Network solutions provider Sun Microsystems Inc (Nasdaq:JAVA) announced on Monday a new version of Sun VirtualBox, its high performance, cross-platform virtualisation software.
According to the company, VirtualBox 3.1 introduces the ‘Teleportation’ capability, allowing running virtual machines to be moved, uninterrupted, between disparate hosts, including those on different operating systems, different classes of computer (such as server to client) and even different CPUs (such as Intel to AMD).
By adding Teleportation and performance increases, VirtualBox 3.1 now exhibits a full range of enterprise hypervisor features. Teleportation helps virtual machines achieve high availability, as when physical hardware needs to be taken down, the virtual workload can be teleported to another physical host.
The new release also improves: execution speed, with optimised memory handling delivering performance increases of 30% over the previous VirtualBox release; network performance, delivering increased throughput, while reducing CPU cycles, through a new paravirtualised network driver; and display performance via a new 2D Video Acceleration feature for Windows guests.
In addition, the release offers more powerful snapshotting features that help administrators move a virtual machine back or forward in time to any arbitrary snapshot state.
VirtualBox software is free of charge for personal use and can be downloaded at http://www.sun.com/software/products/virtualbox/get.jsp.
For wider deployments within an organisation, enterprise licenses or subscriptions are also available, starting at USD30 per user per year, which includes 24/7 support from Sun’s technical team. Discounts are available based on volume.
