Virtualization.com

Virsto Raises $7 Million For Virtual Storage Solutions

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Virsto Software, provider of storage solutions for virtual servers, announced today it has completed its Series A round of funding, raising $7 million. The round was led by August Capital and includes Canaan Partners.

Canaan Partners was also a seed investor in Virsto in 2008. Virsto will use the funds to launch its new storage solution for virtual servers. The company will also focus on building its customer base and engaging new partners. Maha Ibrahim, General Partner at Canaan, will remain on Virsto’s board of directors and Vivek Mehra, General Partner at August Capital, will join the board.

Virsto was founded in the fall of 2007 to address the growing need for cost-effective and efficient storage for virtualized data centers.

Virtualized data centers are transforming IT infrastructures by reducing costs, improving performance and increasing efficiency. Server virtualization platforms from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Oracle, Red Hat, and others are being rapidly adopted as the technology matures.

Most data storage systems in use today were designed before server virtualization came about. The older storage techniques and technologies used for physical servers are not optimal for virtual servers. While existing vendors have tweaked storage solutions to work better for virtual servers, the products are inadequate, expensive and complex. Later this year, Virsto will launch a new type of storage solution designed for the unique needs of virtual servers.

SourceFire Presents New Virtual Appliances

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Open source innovator and Snort creator  Sourcefire announced Sourcefire 3D System 4.9, with the new Sourcefire Virtual 3D Sensor and Sourcefire Virtual Defense Center. These new virtual appliances will enable users to deploy the company’s leading security solutions within their virtual environments, increasing protection for both physical and virtual assets. Available during the second half of 2009, the Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 also features the industry’s first Policy Layering capabilities that deliver increased customization for large or multi-organizational networks, including cloud or virtual implementations.

With the new Virtual 3D Sensor and Virtual Defense Center, Sourcefire is enabling customers to:

• Secure virtualization – Protecting virtual infrastructure from internal and external attacks with virtual security appliances
• Virtualize security – Leveraging cost- and energy-saving benefits of virtual security appliances to improve security efficiency

As part of the Sourcefire 3D System 4.9, the new virtual appliances allow organizations to inspect traffic between virtual machines, while also making it easier to deploy and manage sensors at remote sites where resources may be limited. They also enable Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) and cloud computing companies to easily implement Sourcefire’s leading security solutions for increased protection. MSSPs can configure multiple Virtual Defense Centers to support multiple customers from a single VMware server, increasing the efficiency of management efforts.

Users can deploy Virtual 3D Sensors on VMware ESX and ESXi platforms to inspect traffic between two or more virtual machines (VMs), while also using physical Sourcefire 3D Sensors to inspect traffic going into and out of a VMware virtual environment. Deployed as software running within VMs, the Virtual 3D Sensor also makes it easier for users to inspect traffic on remote segments of the network where local IT security resources may not exist (e.g., retail stores, remote offices) or where little rack space remains in the datacenter.

The Virtual 3D Sensor will provide simultaneous execution of Sourcefire IPS, RNA (Real-time Network Awareness) and RUA (Real-time User Awareness) functions. Customers can deploy the Virtual Defense Center to monitor any combination of up to 25 virtual or physical 3D Sensors. They can also opt to monitor their Virtual 3D Sensors from the same physical Defense Center they use to monitor their physical 3D Sensors.

In addition to the new virtual appliances, Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 delivers new policy management capabilities that allow organizations to easily customize security to support the varying user requirements of expansive multi-department/organization networks, as well as virtualization and cloud computing implementations. With the industry’s first Policy Layering capability, Sourcefire users can create policy “building blocks” to capture specific Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) requirements by organization, by site, by department, or even by user.

Sourcefire is enhancing its market-leading dashboard to include new custom query widgets, providing users with increased control over the way data is presented. With Sourcefire 3D System 4.9, Sourcefire is also improving the overall manageability and detection accuracy of RNA to include new application and service detectors, auto-configuration and simplified packet-level forensics.

The Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 release, including the Virtual 3D Sensors and Virtual Defense Center, will be available during the second half of 2009.

Uptime Software Upgrades VMware Monitoring and Reporting Tool

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uptime software has announced the latest version of its systems management software, up.time 5. Through close collaboration with VMware and its vSphere and vCenter Orchestrator offerings, up.time’s new capabilities aspire to change the way enterprises manage, measure, and monitor their VMware infrastructure.

up.time represents a leap forward for companies that need to drive both performance and cost-savings from their VMware infrastructure, while ensuring a consistent quality of service. It does this by providing IT managers with an unobstructed view of the datacenter to efficiently manage distributed applications and global services levels, while maximizing enterprise-wide IT resources. The solution’s ability to span both physical and virtual realms has helped hundreds of customers achieve new levels of performance and render immediate cost savings. QuickPlay Media, a customer dedicated to providing solutions that manage the business of mobile video for the world’s leading communications providers, is one example.

The new capabilities announced today– advanced visibility, deep VMware metrics and reporting, automated problem resolution and incidence avoidance –raise the bar for managing VMware performance with:

• Increased VMware efficiency though dramatic increases in VM density and optimized VM workloads.
• Automated incidence avoidance that reduces manual find/fix by automatically heading off reoccurring problems before they happen. Deep and seamless integration with VMware vCenter Orchestrator® makes building out automated problem avoidance workflows easy, providing advanced capabilities for SMB and Enterprise companies. This dramatically reduces Mean-Time-To-Repair and required resources, while increasing performance and productivity.
• Fast problem isolation and resolution through intelligent alerting, easy pinpointing of root cause, and automated actions that can eliminate recurring outages in the future.
• Rapid VMware infrastructure growth requiring fewer resources by delivering an easy-to-use consolidation, monitoring, optimization, and automation solution, all while helping reduce VM sprawl.
• Improved visibility and manageability of the entire infrastructure from a single console, including virtual and physical infrastructures and applications, and across multiple datacenters.

An enterprise version of up.time is available for a risk-free 30 day evaluation download here -  (a Virtual Appliance is also available for download here. uptime software’s world-class support services are free during this evaluation period to help customers drive value in their environments.

OK Labs Launches Mobile Virtualization Integration Practice (VIP)

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Open Kernel Labs (OK Labs) today announced that the company has launched the industry’s first mobile Virtualization Integration Practice (VIP). The VIP offers a set of consulting and training services that help customers to define requirements, validate design approaches, and support mobile phone product development.

Leading the practice offerings is a collaborative Discovery Service that helps OK Labs OKL4 users integrate virtualization into mobile handset hardware and software architecture. Other VIP Services include Training, Porting, Quick Start, Installation, and Engineering consulting. OK VIP Services help handset OEMs, mobile network operators (MNOs), and semiconductor suppliers to realize significant value from deploying mobile phone virtualization, and to propagate that value across the mobile ecosystem.

OK VIP Discovery service takes into account not only the architecture of mobile hardware and software, but also customer-defined business goals and objectives, and ecosystem relationships. The service delivery is informed by the OK Labs tech team’s understanding of silicon suppliers’ current capabilities and product roadmaps; the evolution of mobile operating systems and other mobile device software; the requirements and service rollout plans of MNOs; and the channels used to deliver handsets, applications, and content.

The VIP Discovery Service starts with detailed requirements gathering, accomplished through an on-site engagement with handset OEM, MNO, or semiconductor supplier technology and business teams. Together with the customer, OK Labs evaluates mobile project design, development, testing, and deployment processes, from both technical and commercial perspectives. Ultimately, OK Labs VIP Discovery Service includes delivery of actionable recommendations for implementation of mobile phone virtualization architecture, integration, training and support.

The VIP Discovery service confers a range of benefits to OEMs and their ecosystem:

•       Aligning mobile phone virtualization with business goals and objectives
•       Building and refining mobile design strategies to maximize ROI from mobile phone virtualization
•       Aligning mobile device features with capabilities and requirements of ecosystem partners and the mobile marketplace

In a study conducted by OK Labs regarding mobile access to enterprise applications, something made possible by mobile phone virtualization, it was found that mobile phone users and corporate IT managers expect that mobile access to enterprise applications growth will outpace the growth of mobile email over the next two years. For OEMs, MNOs and semiconductor suppliers that leverage this opportunity, VIP services enable a quick and efficient path to meet this demand.

OK VIP services are available immediately from OK Labs

RNA Networks Debuts RNAcache For Its Memory Virtualization Platform

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RNA networks today announced it has extended its Memory Virtualization Platform (MVP) product family with the release of RNAcache. MVP transforms server memory into a shared network resource.  RNAcache allows servers to leverage RNA’s unlimited pool of memory by loading entire working datasets into a single shared, virtual memory pool for simultaneous access and processing. RNAcache significantly lowers the cost of supporting business critical, memory-intensive applications without making further investments in costly data center equipment, enabling companies to wring as much revenue potential out of existing servers as possible.

Broadly applicable to a variety of industries, RNAcache provides line speed processing of the most memory intensive and I/O bound applications including predictive analytics and modeling, high volume Internet applications and clustered environments without requiring changes to applications, OS or storage.

An investment management firm using RNAcache said, “With RNAcache, our analytic models that previously took 1.5 hours ran in a matter of minutes – showing a 2,000 percentage performance improvement.” In this case, RNA’s unlimited memory pool held a working dataset of 3 Terabytes across hundreds of compute nodes.

RNAcache works in all network environments including GbE, 10GbE, and InfiniBand. RNAcache removes data center bottlenecks caused by contention for application memory, the most scarce and limited resource in the data center. During customer testing, RNAcache significantly enhanced performance in the following use cases:

• Predictive Analytics and Modeling: improved predictive modeling capabilities by 20X, delivering results to analysts in a fraction of the time.
• High Volume, Fast Internet Applications: improved query speed 100X, increased simultaneous user capacity 5X and expanded customer revenue opportunities each business day.
• Clustered Environments: A high performance cloud provider accelerated processing rates by 30X, without having to scale out their hardware, power or space footprint.

The rate of proliferation and amount of data that must be quickly analyzed, shared and interpreted is growing exponentially. RNAcache makes the benefits of memory virtualization widely available to customers in industries who rely on access, performance and scale to remain competitive - be it video streaming or algorithmic model processing.

Release: 5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner

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5nine Software today announced the release of  5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner, and  5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner Free Edition - the first virtualization migration planning solutions specifically designed for enterprise P2V Hyper-V deployment projects.

5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner offers the following features:

• Automated P2V Hyper-V Migration Planning – Performs sophisticated analysis of the current data center and provides multiple migration plans depending on particular enterprise requirements. Optimized placement of virtualized workloads is based on business requirements, technology (memory, storage and CPU utilization, security) and TCO/ROI.
• Agentless Data Collection – Automatically discovers and collects hardware inventory, utilization data and application performance metrics in a non-intrusive manner without installing agents. It also allows importing this information from an Excel or XML file.
• Simple-to-Use – The product was designed to be used for projects of all sizes - from small virtualization pilot or SMB projects to large enterprise projects with hundreds of servers, hosts and virtual machines (VMs).
• Integrated TCO/ROI Reporting - P2V Planner creates a variety of technology assessment, workload and TCO/ROI reports for each migration plan, for easy comparison and decision making.
• Ongoing Value – Whether your P2V Hyper-V migration project is complete or ongoing, the Planner continues to provide value by optimizing the workloads and resource utilization in a virtualized data center.

The current version of the product supports Microsoft Hyper-V, while subsequent releases will support multiple virtualization platforms, including VMware P2V planning, as well as actual P2V conversion in accordance with the P2V migration plans created.

5nine P2V Hyper-V Planner Free Edition is available immediately, and it’s free for any Microsoft Hyper-V environment. P2V Hyper-V Planner is also available immediately, with North American pricing starting at $59.00 USD per physical server.