Oracle Announces Latest Version Of Oracle VM Server For SPARC

Continuing to deliver new innovations in virtualisation for Oracle Solaris and its SPARC servers, Oracle today announced Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.1, a key component in Oracle’s complete, integrated desktop to datacentre virtualisation portfolio.

Pre-installed on Oracle’s SPARC T-series servers, Oracle VM Server for SPARC is a server virtualisation solution that allows up to 128 virtual machines, or “domains”, on one system, providing organisations increased flexibility and improved server utilisation. Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.1 delivers live migration capabilities to the SPARC T-series server family, including SPARC T3, UltraSPARC T2 Plus and UltraSPARC T2 based servers, allowing customers to quickly and easily migrate running domains from one physical server to another, eliminating application outages and server downtime.

In addition, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack provides full lifecycle management of Oracle VM Server for SPARC. Through the enhancements to domain migration and resource management, users of Oracle SPARC T-series servers can benefit from increased application service levels.

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Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.1 delivers live migration which enables users to migrate an active domain to another host machine while maintaining application services to users. Live migrations are as simple as point and click using Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center’s console. The on-chip cryptographic accelerators deliver secure, wire speed encryption capabilities for live migration – without any additional hardware investments.

Dynamic Resource Management (DRM) between domains ensures that domains running the most important workloads get priority for CPU access over domains with less critical workloads. Increased maximum number of virtual networks per domain permits a dramatic increase in external access to domains. The lower-overhead, higher scalability networking for Oracle Solaris 11 Express allows virtual network devices to use shared memory to exchange network packets, enabling improved performance and scalability.

Support for virtual device service validation immediately validates the name and path for a specified network device or virtual disk, greatly reducing the risk of incorrectly configured I/O. Integrated Dynamic Reconfiguration (DR) of cryptographic units and virtual CPUs simplify operations by dynamically reconfiguring cryptographic units and CPUs.

Enhanced Management Information Base (MIB) enables the SNMP MIB to use the latest Logical Domains Manager XML interface, permitting third party management software to access the new features and resource properties and P2V tool enhancements bring more flexibility to quickly convert an existing SPARC server running Oracle Solaris 8, 9 or 10 into a virtualised Oracle Solaris image to run on SPARC T-series servers.

“The addition of secure, live migration and the enhancements to network and CPU resource management in Oracle VM Server for SPARC 2.1 is an exciting milestone for our development teams and our customers,” said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president Linux and Virtualisation Engineering, Oracle. “With these enhancements, customers can take advantage of an enterprise class virtualisation solution that is fully integrated and optimised with the operating system and hardware to not only keep their datacentres performing efficiently and cost-effectively, but also to improve application service levels in even the most demanding environments.”

“Oracle VM Server for SPARC demonstrates the tremendous benefits of hardware and software engineered to work together,” said Bill Nesheim, vice president Oracle Solaris Engineering, Oracle. “This release offers customers a new level of flexibility in efficiently deploying enterprise workloads on the SPARC T-series family of systems and demonstrates Oracle’s ongoing commitment to innovation in SPARC and Oracle Solaris. Oracle VM Server for SPARC, the SPARC T-series family of systems, and Oracle Solaris, together with the lifecycle management capabilities of Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center, offer an unmatched foundation for deploying a wide range of enterprise applications.”