Some of the key points that Steve makes in the interview are:
Sun is a player in the virtualization space
Sun xVM Server includes a number of datacenter-grade features borrowed from Solaris that give xVM Server a set of highly unique attributes such as predictive self healing
xVM Server will be able to run VM files which were created for VMware's ESX Server or Microsoft's Hyper-V without modification
xVM Ops Center is designed to manage up to thousands of servers (physical and virtual)
xVM Ops Center will be available freely under the very liberal GNU Public License (GPL) version 3
Sun is planning to provide the ability to use Solaris Cluster together with xVM Server for applications where true clustering is required
Ops Center 1.0 includes support for patching of Solaris (x86 and SPARC) as well as several versions of Redhat and SuSE Linux. Windows patching support will be added in a future revision
xVM Server includes a simple to use, self-patching system that can automatically download and install the newest patches
xVM Ops Center will ship in the next few weeks, ahead of the first commercial release of xVM Server
xVM Ops Center 1.0 is focused on datacenter automation and includes features such as:
Server discovery and inventory management
Server firmware analysis and provisioning
Bare metal Server provisioning
Patch management
Monitoring
xVM Server, and an update to xVM Ops Center to go with it, are planned for Q2 of calendar year 2008. Specific features to manage virtualized environments, include:
Full virtual guest life cycle management
Management of the domain 0 instance
Monitoring, management and provisioning of Windows, Linux and Solaris guests
Migration capabilities (Live, Regular and Cold)
Simple single host management through direct browser access, as well as large scale multi-node management via xVM Ops Center
Expansive resource monitoring and analysis
Guest image storage library management
Virtual and resource pooling
Network virtualization and bandwidth management
Both xVM Server and xVM Ops Center will expose API sets through WS-Management. Sun will be putting specs out for this over at http://openxvm.org shortly
virtualization.info
