Sun VirtualBox 2.2 adds OVF support

SANTA CLARA, USA: Sun Microsystems, Inc. has announced the availability of Sun VirtualBox 2.2, the latest release of its high performance, free and open source virtualization software.

VirtualBox 2.2 introduces support for the new Open Virtualization Format (OVF) standard, as well as significant performance enhancements and updates.

OVF is a Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) standard that enables virtual machines or appliances to be imported and exported. Virtual appliances are one or more virtual machines that are pre-installed and configured so they can be shared, published and distributed.

VirtualBox 2.2 software enables users to build virtual machines or appliances and effortlessly export them from a development environment and import them into a production environment. Support for OVF also helps to ensure VirtualBox 2.2 software is interoperable with other technologies that follow the standard.

"We continue to see great momentum for VirtualBox, through huge adoption numbers, as well as the speed and frequency of technology releases. VirtualBox has always been a fantastic tool for developers to create multiple virtual machines, network them together and deploy them using nearly any operating system," said Jim McHugh, vice president Datacenter Software marketing at Sun.

He added, "Now, with the new import and export features of the VirtualBox 2.2 release, users can quickly and easily put their development environments into production, on the desktop, the server or even in the cloud."

Additional features of VirtualBox 2.2 software include:

    * Hypervisor optimizations to make this the fastest VirtualBox release available to date

    * 3D graphics acceleration for Linux and Solaris applications using OpenGL(R), allowing a whole new class of applications to run in a virtual machine

    * Support for Snow Leopard, Apple's forthcoming 64 bit platform

    * Increased maximum memory size of guests to 16Gb RAM

    * New host-interface networking mode, which makes it easier than ever before to run server applications in virtual machines