Sun will begin supporting Xen virtualization in OpenSolaris in the next four months, with support in Solaris 10 in the first half of next year, the company said this week.Sun will release working Xen support code in July. This code will give OpenSolaris the ability to run on Xen as a “Domain 0” (Dom0), or host system, with support for 32-bit and 64-bit guest (DomU) Solaris systems.OpenSolaris will get full Xen support by October, which will be extended to Solaris 10 in the first half of 2007, Sun said.Under Xen, a virtualized machine is called a “domain,” and operating systems must be modified at the kernel level to be fully virtualized—an approach called paravirtualization that is designed to allow for maximum performance. The Dom0 system is fully virtualized, but has direct access to hardware, unlike DomU systems. So far, Linux operating systems such as SUSE Linux Professional 9.3, the upcoming Suse Linux Enterprise 10 and Red Hat’s Fedora Core 3 and 4, have been modified for Xen support. Operating systems such as Windows can run as a host system without modifications using virtualization technology found in newer Intel chips and upcoming AMD chips.Virtualization is expected to revolutionize the use of operating systems, applications and even malware once it goes mainstream. Xen, developed at the University of Cambridge, is an open-source competitor to virtualization providers such as VMware. Sun also provides its own container technology, but said it plans to provide users with the ability to mix and match. Sun initially got Solaris working with Xen in a rudimentary form in July 2005. In February 2006 Sun released the first, early OpenSolaris-on-Xen code.“Running on Xen, OpenSolaris is reasonably stable, but it’s still very much ‘pre-alpha’ compared with our usual finished code quality,” wrote Sun engineer Tim Marsland in his blog at the time. “Installing and configuring a client is doable, but not for the faint of heart.”-Matthew Broersma, Techworld.com (London)Check out our CIO News Alerts and Tech Informer pages for more updated news coverage. Related content opinion Website spoofing: risks, threats, and mitigation strategies for CIOs In this article, we take a look at how CIOs can tackle website spoofing attacks and the best ways to prevent them. By Yash Mehta Dec 01, 2023 5 mins CIO Cyberattacks Security brandpost Sponsored by Catchpoint Systems Inc. Gain full visibility across the Internet Stack with IPM (Internet Performance Monitoring) Today’s IT systems have more points of failure than ever before. Internet Performance Monitoring provides visibility over external networks and services to mitigate outages. By Neal Weinberg Dec 01, 2023 3 mins IT Operations brandpost Sponsored by Zscaler How customers can save money during periods of economic uncertainty Now is the time to overcome the challenges of perimeter-based architectures and reduce costs with zero trust. By Zscaler Dec 01, 2023 4 mins Security feature LexisNexis rises to the generative AI challenge With generative AI, the legal information services giant faces its most formidable disruptor yet. That’s why CTO Jeff Reihl is embracing and enhancing the technology swiftly to keep in front of the competition. By Paula Rooney Dec 01, 2023 6 mins Generative AI Digital Transformation Cloud Computing Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe