Sun Microsystems this week released VirtualBox 3.1, including several key enterprise features aimed at maintaining minimal downtime on virtual servers.

VirtualBox 3.1 has the ability to “teleport” virtual servers — move running virtual machines uninterrupted between disparate hosts on different operating systems and computer classes. It also includes a full suite of enterprise hypervisor features.

In addition, VirtualBox 3.1 offers more powerful snapshotting features that help administrators move a virtual machine backward or forward in time to any arbitrary snapshot state.

Version 3.1 is a very interesting release, according to Weinberg, who expected improvements in performance but found much more built into VirtualBox this time around.

The teleportation feature, for example, breaks VirtualBox out of its beginning efforts and into something that will support cloud computing, he said. The features add value higher up the stack.

Optimized memory handling delivers performance increases of 30 percent over the previous VirtualBox release, according to Sun.

Network performance shows increased throughput and reduced CPU cycles through a new high-speed, paravirtualized network driver. Also, display performance is improved thanks to a new 2D Video Acceleration feature for Windows users.