Sun open sources virtualization management tool suite

Posted by Srini Penchikala on Dec 21, 2007

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Operations & Infrastructure

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Virtualization ,

Architecture

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Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems recently released xVM platform, a virtualization and management tool suite which includes two products: xVM Ops Center and xVM Server. Ops Center is a management console used for the discovery, provisioning, and monitoring of virtual and physical IT assets. Sun xVM Server is a Xen based open-source hypervisor (with a Solaris-based kernel instead of Linux) that will run Windows, Linux, and Solaris operating systems.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz made the announcement about xVM platform last month at the Oracle OpenWorld conference. xVM infrastructure, a critical part of Sun's virtualization portfolio is the company's first venture into hypervisor-based virtualization.

xVM Ops Center consolidates different data-center management services including:

• Hypervisor lifecycle management
• Discovery of hardware, software, and operating systems
• Management of firmware and operating system updates
• Compliance reporting with the audit-trail details of actions taken on specific systems

Oren Teich, Ops Center's director of marketing said that "Sun xVM Ops Center is specifically designed to work in existing data centers, even if the companies aren't currently running Sun technology". The software is a set of management tools with five categories of integrated functionality - discovery, monitoring, provisioning, updating, and reporting.

Sun released open source version of xVM Ops Center last week to the newly formed open source community OpenxVM. OpenxVM project, available for download under GPLv3 license, is currently hosted as a java.net community project. Common Agent Container (CAC) is the current project available in OpenxVM Ops Center list of projects. CAC is a JMX management services container that enables the deployment and administration of JMX and JDMK based java management modules.

The architecture of xVM Server, which is already an open source product, is based on the Xen project as well as Sun's Logical Domains (LDoms). It includes the support for Solaris 10 OS features like ZFS file system and Predictive Self Healing (FMA), a technology where the system predicts and warns of component failures.

The first commercial version of Sun xVM Ops Center is expected to be available next month. Sun plans to make the entire code base of Ops Center software available to OpenxVM community in the first quarter of next year.

Srini Penchikala currently works as Security Architect and has 17 yrs of experience in software product management.

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