller virtual processors running their own operating systems, and software virtualization based on the container feature in its Solaris operating system.
Source: ComputerWire daily updates
