Scalent Systems announced support for Sun Logical Domains (LDoms) server virtualization and partitioning technology by Scalent V/OE Infrastructure Virtualization software. Sun’s LDoms technology is available on its chip multi-threaded (CMT) systems with CoolThreads technology including the Sun SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers.

Scalent allows data center operators to rapidly change entire systems and associated topologies, including which servers are running, what software is running on them, and how they're connected to network and storage. Scalent does this in real-time without requiring physical changes to the infrastructure. Scalent V/OE software enables customers to take their data centers from "dead bare metal" (powered off hardware with no software installed) to live (newly deployed or restored), connected (to network and storage) servers, in boot time.

Scalent software leverages the infrastructure deployed within the datacenter to enable real-time reconfiguration and repurposing of resources. Scalent enables customers to freely move servers between physical and virtual machines. With Scalent, servers brought up on Solaris SPARC bare-metal can be re-deployed or fail-over to Solaris in LDoms in boot time. Scalent is a provider of graphical server repurposing software that supports bare-metal Solaris, Windows and Linux operating environments as well as virtualization technologies including LDoms, VMware, and Xen.

LDoms is a powerful, open source, hardware virtualization and partitioning technology, and is provided as standard at no extra cost on UltraSPARC T1, T2 and T2 Plus-based servers. The latest SPARC Enterprise T5140 and T5240 servers can support up to 128 LDoms per server, with superb granularity, all at no cost. Unlike proprietary virtualization technologies, LDoms can save customers up to $3,600 per system.

“Sun’s LDoms virtualization allows Scalent to leverage a new functional area from which to deliver virtual servers,” said Chandy Nilakantan, Chief Technology Officer, Scalent Systems. “To support the data center, infrastructure virtualization software must deliver repurposing for physical and virtual servers in coordination with the dynamic reconfiguration of network resources and allocation of storage.”

“We are excited that Scalent has embraced Sun Logical Domains technology available in Sun’s CMT servers,” said Bob McGaughey, senior director, Systems Product Management, Sun Microsystems. “ “Sun CMT servers offer the industry's only flexible, open source, no-cost virtualization technologies with Solaris Containers and LDoms, helping customers create a more agile, responsive, eco-friendly compute environment. ”