CALIFORNIAN firm, Sun Microsystems is trumpeting the release of its open source, totally free virtualisation product for Windows, Linux, Solaris and Mac OS-X, Virtualbox. This now adds the ability to run 64-bit OSes on a virtual machine, an improved GUI on OS X and paid support subscription for its customers.

This new release comes only a few days after the release of the maintenance release 1.6.6 which already included some important fixes, like improved stability and performance on AMD CPUs that support AMD-V virtualisation, plus better SATA drivers, shared folders performance, improved support for recent Linux kernels, and some fixes for OS-X users as well. A full "change log" detailing the bugs fixed can be found over here.

Available in 32-bit and 64-bit editions, Sun's open source product available under a GPL licence allows running most modern OSes unequalised and itself runs on a wide range of host operating systems: Mac OS-X, Windows (32 and 64-bit), Linux, Sun's own x86 Solaris and OpenSolaris. Some die-hard OS/2 users have also donde a port of an older version.

With the release of version 2.0, Sun also offers a subscription programme dubbed "xVM VirtualBox", which includes 24/7 support at a cost of $30 (U.S.) per user per year, with discounts available based on volume. Version two is the first to support running virtualised 64-bit OSes like Red Hat Server , Windows XP 64 or the 64-bit editions of Vista as guests, provided you run it in a 64-bit OS as the host.

Moving VMs to 2.0 should be painless
We asked Sun Microsystems what this new version means for existing users, from a compatibility point of view: Sun Microsystems' Frank Mehnert told the INQUIRER: "The only difference between 1.5.x, 1.6.x and 2.0.0 is the XML format and the format of the snapshots/saved states. So as long as you shut down your VM safely, you will be able to use the same .vdi image with 1.5, 1.6 and 2.0.0."

Mehnert said the saved VM states should be compatible between 1.6 and 2.0.0. "We are trying hard to not break the saved states any more." He added that in the event users find any problems during upgrade or downgrade users can, "just create a new VM, detach the hard disk from the old VM and attach it to the new VM." In the case of Windows guests make sure the settings are the same for I/O APIC, PIIX3/4 and ACPI. "Other settings should not make any matter and Linux guests don't care anyway," he said.

Mehnert told us that if you jump from version 1.5 to 1.6 or 2.0.0 the program will ask you to convert the .xml files the first time you start it, and users can press the 'backup' option to keep the old .xml files around. This is useful in case you need to downgrade, so you can keep using the backed up config files.

Manual editing of files is only needed in case you want to downgrade from the new 2.0 to 1.6. Currently there is no other way to downgrade from 2.0 to 1.6. Said Frank: "Just remove the two superfluous elements (from the XML file) and press the 'Refresh' button."

From an OS/2 ISV to the World+Dog
Sun Micro snapped the Virtualbox technology by buying it from OS/2 ISV Innotek Systemberatung Gmbh earlier this year. Innotek was the company which about six years ago ported Virtual PC version 5.x to Big Blue's OS/2 platform, allowing "Warp" users for a brief time frame to run 32-bit windows 2000 and XP to run in a window under OS/2 as a host.

Of course, once the Microsoft Vole set its sights on Connectix' virtualisation technology, turning it into Microsoft's "Virtual PC", the first thing it did was to kill the OS/2 hosted version. But all that is water under the bridge only of interest for IT historians and some day even anti-trust law experts.

The firm is quickly positioning itself as a big virtualisation player as outlined here, with products like Virtual Desktop Infrastructure for the large enterprise and VirtualBox for easy virtualisation for end-users at home, the small business, and big corporations alike.

Steve Wilson, VP of xVM at Sun said, "Virtual desktops, such as those provided by the xVM VirtualBox software, are the future of business desktops because they are more flexible, manageable and secure than traditional PC architectures. Enterprises will be thrilled with the xVM VirtualBox platform because it provides them an easier way to deliver a standard operating environment across their enterprises."

SDK also available
Users of Virtualbox, regardless of platform are encouraged to upgrade to get the best experience from this virtualisation product. The 2.0 version is 33MB big for Linux and 31MB for the Win32 version.

Version 1.6.6 is around 22MB. As usual RPMs or DEBs are available for about every distro on Earth. All the files are over here.

Just remember to right click and selecting "save as" as Sun Micro has apparently still not managed the art of setting MIME-types right on its web server. We got gibberish on our browser instead of a file download the first time we attempted to download the 1.6.6 bug fix release.

A Software Development Kit (SDK) for v2.0 is now also available over here. µ