"Demystifying Enterprise-Class Server Virtualization," (login or registration required) a Sun BluePrints Online paper by Chad Prucha defines and classifies the various subtypes of server virtualization and provides an overview of the various enterprise-class server virtualization offerings available today from Sun Microsystems and other vendors.

Specifically, the paper addresses the following topics:

• Overview of virtualization: Introduces server virtualization and provides an overview of different virtualization approaches

• Taxonomical summary: the subtypes of virtualization technology: Presents a detailed means of classifying server virtualization implementations

• Survey of virtualization technologies for enterprise-grade platforms: Provides a survey of current server virtualization implementations available from Sun and other vendors

Prucha cautions that some vendors have merely retrofitted a hypervisor to an existing server and labeled it virtualization. It is imperative, therefore to compare such servers in native configurations against themselves in virtualized configurations. This is important because these type of comparisons will provide more useful information than trying to compare results from a competitor's differently engineered server.

The author writes that the range of virtualization options available from Sun, which extends across platforms and OS choices, allows enterprises to select the right tool for the problem. He adds that the integrity of an enterprise server should not be compromised by the virtualization technology.

In accordance with this principle, Sun offers a balanced approach to virtualization, spanning multiple technologies, each emphasizing stability and platform verity while maintaining key performance advantages, Prucha points out. Sun engineers reason that it makes little sense to design stable and fast systems that cannot be used to their fullest potential in a virtualized configuration.

According to Prucha, Sun believes much of its enterprise-grade virtualization technology is a natural extension of the platform’s capabilities and has opted to license the virtualization features accordingly, offering much of the technology free of charge. The simple approach to licensing virtualization technology on SPARC-based platforms reflects Sun’s intent to provide the customer with a recurring value that contributes to overall cost-effectiveness, he concludes.

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