We still don’t know what Oracle’s plans are for the Virtual Iron technology it acquired in May, but in light of these developments, a much bigger question is arising about a much bigger acquisition: Will Oracle kill off Sun Microsystems’ virtualization line too?

To answer this question, I did what any responsible journalist would do. I consulted the Magic 8-Ball. Its response?

On one hand, the future doesn’t look good for Sun virtualization. In the wake of the acquisition by Oracle — which is expected to close this summer — Sun has backed down on its plans to offer its xVM Server as a standalone hypervisor. It will only be available as part of the xVM Ops Center management console or the OpenSolaris operating system (but not the commercial version of Solaris).

Judging from this move, you’d think Sun sees the writing on the wall: Oracle wants to present a unified virtualization front, and all these different products from three different vendors won’t help meet that goal.

But on the other hand, Sun just yesterday released its VirtualBox 3.0 virtualization software. Why would Sun execs go through all the trouble of putting out a new release if they thought Oracle was just going to squash it in a few months?

It’s all very confusing for the three companies’ customers and partners. Oracle’s relative silence about the acquisitions isn’t helping matters. (Instead of responding to our questions about Virtual Iron’s future, the company just emailed us a link to its specifics-deficient Virtual Iron FAQ.)

Oracle knew what its plans were for both Virtual Iron and Sun when it bought them. Whether the Magic 8-Ball says “signs point to yes” or “outlook not so good,” any sort of definitive answer would be welcomed.

Most of the early reaction to the news has focused on the fallout in the database market. Oracle, the market leader, now owns the biggest thorn in its side, Sun’s open source MySQL.

But the real legacy of the Oracle-Sun acquisition could be its effect on the virtualization market — particularly on VMware.

“Oracle now has the ability to compete head-to-head with VMware, Citrix, Red Hat, and Microsoft for virtualizaton supremacy,” writes blogger Floyd Strimling. “They now own Sun’s xVM products and solutions that are cutting-edge.”

Oracle’s past attempts at getting into virtualization — namely its Oracle VM hypervisor — have failed to make much of a splash. But you could tell over the past month or so that Larry Ellison had something up his silk-shirted, gold-cufflinked sleeve.

First there was word that Oracle had its eyes on acquiring VIrtual Iron. (Wonder where that stands now?) Then Oracle launched its own virtualization blog, which regularly takes shots at VMware. Now it’s all coming into place.

“Oracle now has physical hardware [and] a real OS for their virtual story,” analyst Greg Schulz writes on Twitter. “Ironic, virtual servers still need physical servers.”

This acquisition is the latest example of consolidation, as more vendors look to become one-stop shops for their business customers, according to Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff. He writes on CNET that “the system vendor landscape is being reconstituted into big, highly integrated companies that can do it all.”

When you look at that trend from a virtualization standpoint, VMware and Cisco stick out with the Virtual Data Center Operating System and Unified Computing System, respectively. VMware knows the virtualization software business better than anyone else, but it typically relies on OEMs to meet customers’ hardware needs. Cisco has the infrastructure down pat, but its virtualization expertise just doesn’t match up as of yet.

Clearly there is room for a vendor that has both a hardware play and a software play. With this Sun acquisition, could Oracle now be that vendor?

“With this acquisition Oracle gets the entire Sun virtualization portfolio, and its entire computing stack (servers, storage, hypervisor, operating system, management layer, connection broker, etc.),” writes Alessandro Perilli. “If Oracle plays well its cards here in a couple of years it may become a dangerous competitor for VMware.”

The limitation with this configuration is that the settings cannot be accessed through the VirtualBox interface while the VM is running, which makes advanced configuration a little difficult. Further, if the machine is in a saved state but not running, it cannot be configured. The vboxmanage command can perform this same configuration but it still requires offline access to the VM. VMware products have a BIOS for the VM, making configuration similar to that of a physical machine for boot order. With VirtualBox, there is not an accessible BIOS interface for the VM. During the boot process, however, there is a default option to access a boot menu by pressing F12. This functionality is shown below.

By VirtualBox not having a VM BIOS in a conventional sense, all relevant configuration is accessible from the interface. The four standard boot classes of hard disk, network, floppy or optical drive can be configured in the interface as shown above or with the earlier mentioned vboxmanage command. The following command will configure the boot order of the Solaris-Test VM:

vboxmanage modifyvm Solaris-Test -boot1 disk

I’ve mentioned the vboxmanage command before for amazing configuration options from the command line. In the case of boot configurations, virtual media (.ISO and .FLP files) can be configured as well.

Version 2.0.2 of VirtualBox was released on September 12, 2008. More information on Sun xVM VirtualBox can be found in the online user manual at the VirtualBox website.

For starters, a DHCP scope option is a configuration that is defined on a networking server such as Windows Server’s DHCP server role. Traditional configurations for PCs and servers would have DHCP options such as subnet mask, default gateway and domain name server. VDI, however, allows the full range of DHCP scope options to be used. There are numerous scope options available for DHCP that are delivered to the requesting device in the acknowledgment message (DHCPACK), which is sent after the DHCP request message.

DHCP scope options vary by VDI device. Take for example the SunRay series of VDI devices. For VDI solutions in VMware implementations, the technology requires that at least DHCP options 49 and 66 are configured for connection to the Virtual Desktop Connector agent. Option 49 is for an X11 server window manager and 66 is a trivial file transfer protocol (TFTP) server for VDI device configuration files.

Beyond basic configuration, it may be worth tweaking some other network options based on the architecture of the VDI implementation. What has particularly caught my attention is a blog post by Sun’s Thin Client and Server Based Computing group, which points out that some environments may need to configure the maximum transmission unit (MTU) of network packets. This can also be assigned by DHCP and is of particular importance if the VDI implementation is to be a remote site with limited bandwidth. The default MTU of most configurations is around 1,500 bytes, yet performance may be better with a smaller number for maximum packet size from the endpoint VDI device. This and other factors make a fully representative pilot sound like a really good idea!

However, other platforms may use a new set of options to interact differently with the VDI device firmware. One example is the Pano Logic desktop device, which only requires the creation and configuration of option 001 as a vendor class. This is different than the example above in that there is no X11 window manager resident on the device.

While these DHCP configuration options are not overwhelming when viewed individually, it is worth considering the larger picture in the case of these options already in use. The most common example is an IP telephone at a remote site. While in central offices, IP telephony is usually split to a separate network, but this may not be the case for remote sites that have two or three VDI stations and the same number of phones. It may make sense to have only one IP network.

DHCP is critical to effective network management, including a VDI solution. Some planning on scope and configuration can go a long way to ensure that the technology will function as expected.

The installation of version VirtualBox 2.0 is seamless, quick and is still only a small download at 32 MB. The version 2.0 series still lacks the robust native bridged networking offered by VMware products. Further, an upgraded Windows host will lose any bridged network interfaces and will need to be recreated as in prior upgrades of VirtualBox. If you are upgrading a previous version of VirtualBox and used bridged network interfaces, run this command to enumerate your devices:

Here is a previous blog entry about creating network interfaces, which would need to be run again on the new environment. More information on version 2.0 of VirtualBox can be found in the online user manual available on the VirtualBox website.

The new Xen 3.3 release provides users with the new features including:

* Power management in the hypervisor
* Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM) emulation domains for better scalability, performance and security
* Shadow pagetable improvements for the best HVM performance ever
* Hardware Assisted Paging enhancements
* Device passthrough enhancements
* CPUID feature levelling that allows safe domain migration across systems with different CPU models (within the same vendor brand – Intel or AMD)

Xen 3.3 provides virtualization for x64, IA64 and ARM-based platforms, and through close links with CPU and chipset vendors in the Xen project, Xen 3.3 also supports the latest hardware virtualization enhancements, like Intel Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT).

With Xen’s memory ballooning feature, the hypervisor can reallocate memory between guest Virtual Machines (VMs) to guarantee performance and allow greater density of VMs per server. Xen 3.3 also offers CPU portability to allow live migration of VMs across different CPUs, active power optimization to reduce server power consumption, and significant security enhancements.

Simon Crosby, CTO, Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems, said in a statement, “In just two years, Xen has rapidly gained share in virtualization, much as Linux did in operating systems – and in the same period Xen has driven the price of competing hypervisors to zero, allowing any vendor to include virtualization for free.”

In addition to its growing development community, Xen hypervisor is the standard virtualization platform used by cloud computing providers like Amazon.com. It is also used in virtualization products from Citrix (XenServer), Fujitsu, Novell, Oracle (Oracle VM), Sun Microsystems (Sun xVM), and Virtual Iron, and is available as an embedded option in many x86 servers.

Administrators frequently get wrapped up in the server side of a technology that the experience end of the solution may be overlooked. Two specific pieces of functionality such as screen resolution and dual monitor support can be incredibly important to the endpoint experience, and may make an implementation fail if it does not meet the requirements of all applications involved. By comparison, other topics such as USB device support, printing and sound are more of a policy decision rather than a device selection process decision.

We strategically arrive at determining device capabilities to match the requirements. At that point, we can then ‘back into’ various backend VDI solutions. Take for example the Sun Ray 2FS Virtual Display Client, which offers two DVI-I (digital video interface) ports that can provide a resolution with one monitor at 1920 x 1200 resolution, or two monitors at 3840 x 1200. Among VDI devices the standard offering is a 1600 x 1200 resolution which will satisfy most resolution situations, however. The dual DVI-I monitor may seem like overkill for a VDI-based thin client, but for many systems that perform archival by scanning documents, the high resolution and dual monitor functionality may be a requirement. Just ask any accounts payable clerk.

Some of this functionality may be circumvented by the use of existing devices, specifically VDI solutions that allow a Windows or other operating system PC to connect to the VDI broker. In this regard, if there are a very limited number of systems with requirements that may not be accommodated with standard endpoint devices, the typical PC can be used to provide the VDI connection from a full install PC. While not ideal, it is a decent stop-gap measure and a way to use of existing equipment.

Modifyvm parameter
Probably one of the more versatile commands for VBoxManage is modifyvm. This parameter can set memory, operating system type, pae settings, monitor quantity, hardware inventory as well as snapshot configuration. Here is a sample command that sets a memory amount, makes the CD-ROM disk the first boot device and disables USB support:

vboxmanage modifyvm XP-TestSystem -memory 512 -boot1 dvd -usb off

The modifyvm parameter also has extended options such as BIOS display time, network interface driver type, host network interface assigned to the VM and enabling or disabling of the clipboard. Overall, modifyvm has over 50 parameters for an individual VM.

Controlvm parameter
From an automation standpoint, the controlvm parameter would be used to start a VM at host system boot. Controlvm can also be used to attach USB or DVD devices. The entry below will disconnect the media of the two virtual Ethernet adapters and reset the power state:

vboxmanage controlvm XP-TestSystem reset setlinkstate1 off
vboxmanage controlvm XP-TestSystem setlinkstate2 off

Note that in the case of an inventory of multiple devices of the same type, a separate entry would be required as in the case of disabling the network interface.

Snapshot parameter
The snapshot parameter can be used to manage all elements of a snapshot. In the case of a frequently used test system, it may be a good idea to automate the change back to the base snapshot. The following command would revert a VM to the existing snapshot:

vboxmanage snapshot XP-TestSystem discardcurrent -state

This command cannot be executed while the VM is running, yet a leading with a power down controlvm parameter can get the system to a state where running the snapshot parameter will do the trick.

Powerful Stuff
This is a very quick sample of what is capable with the VBoxManage command. I don’t know of anything that can be done in the interface that cannot be done with this command. VBoxManage commands also interact the same way across different platforms of xVM VirtualBox. This flexibility offers a compelling solution for an automated deployable solution at the zero-cost of xVM VirtualBox. The online user manual has the entire chapter 8 dedicated to the VBoxManage command, which can be downloaded from the VirtualBox website.

Sun xVM VirtualBox software is a component of Sun’s broader xVM virtualization and management software portfolio, which includes Sun xVM Ops Center, Sun xVM Server and the Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Software. The xVM VirtualBox software is the free, entry-level offering into the Sun xVM platform.

Sun xVM VirtualBox supports whichever operating system and application stack a user chooses, and has a small enough footprint to be an embedded component in OEM equipment. 

Since its release in January 2007, Sun xVM VirtualBox has surpassed 5 million downloads, and is the first free hypervisor to support all major host operating systems, including Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, Solaris and OpenSolaris.

The 20 megabyte download installs in less than 5 minutes, and has received positive third-party reviews and awards, and is being used by the Texas Advanced Computing Center, or TACC on part of its 4,000-node supercomputer.

La Garenne-Colombes, France-based Software publisher Avanquest Software will produce and publish Sun xVM VirtualBox bundled with OpenSolaris and sell it in retail outlets in the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France. Beginning this fall, Avanquest will provide Mac users with a solution to run the Windows operating system through Sun xVM VirtualBox.Mountain View, Calif.-based Q-Layer, a provider of cloud computing through Virtual Private Data Centers (VPDC), is using Sun xVM VirtualBox to deliver virtualization capabilities for its customers.

Bombay, India-based Zenith InfoTech Ltd., a managed services and business continuity software provider, has built its network attached storage appliance for small and medium-sized businesses using Sun xVM VirtualBox.

Sun xVM VirtualBox is available free of charge under a Personal Use License. OEMs have two options for licensing xVM VirtualBox: open source edition under GPLv2 or under a commercial license.

During the upgrade installation, you are presented with the familiar message about installing a device that has not passed Windows logo testing. These messages are common across virtualization platforms, as these drivers and devices enable the hypervisor to present the virtual machines. A typical message is shown below:

After these messages are accepted, the installation will continue and allow you to access your existing VMs from the previous version that you may have. 

The one unfortunate point of the upgrade process is that any host interfaces created on an existing installation of 1.6.2 or earlier will be removed by the upgrade process. Overall, I think VirtualBox’s networking implementation is a little short of both VMware Workstation and VMware Server’s VMware bridge protocol. Before you embark on the upgrade, I recommend you enumerate any host interfaces that you have created. Then, make a quick script in the following fashion that will recreate them with the same names you already have:

VBoxManage createhostif "VM-Bridge1"
VBoxManage createhostif "VM-Bridge2"
VBoxManage createhostif "VM-Bridge3"

Any VMs with a bridged interface will be configured to an invalid network interface after the upgrade to 1.6.4. I have an earlier blog posting about bridged networking on VirtualBox, and the commands and planning points are unchanged from 1.6.2 to 1.6.4.

The VMs will not need to be upgraded directly, but it would not hurt to get the 1.6.4 version of Guest Additions installed to optimize the corrected functionality between these two versions. Once the new version is installed, the systray icon and the VBoxControl getversion will show the 1.6.4 release.

Version 1.6.4 is still lean, at only 23 MB, it remains a ready to go virtualization platform and is still freely available from the Sun website.