The Oracle virtualization portfolio got a boost with the company’s acquisition of Sun, and it has signaled a willingness to take on VMware. Oracle VM 3, which is expected this spring, will give Oracle credible Xen-based server virtualization that could challenge VMware, Microsoft and Citrix Systems Inc. — at least in the tens of thousands of Oracle database and application shops. A SearchServerVirtualization.com article explores Oracle’s virtualization play.
Sun’s OpenOffice.org, Solaris 10 Considered Significant
A special eWEEK report names the products, applications, and technologies of the last decade that have changed the way people work, play, and live. Limiting the list to 25 of the most significant technologies and products, eWeek found OpenOffice.org and the Solaris 10 Operating System to be two important solutions making a mark in the last 10 years.
Migrating the Guest OS Oracle Enterprise Linux from VMware to VirtualBox
If considering moving a virtual machine (VM) from one virtualization platform to another, you might want to think about just creating a new VM on the preferred platform. However, if you would rather avoid a complete reinstallation and are interested in trying a VM migration, then read on to find out some tips on making the move as smooth as possible.
Work Still Needed to Interest Enterprises, But Potential is There
Oracle plans to make VirtualBox part of its enterprise virtualization portfolio, right alongside its server virtualization hypervisor Oracle VM, according to a SearchServerVirtualization.com article. Oracle aims to integrate Sun’s VirtualBox hypervisor (rebranded as Oracle VM VirtualBox) with Oracle VM, allowing administrators to use VirtualBox as a sandbox to create virtual desktops and deploy them to Oracle VM pools.
Adds Operating System Support, New BIOSconfig Utility
The free Sun Server Management Pack for Sun’s X64 servers has an updated release. Version 1.3 has added support for Windows Server 2003 and 2008 support, along with Solaris, Linux, VMware, and additional versions of Windows operating systems. The CLI component has new BIOSconfig utility that supports most of the supported operating systems. The Sun Server Hardware Management Agents and associated Sun Server Hardware SNMP Plugins provide flexible in-band management to monitor Sun x64 Server and Blade module’s hardware.
Sun’s VirtualBox 3.1 has definitely made a big hit with InfoWorld’s reviewer Randall C. Kennedy, who writes, “This is one freebie that breaks the mold and delivers more, not less, than you’re expecting.” In Kennedy’s opinion, VirtualBox 3.1 should give VMware something serious to worry about. ” … after years of wallowing in obscurity, VirtualBox, the desktop virtualisation solution of choice for FOSS groupies and similar anti-establishment types, is causing quite a ruckus,” he continues.
For VMware ESX on the Sun Fire X4150 and Unified Storage 7000 Series
If you are interested in getting started using VMware on Sun servers, then a quick start guide by Ron Graham is certainly a resource worth reading. This document goes through the basic steps of setting up VMware Infrastructure 3 functionality on the Sun Fire X4150 with the Sun Storage 7210 Unified Storage System as shared storage.
InfoWorld has published what its test center staff believes are this year’s technologies of the year, and Sun’s VirtualBox 3.1 is one. The judges find Sun’s high performance, cross-platform virtualization software a compelling alternative to VMware Workstation, noting that VirtualBox definitely supersedes this competitor in scalability.
The Sun Fire X4270 server running VMware ESX 4.0 OS earned an excellent result on the virtualization benchmark VMmark from VMware for 8 core platforms. The Sun x64 server delivers near linear scalability under the heavy load conditions of the VMmark benchmark, whose purpose is to measure performance and scalability of a pre-established mix of workloads (a Tile), which allows comparisons among similar platforms.
The new BigAdmin Support hub covers Sun services and solutions of interest to sys admins, e.g. different support scenarios for Solaris and OpenSolaris operating systems. Find out about SunSpectrum Support Programs and service plans for sites and solutions, for servers, or for software.
Backup and Recovery Snapshots for VMware ESX Server With Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage System
This implementation guide from a Sun engineer discusses array-based backup and recovery operations for VMware ESX Server and VMware vSphere virtual machine environments. These examples use the snapshot, clone, rollback, and replication features of Sun Storage 7000 Unified Storage Systems.
