It's been a while since I've posted here. Let me bring you up to speed.

I've started deploying Solaris xVM in an attempt to use ZFS on the backend via iSCSI and the goodness of Xen 3.1.2 that is now in SXCE b85.

The first step in embracing xVM was deciphering the labyrinth that is Sun marketing.

OpenSolaris is the source based distribution. It relates to ON source trees and compiling things. If you state in #opensolaris that you are using "OpenSolaris", they assume you are building from source and are a developer.

The ON source trees are there for developers to build from. Likewise, the Blindingly Fast Updates (BFUs) are there for developers to update binaries between weekly builds, so they don't have to rebuild an entire tree. If you use BFUs, you break packaging and upgrades, and are effectively on your own.

What you are most interested in is Solaris Express Community Edition, otherwise known as SXCE.

SXCE is based on weekly build numbers, and is released every other week as a ISO image for mainstream users to play with. You can LiveUpdate between SXCE releases, and all packaging is handled properly.

SXDE is SXCE "frozen" quarterly. It is dead now. Ian killed it. Let me explain...

The Linux distribution Debian is pronounced /ˈde.bi.ən/. It comes from the names of the creator of Debian, Ian Murdock, and his wife, Debra.

Sun hired Ian Murdock. Ian has been changing things internally within Sun. Ian has championed a Linuxization of Solaris of sorts, which is a bit against the grain of most senior Solaris folks.

The new Indiana project is a culmination of this effort. It is effectively a repackaging of Solaris leaning more on the GNU tools and adopting a new "pkg" format that can update from repositories more readily. The current release of Indiana is Developer Preview 2, which is based off of SXCE b79. It is a live CD that can run a full desktop environment without actually installing it on a machine. There is an integrated "light" version of the caiman installer on the desktop that will allow you to install to harddrive media if you wish.

The "pkg" packaging in Indiana is a wonderful thing. Unfortunately, the repository doesn't appear to be updating every two weeks like SXCE.. yet. They're planing on doing this soon, which should make updates relatively painless. Automatic dependency resolution and the ability to point to a server or media repos makes this very similar to the apt-get way of doing things, though it's a Python based system (rather than Perl) that is actively under development.

Indiana installs to a zfs root. SXCE currently (as of b85) only installs to a UFS root.

While you can make SXCE boot to a zfs root, you effectively break LiveUpdate, as it doesn't grok zfs root.

Indiana doesn't need LiveUpdate. The "pkg" system will soon automagically do zfs snapshots to do upgrades (similar to the Nexenta apt-clone that I absolutely love), but you can approximate that now with minor effort.

... back to the explaination: Due to the advent of Indiana and Ian Murdock's influence, it looks like SXDE is effectively dead. There will reportedly be no future SXDE releases.

The default boot option of SXCE is "Solaris Express Developer Release". This is the caiman installer that is slightly bleeding edge and installs everything possible in a rather simple way.

The SXCE "Solaris Express" boot option is for the older more familiar Solaris installer. This allows you to fully specify what packages to install, and is more involved at install time.

Back to xVM: SXCE b89 will be the freeze point for Sun's xVM Server.

SXCE is currently in week b87, so in 2 more weeks there will be a deep freeze for that build.

Again, you have to pay attention to the community posts, flag days, and other things that let you get a feel for Sun's release cycle and marketing changes. I'm only just beginning to get a handle on it.

So, in conclusion, if you want to play with xVM, b85->b89 is a great time to get up to speed for the xVM Server product release.