Sun xVM Ops Center

Sun xVM is Sun's overall brand for virtualization and management software.

The intersection of virtualization and management.

Sun xVM portfolio includes the following products:

• Sun xVM Server - Multi-platform, high-performance hypervisor.
• Sun xVM Ops Center - Multi-platform datacenter automation and unified management of physical and virtual elements of the modern datacenter.
• Sun xVM VirtualBox - Type2 hypervisor that supports a wide range of operating systems on the same workstation or laptop.
• Sun VDI Software - Secure virtual desktop access from nearly any client on the network.

Yes. Stay tuned.

Sun xVM Ops Center is a new tool for datacenter automation and virtualization management of servers at high-scale. It contains features to control the hardware and software elements of the stack (real and virtual).

Sun xVM Ops Center is developed using proven technologies from Sun's N1 and Sun Connection management stacks. The user interface to the product is all new and has been developed using the latest Web technologies. The UI is designed to allow administrators to dramatically extend their reach and maintain thousands of systems in a lights-out environment.

Sun xVM Ops Center supports Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, and Solaris. Microsoft Windows is supported on virtual machines. Windows provisioning and patching support will be extended to bare metal systems in future releases.

The great strength of SPS is its powerful workflow and dependency engine. In future releases, this engine will be extended to integrate deeply with Sun xVM Ops Center, giving SPS customers access to many new, powerful management capabilities. The newest release of N1 SPS (version 6.0) was just released in August 2007. Periodic updates are provided.

Sun Connection Satellite is a product built on technology acquired from Aduva in 2006. Sun xVM Ops Center embeds this same Aduva engine and adds a new, scalable user interface, as well as substantial new functionality from N1SM. We expect that over time Sun Connection Satellite customers will want to upgrade to Sun xVM Ops Center. Existing Sun Connection Satellite customers will be able to upgrade to similar functionality in the new product set as part of their existing subscriptions.

Sun Management Center (Sun MC) provides deep monitoring and management capabilities for Sun systems. Customers can use Sun MC and Sun xVM Ops Center together to provide both in-depth monitoring as well as advanced lifecycle management.

Sun xVM Ops Center is a world-class data center automation and management platform. It can be used to manage hundreds of datacenters. In addition to the life-cycle management of physical systems, Ops Center can be used to manage Containers and LDoms to a limited extent. With xVM Ops Center 2.0, you can manage xVM Server as well. With this release, xVM Ops Center provides an integrated management solution for physical and virtual systems. Additional support for Containers and LDoms will be provided in future releases. All the capabilities that are applicable to physical systems and other advanced capabilities are available now for virtual system management.

Solaris Containers and Sun xVM Server provide complementary virtualization solutions for heterogeneous environments. These solutions can be used in different environments depending on the workloads and operating systems of that environment. They provide flexibility and choice in virtualization technologies. Sun xVM Ops Center software provides a unified management interface for both Sun xVM Server and Containers. At this point, Container management functionality is limited. Additional functionality will be provided in future releases.

No. VMware is a valued Sun partner. Sun and VMware entered into a formal partnership in 2005 that helps ensure that the Solaris 10 OS is supported as a guest OS within VMware's hypervisor, and that Sun's hardware is an effective platform on which to run said the VMware hypervisor. Also, Sun xVM Ops Center is a product with broader scope than Virtual Center, so many of its functions (hardware management and OS patching, for instance) are complementary to Virtual Center; therefore, we expect that many existing VMware customers may use them together.

In September 2007, Sun and Microsoft announced their strategic alliance to include working together on virtualization. Sun and Microsoft continue to work together toward the support of Solaris inside Microsoft Hyper–V, Sun´s support of Windows in Sun xVM Server, and an increasing focus on Windows management in Sun´s tools. Sun is now a part of Microsoft´s Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP). Sun and Microsoft have expanded the collaboration to include supporting Sun Ray thin client customers' access to Microsoft Windows as a guest on Hyper–V. The Solaris OS will be certified as a guest on Windows Server 2008 Hyper–V.

No. Although Sun xVM Ops Center leverages the code of N1SM, it is a new product. Please contact your sales representative, who can present you with some special pricing promotions for access to this new product.

No. You must purchase an xVM Ops Center subscription separately, as it provides the ability to discover, manage, provision and update your operating systems and hardware platforms from one web based interface. You must have a current standard or premium support contract for Solaris to get access to the updates. You must also have a current Red Hat or SUSE support contract to get access to the updates provided for those operating systems. Sun xVM Ops Center provides value by allowing customer's the ability to discover, provision, manage and update their assets from one web based interface.

Open Source is a central to the Sun xVM portfolio strategy. The open source offerings as part of the Sun xVM portfolio are available through www.openxvm.org. Openxvm.org is a open source community site with various resources, blogs, source code as well as API documentation that will allow developers and partners to build and integrate datacenter virtualization and management offerings using the Sun xVM portfolio. Sun xVM Server and xVM VirtualBox source code as well as Ope Center interoperability APIs will be available through openxvm.org at launch time. Please feel free to sign up for one of the email or messaging services available on the site. Additionally, you can find links to blogs from members of our team and read the latest thoughts and plans on our direction.

For small xVM Ops Center implementations (up to 25 hosts), the software subscription includes installation service. For any xVM Ops Center implementation above 25 hosts, we recommend the Virtualization Suite of Services for both architecture and implementation.