Oracle has launched a new release of the virtualization platform for its Sparc servers that increases the number of virtual machines per server and adds the capability to shift workloads from one physical host to another without application downtime.
Pre-installed on Sparc T-series severs, the new Oracle VM Server for Sparc 2.1 allows for up to 128 VMs to run on one physical system. The live migration capabilities are to members of the Sparc T-series family, including T3, UltraSparc T2 Plus and UltraSparc T2 based machines.
The platform's on-chip cryptographic accelerators ensure encryption capabilities for live migration. Another new feature is Dynamics Resource Management, which ensures VMs running the most important workloads get priority CPU access.
Management of VM Server for Sparc is provided by Oracle's Enterprise Manager Ops Center Virtualization Management Pack.
Tackling downtime from the application end, instead of at the infrastructure level, is a course increasingly taken by enterprises. Taking this course changes the way companies think about their data center infrastructure.
If there is an issue at the physical layer in the data center, a smooth migration of the workload to a different area on the raised floor or to a different facility altogether prevents prolonged application downtime that may take place while the infrastructure is being brought back up.
In a recent paper, Microsoft's general manager of data center research Christian Belady wrote that this transformation was one of the most powerful forces being exerted on the data center market.
He described it as a "shift from highly redundant and well-controlled data centers to lower-cost, highly efficient cloud data center designs. These designs leverage their scale and application redundancy, as opposed to hardware redundancy, to drive down cost."