Sun Releases xVM Server under Open Source License

It looks like VMWare ESX server is no longer the only freely available bare metal hypervisor (i.e. one that doesn’t require a full-blown OS but runs directly on the hardware). I tried to play with ESX but was kind of put off by the particular enterprise hardware it required, there is no way to run it on commodity hardware. Sun now released they xVM hypervisor under the GPLv3. Currently you can only download the source code, but I am looking forward to a binary release. I am hoping it’ll run on one of my servers at home :)

“Sun xVM Server is an outgrowth of the Xen project — which raises the question of why a company would go with Sun’s version rather than the Xen one. Apart from its support for SPARC and Solaris (as well as other chips and operating systems), Sun is also building a services and sales organization around a commercial version of xVM server… If you want to kick the tires or cut your costs, you can hop over to xVMServer.org, download the source (GPL 3) and join the community. But Sun is betting that, as deployments move from an initial testing phase to active usage, large organizations will be willing to pay for guaranteed support (starting at $500 per year per physical server).”

Check it out on xvmserver.org

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