Sun Microsystems and VMware Inc. have announced an OEM agreement to expand their virtualization offerings that will see Sun offering the VMware Infrastructure product suite on Sun hardware systems with full support from Sun.

The companies say this helps enable customers to capitalize on the performance, scalability and energy efficiency of Sun's x64 servers while leveraging VMware's virtualization solutions.

The agreement also benefits systems integrators and channel partners by providing a fully supported, seamlessly integrated solution from these two leading technology providers.

Sun and VMware will continue their qualification program of VMware products on Sun systems. The companies will also work to ensure that the Solaris Operating System will continue to be a first-class guest operating system on VMware virtualization software, and VMware Infrastructure will be a first-class datacenter virtualization run-time and management stack on Sun x64 systems.

The two companies plan to also collaborate on system management configuration, deployment and monitoring for each other's products.

Selected Sun x64 servers are available for a free 60-day trial as part of Sun's Try-and-Buy program, which includes a free 60-day evaluation of VMware Infrastructure. Sun also offers its own complete virtualization portfolio that includes unified software management tools and virtualization of operating systems, servers, storage, desktops and chips - both inside and outside the box.