After announcing its efforts in October 2006, Sun is preparing to really deliver its new virtualization technology for SPARC processors called Logical Domains (LDom).
On Sun official website is in fact available Logical Domains Manage 1.0 Early Access (corresponding to Release Candidate 3).
Logical Domains are a different approach to virtualization than Solaris Containers introduced with Solaris 10: they are partitions handled directly by Sun T1 UltraSPARC CPUs through the sun4v hypervisor, with a current limitation to maximum 32 fully isolated domains (on 8-cores CPU) depending on a so-called control domain.
Sun plans to release this technology for free to its customers even if they will have to pay for a support contract.
Enroll the beta program here.
At the same time Sun published a 95-pages introductory guide on this new technology, Understanding and Deploying Logical Domains, which is worth to read.
Thanks to Tony Kay for the news.