The Virtualization Battle: News from Sun, Novell and Microsoft - and Red Hat joins in
The battle in the virtualization market enters a new phase: Sun Microsystems released new versions of its virtualization software Sun xVM. And a few days ago Red Hat announced its takeover of Qumranet, makers of the virtualizer KVM. Meanwhile Microsoft and Novell are teaming up to counter with their own Microsoft Hyper-V and Suse Linux Enterprise Server offerings.
Today Sun Microsystems issued a new version of its server virtualizer Sun xVM along with its accompanying management solution xVM Ops Center 2.0. At the same time, the company wants to create a new open source community through its xVMserver.org developer hub. This announcement follows just days after Sun announced their desktop virtualizer xVM VirtualBox 2.0. The software hails from its acquisition in early 2008 of Innotek. Through its new community platform, the company seeks to attract more developers in a collaborative effort. Sun xVM VirtualBox and Ops Center are open source and free for downloading from www.openxvm.org. Sun is targeting its virtualization portfolio for the x86 and Sparc platforms along with Windows, Linux and Solaris. And this is currently a hotly contested market.
The same day as the Sun press release, Microsoft and Novell issued a joint announcement: the two companies want to sell a combined Suse Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) and Microsoft virtualizer Hyper-V. To add to this, Dell wants to test and evaluate the solution, having joined the team back in May. Although content wise this announcement offered nothing new, the partners issued an additional announcement at the end of August that restated their collaboration in even stronger terms. Even on this occasion they continued to stress openly their cooperation in the virtualization market. In June, Novell joined Microsoft's certification program, and the theme is still at the top of the daily agenda at their joint research center. This news is certainly interesting in light of a new Linux offering: less than a week ago Red Hat announced its buy-out of virtualization vendor Qumranet.
By acquiring Qumranet, Red Hat integrates its Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) with Solid ICE. KVM has already been part of the Linux kernel for over two years and therefore, in the Linux vendor's view, offers a unique competitive edge in hardware offerings and development times. As Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst asserts in his press conference, this puts his company at eye level with Microsoft. Here again it seeks to clarify its target market: according to Red Hat's concept, it wants to virtualize both Windows and Linux servers and desktops, and this under Red Hat infrastructure management.
Issue 272/2023
Buy this issue as a PDF
Subscribe to our Linux Newsletters
Find Linux and Open Source Jobs
Subscribe to our ADMIN Newsletters
News
-
An All-Snap Version of Ubuntu is In The Works
Along with the standard deb version of the open-source operating system, Canonical will release an-all snap version.
-
Mageia 9 Beta 2 Ready for Testing
The latest beta of the popular Mageia distribution now includes the latest kernel and plenty of updated applications.
-
KDE Plasma 6 Looks to Bring Basic HDR Support
The KWin piece of KDE Plasma now has HDR support and color management geared for the 6.0 release.
-
Bodhi Linux 7.0 Beta Ready for Testing
The latest iteration of the Bohdi Linux distribution is now available for those who want to experience what's in store and for testing purposes.
-
Changes Coming to Ubuntu PPA Usage
The way you manage Personal Package Archives will be changing with the release of Ubuntu 23.10.
-
AlmaLinux 9.2 Now Available for Download
AlmaLinux has been released and provides a free alternative to upstream Red Hat Enterprise Linux.
-
An Immutable Version of Fedora Is Under Consideration
For anyone who's a fan of using immutable versions of Linux, the Fedora team is currently considering adding a new spin called Fedora Onyx.
-
New Release of Br OS Includes ChatGPT Integration
Br OS 23.04 is now available and is geared specifically toward web content creation.
-
Command-Line Only Peropesis 2.1 Available Now
The latest iteration of Peropesis has been released with plenty of updates and introduces new software development tools.
-
TUXEDO Computers Announces InfinityBook Pro 14
With the new generation of their popular InfinityBook Pro 14, TUXEDO upgrades its ultra-mobile, powerful business laptop with some impressive specs.