Oracle's Desktop-to-Datacenter Virtualization Solutions

An integrated virtualization strategy is needed to optimize the datacenter and gain greater efficiency and improved flexibility at less cost, asserts the Oracle white paper "Virtualization with Oracle Solaris 10" that describes server, desktop, and storage virtualization from an Oracle product solutions perspective.

Technologies covered in this 17-page PDF include:

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization technologies enhance consolidation strategies by helping organizations to create administrative and resource boundaries between applications on a system to deliver on application performance and security requirements. The following server virtualization technologies can be used separately or together to tackle specific deployment challenges.

Oracle Solaris Containers: With the ability to consolidate dynamic applications onto significantly fewer high-performance systems, Oracle Solaris Containers deliver strong performance improvements across a significantly reduced hardware footprint.

Oracle VM Server for x86: Free to download, Oracle VM Server for x86 provides an easy-to-use graphical interface for creating and managing virtual server pools running on x86 and x64 systems.

Oracle VM Server for SPARC: Purpose-built for Oracle servers with chip multithreading (CMT) technology, Oracle VM Server for SPARC (previously called Sun Logical Domains) provides a full virtual machine that runs an independent operating system instance and contains a wide range of virtualized devices.

Dynamic Domains: Available on Oracle’s Sun SPARC Enterprise M-Series servers, Dynamic Domains technology enables a single system to be divided into multiple electrically isolated partitions for the ultimate in workload isolation.

Desktop Virtualization

Oracle provides a set of client- and server-based desktop virtualization solutions that transcend the limitations of conventional desktop computing for secure, anytime, anywhere access to IT resources from any device.

Oracle VM VirtualBox: Supporting an extensive range of host and guest operating systems, the open-source Oracle VM VirtualBox solution lets client systems run multiple environments at the same time to get the most flexibility and utilization out of systems.

Oracle Virtual Desktop Infrastructure: This complete solution can help users manage, host, and provide access to virtualized desktop operating systems hosted in the datacenter. By standardizing on virtual desktop images that can be used across organizations, IT staff can reduce the overhead associated with managing individual desktop operating systems.

Sun Ray Software: These simple, low-cost, thin-client devices are ideal for displaying server-hosted virtual desktops. Sun Ray Clients can reduce many of the problems associated with traditional desktop deployments.

Oracle Secure Global Desktop: This software delivers secure access to centralized, server-hosted Windows, UNIX, mainframe, and midrange applications from a variety of clients, including Windows PCs, Mac OS X systems, Oracle Solaris workstations, Linux PCs, thin clients, and more.

Storage Virtualization

Oracle’s storage virtualization technologies - Oracle Exadata Storage Servers, Oracle Automatic Storage Management, Oracle VM Storage Connect, Open Storage - can help organizations eliminate redundant data, reduce bandwidth requirements, gain flexibility, and better utilize existing infrastructure to reduce space, power, and cooling requirements.

How These Virtualization Solutions Work

The paper continues with an overview of how these desktop-to-datacenter virtualization solutions work together, touching on their ability to consolidate and scale, support legacy applications, scale to meet demand, create a more agile datacenter, speed application throughput, protect web-facing applications, and can be rapidly deployment with templates.

More Information

Oracle VM Server for SPARC Enabling a Flexible, Efficient IT Infrastructure

Oracle VirtualBox 3.2 vs. VMware Workstation 7.1