While Sun puts the final touches to its first hypervisor xVM Server 1.0 and to xVM Ops Center 2.0 (which could be released in November), some more details about the products emerge from a corporate blogs.
In a list of FAQs published there an interesting (yet confusing) indication about the free vs paid strategy about the xVM family:
Q: Within the Sun xVM Portfolio, what’s going to be open-source, and what will cost money?
A: Sun xVM VirtualBox and Sun xVM Server will be open-sourced. Some features, though, such as guest migration, are part of Sun xVM Ops Center. Also, service contracts can be purchased for any part of the Sun xVM Portfolio.
The list also includes some additional details about the supported virtual machines formats:
Q: Will Sun xVM Server support native Xen formats?
A: We don’t, as there weren’t a lot of requests for it.Q: Can you move guests back and forth between Sun xVM Server and similar VMware solutions?
A: It’s only one-way. Sun xVM Server can read vmdk files, but it doesn’t save to the vmdk format, so you couldn’t modify the guest and then move it back. As far as I know, VMware doesn’t support our format either.