Archives for August 2009

Pivot3 To Showcase First iSCSI SAN Platform to Include Virtual Servers

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Pivot3 today announced an enhancement of its Serverless Computing platform to support the Intel Core microarchitecture (codenamed ‘Nehalem’). With integrated server virtualization, each Pivot3 storage appliance can host server applications that have access to the underlying IP SAN and are managed with virtualization management tools.

Pivot3 Serverless Computing consolidates physical servers into a Pivot3 SAN by adding server virtualization into each scale-out SAN appliance. Unlike conventional head-end storage arrays, the Pivot3 solution has ample hardware resources to offer both server and storage virtualization. Pivot3 SAN software aggregates the storage resources of each SAN appliance, and hosted servers have access to the resources of all the aggregated SAN appliances. Both data and applications are protected in the case of appliance failures. The appliance approach is ideal for growing environments, requiring flexibility in both storage and server resources.

The Pivot3 high-availability storage appliances include a free virtual server with failover at a list price of $1,000 per terabyte.

F5 Solution Enables Cloud Connection for Live Application Mobility

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

F5 Networks today announced that it will be demonstrating a solution that affords businesses seamless flexibility in leveraging both public and private clouds.

During VMworld, F5 will demonstrate how it is possible to perform a secure migration of a live virtualized application, and its associated storage, to and from the cloud with no downtime or user disruption. This solution leverages F5 and VMware products available today.

An agile Application Delivery Network is the fundamental component required to extend virtualization beyond a single data center or VMware vSphere 4 instance. This integration uses F5’s BIG-IP solutions with VMware vSphere 4, VMware VMotion, VMware Storage VMotion, and the VMware vCenter APIs to overcome many of the networking hurdles that previously prevented organizations from migrating live applications to and from the cloud. The integration between VMware vCenter Server, BIG-IP Global Traffic Manager, and BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager simplifies global traffic management to enable easier live migrations. The solution also takes advantage of BIG-IP WAN application delivery services to accelerate VMware VMotion and VMware Storage VMotion events over links that are limited by bandwidth, latency, or packet-loss.

Prior to this solution, virtual applications needed to be cloned or suspended and redeployed separately in the cloud. Neither live virtual applications nor their storage could be migrated to the cloud. This integrated solution enables organizations to fully take advantage of the cost savings of the cloud model, while avoiding the hassles and complexities of rerouting global traffic manually or having to terminate live applications in order to reroute traffic.

Release: New Version Of KACE Virtual Kontainers

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

KACE, a systems management appliance company, today announced a new version of its application virtualization technology, KACE Virtual Kontainers.

New functionality, including easier patching and expanded application compatibility, positions the company at the forefront of application virtualization innovation and offers users an even easier to implement and maintain solution, leading to significant time and money savings.

Application virtualization, which allows users to run applications without the need for a traditional installation, is notoriously known for high-costs and complexity. KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0, offered via a single, integrated Web-based console, provides users with an easier, faster and significantly less expensive alternative for creating, deploying and managing virtual applications.

This major new technology release includes considerable improvements in the areas of application compatibility and support for updating and patching virtual applications. And with the ability to publish applications via self-service user portal, KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0 reduces administrative overhead even more.

KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0 pushes traditional application virtualization technologies to a new level by extending the benefits beyond the features typically associated with these solutions. Some of the new features in the new KACE Virtual Kontainers release include:

Improved application compatibility by way of a new signature update service which allows for KACE to respond more rapidly than any other application virtualization product when it comes to adding support for changes to Windows, middleware and challenging new applications;
The ability to easily update, patch or modify an existing virtual application package directly, without the need to start over with each required change;
Self-service user portal support so administrators can provide virtual applications via a simple Web-based interface, saving time associated with ad-hoc deployments and keeping user desktops uncluttered with software they do not need;
Command line support for administrators that prefer to script operations themselves, including the ability to create a Kontainer package from the command line.

KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0 is available immediately. Pricing starts at $3,995 per 100 computers. Volume discounts are available.

KACE saves its customers both time and money. Systems managers are increasingly forced to wear many hats throughout the day to work on a myriad of IT functions. KACE helps consolidate these functions by providing a single appliance for all projects, while delivering easy-to-use, comprehensive systems management that is affordable. The KBOX family of systems management and deployment appliances fulfills all of the systems management needs of an enterprise, from initial computer deployment to ongoing management and retirement.

VMware To Debut New Products: VMware Go and vCenter Product Family

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware is launching two new products at VMworld, its annual conference, tomorrow.

The first is a suite of VMware’s existing virtualization solutions, called the VMware vCenter Product Family. The suite is built on top of VMware’s vSphere 4 to help enterprises create and maintain dynamic and flexible IT infrastructures.

VMware says that they have received an overwhelmingly positive response the latest generation of vSphere 4, with approximately 75 percent of customers planning to upgrade to VMware vSphere 4 within the next six months.

VMware’s second product launch is targeted towards small to medium sized businesses. VMware Go is a free beta service that makes it simple for clients to get started with virtualizing their applications. A web-based service, VMware Go will lets companies run multiple operating systems and applications on a single server, helping SMBs to spend less money on hardware, energy and server administration.

Via Between the lines.

NetQoS Launches Network-Based Virtualization Management Offerings

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

For all its benefits, server virtualization masks critical data that IT organizations need to ensure optimal delivery of applications across the network to end users. With new virtualization capabilities, the NetQoS Performance Center unearths this data and combines it with network and application performance information from the physical environment to show how well the entire infrastructure is supporting application delivery.

The NetQoS Performance Center bridges the gap between the virtual and physical environments by collecting and analyzing application response times, traffic flows via Cisco IOS NetFlow, and device performance statistics within multi-tiered, virtual hosts as well as into and out of the virtual environment. The new offerings include:

· NetQoS Response Time Virtual Collector: This software only version of the NetQoS Performance Center application response time monitoring capability runs as a virtual machine in VMware, Microsoft or Citrix environments to provide visibility into the communications between each virtual server residing on the same physical machine. In addition, the Virtual Collector monitors the traffic between each virtual machine and the physical infrastructure.

· NetQoS NetFlow Reporting for Virtualized Environments: The NetQoS Performance Center network traffic analysis capability now supports NetFlow statistics exported from the Cisco Nexus 1000v and the VMware vSwitch to help network groups monitor how virtual application traffic is impacting network performance.

· NetQoS Performance Center Integration with VMware vCenter: The NetQoS Performance Center retrieves device health information from the VMware vCenter API to report data such as the number of virtual machines running on a host, CPU utilization, disk usage, and memory utilization.

By integrating the performance data from these three sources in one management console, the NetQoS Performance Center is uniquely positioned to help IT organizations understand how applications are performing across the infrastructure and better manage virtualization. For instance, the ability to measure the before and after impact of infrastructure changes, isolate the source of latency to the network, application or server, and predict bandwidth consumption will help IT organizations solve problems faster and make more informed decisions about which applications to virtualize. In addition, correlating device health information alongside response time and traffic flow information in the NetQoS Performance Center is important as network groups troubleshoot latency and other performance issues in real time.