Sun xVM
| Company type | Product suite |
|---|---|
| Industry | Software, Virtualization |
| Founded | October 2007 |
| Founder | Sun Microsystems |
| Fate | Phased out and rebranded after Oracle acquisition of Sun Microsystems |
Area served | x86 architectures |
| Products | Sun xVM Server, Sun xVM Ops Center, Sun xVM VirtualBox |
| Parent | Sun Microsystems |
Sun xVM represented a virtualization technology product suite developed by Sun Microsystems specifically for x86 architectures. Prior to the Oracle acquisition of Sun, one element of this suite was phased out, while the other two components persisted and were rebranded under Oracle.
History
The xVM family was introduced by Sun in October 2007, originally comprising Sun xVM Server, Sun xVM Ops Center, and Sun xVM VirtualBox. By the end of 2009, the "xVM" designation was removed from the latter two products, which were subsequently renamed Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center and Oracle VM VirtualBox.
Sun xVM hypervisor
Derived from contributions within the OpenSolaris Xen community, the Sun xVM hypervisor was incorporated into the OpenSolaris codebase. It delivered conventional Xen hypervisor capabilities for x86 platforms as part of the OpenSolaris operating system distributions.
Sun xVM Server
The Sun xVM Server, built upon the xVM hypervisor foundation, was designed to run guest operating systems including Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Solaris. It utilized OpenSolaris features such as Predictive Self Healing, ZFS, DTrace, advanced network bandwidth controls from the Crossbow initiative, along with strengthened security mechanisms.
Instead of developing a unique disk image format, Sun xVM Server allowed for importing and exporting of VMDK and VHD files to maintain interoperability with virtualization platforms like VMware ESX Server and Microsoft's Hyper-V.
In May 2009, development on the standalone xVM Server was halted by the OpenSolaris Xen community. The responsibilities transitioned to the Xen/OpenSolaris project, while the original xVM Server team redirected efforts toward Ops Center for managing multiple hypervisors across physical hardware. Sun Vice President Steve Wilson confirmed that commercial Solaris would not incorporate support for the xVM hypervisor.