Sun Elaborates on its xVM Virtualization Plans

Published: October 18, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

After leaving a bunch of hints from a couple of different angles in blogs and trade shows about its plans for supporting various virtualization technologies on its Sparc and X64 server platforms, Sun Microsystems has seen the wisdom of actually making an old-fashioned announcement and telling the IT trade press exactly what its xVM hypervisor for Solaris is, how it will be packaged, and when it will be available for customers. Now we can tell you what Sun's plans are and provide some analysis of the plan, which is our job.

As this newsletter reported two weeks ago, xVM is the name that Sun has chosen for the implementation of the open source Xen hypervisor that has been plugged into the OpenSolaris development version of Solaris Unix. OpenSolaris is, of course, itself an open source operating system now, so weaving Xen into the platform for X64 servers makes good sense. Eventually, the development release of OpenSolaris called "Nevada" will be spun out as a formal Solaris release--and very likely as Solaris 11 because Sun will have to make a big deal about how this is a new and better operating system. But xVM is a lot more than just Xen embedded in Solaris.

Steve Wilson, vice president of connected systems management at Sun, and Dan Roberts, director of Solaris marketing, hosted a "chalk talk" briefing with the IT trade press recently to elaborate on what xVM was. It is not just Xen, but an approach to virtualization that Sun will use going forward to provide a wide array of server and workstation virtualization technologies and a consistent and integrated set of tools for managing virtualization. xVM, for instance, includes the logical domains (LDoms) that are part of the Sparc T1 and T2 server lines and which will undoubtedly be a key technology in the future UltraSparc RK "Rock" processors and their related "Supernova" server line, due in the second half of 2008.

Sun's approach echoes the branding and strategy used by VMware, the 8,000-pound gorilla of X64 server virtualization, is called xVM Infrastructure, and this consists of two sets of programs: the xVM Server and the xVM Ops Center. The Xen hypervisor running on X64 iron will allow for the support of Solaris 10, presumably Solaris 11, Linux, and Windows operating systems as guests, while the LDom hypervisor on Sparc T1, T2, and RK chips will allow for Solaris 10, presumably Solaris 11, and Ubuntu Linux as guests. In both cases, Solaris is the host operating system environment--called the control domain--and Sun's Zettabyte File System (ZFS), Dynamic Tracing (DTrace), and Fault Management Architecture (FMA) features inside Solaris will be wrapped around those guest operating systems and will be able to support them and probe them. FMA is interesting in that it allows bad CPUs or memory DIMMs to be identified and isolated when they are creating errors; the system can keep running until an appropriate time can be found to take the machine down and replace the faulty components. Neither Windows or Linux have such capability, but they will inherit it from Solaris when they are run inside a Xen or LDom partition that is controlled by Solaris.

As new hypervisor technologies become available, particularly on the X64 platform, Sun will evaluate whether they should be adopted into the xVM scheme. Roberts said that the xVM approach will not be limited to servers, either, and that xVM partitions will appear in Sun desktop machines and its storage arrays. It is worth noting that as part of the Sun-Microsoft deal that made Sun an OEM distributor for Windows for its X64 platforms, Sun is working with Microsoft to ensure that not only will Windows work on the xVM framework, but that Solaris (presumably Solaris 11 but maybe also Solaris 10) will run inside the future "Viridian" hypervisor that is due next summer with Windows Server 2008, code-named "Longhorn Server" for many years. Viridian is expected to be compatible with Xen, and a cynic would say that the partnership between Xen and Microsoft inked in July 2006 is about putting Xen inside Longhorn Server and wrapping its own management tools around it, much as Sun is doing with Solaris and xVM.

The xVM Ops Center is the command and control tool for xVM partitioning, and its goal is to bring a consistent management method to Xen, LDom, and presumably Solaris containers, which is a virtual private server (VPS) partitioning technology that is available for Solaris. (Unlike logical or virtual machine partitions, which have a full guest operating system running atop a hypervisor, Solaris containers present virtual Solaris slices that share a single kernel and file system. The VPS approach is one operating system pretending to be a bunch of isolated instances of an operating system, while the VM approach is a hypervisor pretending to be multiple physical servers on behalf of multiple, whole operating systems.) In any event, xVM Ops Center is a Web-based management tool that Sun has created using Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX); it is heavily based on Sun's existing N1 systems management programs (which are a mix of home-grown and acquired technologies) and its Sun Connection Services systems management tools for Solaris platforms.

xVM Ops Center will discover and inventory servers, update firmware, perform bare metal provisioning of physical and virtual servers, manage hypervisors, provision applications inside guest operating systems, and provide compliance reports to ensure that only the right people have access to this capability. The provisioning is done by the N1 Service Provisioning Server.

While some of the xVM features will be available through OpenSolaris and the Solaris Express beta program, Sun's intent is to sell xVM Server and xVM Ops Center as standalone products with separate license and support fees. These products will also be their own development and release cycles, separate from Solaris releases and updates and separate from hardware launched.

xVM Ops Center 1.0 will be generally available in December of this year, followed by a preview of the xVM Server 1.0 release in January 2008. In March 2008, a preview of xVM Ops Center 2.0 will be available, as will a second preview of xVM Server 1.0. In the second quarter of 2008, the fully integrated and ready for production xVM Ops Center 2.0 and xVM Server 1.0 software will be rolled out, complete with shiny new prices.

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