Sun Microsystems has announced availability and pricing details for the Sun xVM Ops Centre, a scalable datacentre automation tool for management of heterogeneous global IT environments. Sun will also release the source code used to build Sun's xVM Ops Centre to the OpenxVM.org community under the GNU General Public License version three (GPLv3).

Sun xVM Ops Centre claims to reduce datacentre management complexity by combining a range of lifecycle management functionality into an all-in-one tool. Sun xVM Ops Centre helps simplify discovery, monitoring, operating system provisioning, updates and patch management, firmware updates, and hardware management from power up to production in cross-platform Linux and Solaris Operating System-based x86 and SPARC environments.

According to Steve Wilson, vice president, xVM, Sun Microsystems, "Through Sun xVM Ops Centre's unique combination of asset discovery, inventory tracking, operating system provisioning, firmware updating and patch management capabilities, customers can automate a number of tasks on a global scale to improve their time to market and productivity to meet ever demanding service level agreements."

Through automated monitoring of assets on a network, and implementation of upgrades and patches for operating systems, Sun xVM Ops Centre automates routine system administrator tasks in the datacentre. Sun xVM Ops Centre also claims to address provisioning and update requirements to help improve predictability and keep Linux and Solaris instances current, thus improving the security and stability of systems.