Sun's VirtualBox 3.0 exits betaland

Update: This story originally said that Sun had not open-sourced VirtualBox. Sun does offer an open source version Only two weeks ago, Sun Microsystems quietly kicked out two quick betas of its VirtualBox 3.0 desktop and sometimes server-virtualization hypervisor, and today, the product is ready for prime time. That was a …

[EnigmaForce]

xVM Server

BTW, xVM Server has been folded into xVM Ops Centre:

"With all the interest in Eco/Green computing we expect a lot of buzz around this. However, the most interesting item is the release of a set of comprehensive x64 hypervisor management functions. Ops Center can now:

* Provision the xVM Server hypervisor onto bare metal servers. It can do these completely "hands off" and it can do this for multiple servers simultaneously. It does all required network setup and plumbing as well (a major hurdle for our EA customers)

* Creation of VM guests and provisioning of images to those guests (either via ISO install or network install)

* Guest snapshotting and backup

* VMDK file format support and import of VMware Virtual Appliances

* NFS and CIFS network storage support for guest and ISO images

* Live migration of guests from one host to another

* Virtual Pool constructs for policy automation across hypervisor hosts based on load, as well as automatic failure recovery

Ops Center 2.1 includes a bundled xVM Server beta that is available to all Ops Center customers, and we will be running a formal beta program with key, interested customers to ensure this works reliably and at scale for real enterprise deployments. If you are of of the existing hundreds of xVM Ops Center 1.0, 1.1, 2.0 or Sun Connection customer then you're eligible to upgrade to Ops Center 2.1 (which includes the xVM Server beta) for free. "

And, the guts of xVM Server is in OpenSolaris:

http://opensolaris.org/os/community/xen/docs/

http://blogs.sun.com/ptelles/entry/sun_xvm_hypervisor_part_i

http://blogs.sun.com/ptelles/entry/sun_xvm_hypervisor_part_ii

Again, this would have actually required a little research on your part. The sources aren't exactly obscure, either.

[klarien masters]

quick quick before they close the doors !!!!!

it's interesting (and somehow distressing)...... watching the flurry of "look at me I'm really busy" type activity going on in sun at the moment;. I guess there are two types of people left - the ones who want to see their baby get out the door before the project gets canned (potentially) by a new overlord, and those who want to be seen to be really usefull and wearing a "please keep me" badge !!!!!

I guess you can take your pick where this project falls........... rumour control at Sun in UK is predicting a 70% chop when the new masters move in.......

[Ben Woodward]

Second beta.

Actually there was a second beta released on the 24th of June.

[Anonymous Coward]

OSS

I thought VBox was in two flavours, one is fully OSS, the other version with extra bits is a locked down binary only release, unless they changed it for v3.0.

Still a great litte VM manager, not quite as good as VMWare just yet, but definately a contender if Oracle don't screw up and let it die.

[Greg J Preece]

@klarlen

If they canned it it wouldn't stop Virtualbox OSE. ;-)

This version looks sweeeeet. The OpenGL will be nice for my development work, and the DX support will be nice for.....non-work-related activities. Oh, come on, I run XP - XP x64, in fact. I can't play Messiah, I can't play Independence War, etc, etc. This could be more awesome than an awesome thing.

[myxiplx]

$30? And the rest...

I'd love to buy the full commercial version... if Sun would just let me.

I'm using the open source edition at the moment, but would jump at the chance to buy the full version if I could. However, if you look at Sun's licencing page, while they do offer a $30 version, that's for a minimum quantity of 50.

I want 2-3 licences max, and while I would gladly pay $90 for them there's no way on earth I'm paying $1,500.

[The Original Ash]

@askvictor

VirtualBox OSE comes as source only (not compiled) and has less of a feature set than VirtualBox.

Pedant or not, "VirtualBox" is not open source, and "VirtualBox OSE" is not "VirtualBox."

[Tony Reeves 1]

Re: $30? And the rest...

"I'd love to buy the full commercial version... if Sun would just let me."

Why? You can use the "full commercial version" for free. From Virtual box Editions page... http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Editions "The full VirtualBox package is available in binary (executable) form free of charge from the Downloads page....... If, instead, you wish to purchase licenses for enterprise use and/or enterprise support for VirtualBox, please do not hesitate to contact your Sun representative. "

[Greg J Preece]

@Ash

OSE can be gotten as a *.deb from the Ubuntu repositories. Job's a good 'un. Now they just need to update the repositories....

[Charles 9]

Still one thing bugs me...

...and others, too. Much as I appreciate the new DX/OGL support, one thing keeps this from being the ideal gap-filler between DOSBox and a Windows Vista/7-native host system--Guest Additions (including OGL/DX support) for Windows 95/98/ME. The problem is this--there are a number of irreplacable applications that are young enough to be beyond the DOS/Win31 era yet are too old to run on XP and Vista, period, even if you use the compatibility tweaks. Currently, the Guest Addition support only goes back to XP, which is useless for this circumstance.

[AchimR]

if only one could...

...assign more than the 128MB video RAM to the guest than what's available now with VBox 3, as well as having dx10 included, I'd switch finally my main machine from Windows to Linux too.

Only thing stopping me, for games / render programs (and some other progs which still have complications with wine)