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Archives for September 2008

Microsoft and Novell Announce Joint Virtualization Solution

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Microsoft and Novell are announcing the availability of a joint virtualization solution optimized for customers running mixed-source environments. The joint offering includes SUSE Linux Enterprise Server configured and tested as an optimized guest operating system running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, and is fully supported by both companies’ channel partners. The offering provides customers with the first complete, fully supported and optimized virtualization solution to span Windows and Linux environments.

The new offering represents significant progress in the Microsoft-Novell collaboration and business model first announced in November 2006, which delivers seamless integration of SUSE Linux Enterprise and Microsoft Windows, providing a bridge between proprietary software and open source software. The virtualization solution is the first to include technology developed by both companies at their joint Interoperability Lab, including virtual machine adapters built to optimize SUSE Linux Enterprise Server as an optimized, or often referred to as enlightened, guest operating system on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, providing optimized performance to SUSE Linux guests.

The new offering represents more than 18 months of technical collaboration undertaken between Microsoft and Novell in response to customer demand for a virtualization solution that provides high performance and ease of deployment, and is tested and supported.

The original November 2006 Microsoft-Novell agreement included four areas of technical collaboration: virtualization, standards-based systems management, identity federation and document format compatibility. Since then, the companies have announced three other areas of collaboration: Moonlight, accessibility and a new SUSE Linux Enterprise Server management pack for Microsoft System Center product. With the new Linux Enterprise Server management pack, Microsoft System Center customers can manage Windows and Linux environments, both physical and virtual, from one common tool. Novell is also a charter member of Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is a validated operating system in the program.

CiRBA Packages Analysis Templates Comparing Hyper-V and VMware Based Solutions

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CiRBA today announced the availability of packaged analysis templates that enable organizations to compare the impact of implementing Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V versus VMware-based virtualization.

Using CiRBA’s analysis, organizations can quickly examine the suitability of each hypervisor for a given environment, understand consolidation ratios, longer term management considerations, and financial returns associated with each platform. CiRBA’s analysis templates for Hyper-V and VMware-based virtualization are driven by specialized Rulesets for each platform in combination with the solution’s advanced utilization analysis.

CiRBA provides cross-platform, multi-dimensional analysis that enables organizations to safely and cost-effectively consolidate heterogeneous environments and maximize efficiency within virtualized infrastructure through dynamic capacity management.

CiRBA’s comparative analysis templates for Hyper-V and VMware provide an opportunity for organizations to leverage vendor agnostic analysis, empirical data, and organization-specific business and technical constraints to determine the optimal solution for any given environment.

As with other Rulesets in the CiRBA product, CiRBA customers can access these new analysis features through CiRBA Central, a central repository of analysis rules that allows organizations to stay up to date on the latest best practices in data center optimization. CiRBA Powered Partners will also have access to these rules in order to help guide their clients through the selection of the optimal technology for their environment.

Provision Networks Introduces Quest Experience Optimization Pack (EOP)

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Provision Networks, a division of Quest, today unveiled its Experience Optimization Pack (EOP). Quest EOP is an extension suite for Microsoft’s Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) aimed to eliminate the adoption barriers of hosted desktop virtualization in all use case scenarios over both local area and wide area networks.

Hosted desktop technologies such as VDI, Blade PCs or even presentation virtualization rely on RDP to provide access and connectivity. RDP, however, does not deliver a PC-like, or even a near PC-like, experience. Quest’s EOP embraces and extends RDP and delivers the optimal user experience for LAN and WAN connectivity. Quest EOP:

  • Delivers support for bi-directional audio, enabling organizations to deploy dictation, collaboration and certain VOIP applications.
  • Accelerates the delivery of multimedia content such as recorded webcasts and web-based training from remote virtualized desktops and applications.
  • Dramatically improves the remoting of graphics including browser and flash acceleration.
  • Eliminates the effects of network latency which can cause havoc even for simple applications such as word processing.

Quest’s EOP is available immediately as an optional add-on to the Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite v5.10, the enterprise multi-platform desktop virtualization solution.

VMware Fusion Helped CERN Not Destroy The World With Large Hardron Collider Project

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VMware has announced physicists at CERN, the legendary European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world’s leading laboratory for particle physics, use VMware Fusion to share Linux-based computer code via VMware virtual machines running on Apple hardware.

Virtual machines created with VMware Fusion are used by the physicists working on the experiments that run on the world’s largest particle accelerator, Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The LHC is the world’s most powerful particle accelerator, producing beams seven times more energetic than any previous machine and around 30 times more intense when it reaches design performance. Housed in a 27-kilometre tunnel, the LHC has operating temperature of 1.9 degrees above absolute zero (-271°C). By studying collisions at higher energies than ever before, physicists will make further progress in understanding the mysteries of how our Universe is made and how it came to be.

With VMware Fusion, physicists use Macintosh hardware to run Linux-based software which links to LHC Computing Grid – a network of more than 150 computing centres with approximately 40,000 CPUs, handling 15 petabytes of new data each year. This Grid, which provides computing power for some of the organization’s most advanced experiments, can be accessed from CernVM, a customized Linux operating system running in a lightweight VMware virtual machine deployed on a range of PC and Mac workstations and laptops.

KACE Buys Into App Virtualization Market With Computers In Motion Acquisition

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KACE (previous coverage), the systems management appliance company, Tuesday announced its entry into the application virtualization market with its acquisition of Computers in Motion. Financial details of the acquisition are not being disclosed. The company intends to release products around this acquisition by year-end.

Established in 2001, Austin-based Computers in Motion provides technology focused on making applications easy to distribute and secure through application virtualization technologies. With this acquisition, KACE plans to revolutionize the application virtualization market by extending the benefits of virtualization to other desktop management areas such as application security and data management. The technology and development staff of the Computers in Motion team will form the foundation of KACE’s application virtualization products.

A preview of KACE Virtual Kontainers will be offered at KACE’s booth at the upcoming VMworld Conference in Las Vegas.

The Computers in Motion acquisition fits in squarely with KACE’s strategy of lowering the total cost of ownership for IT organizations through its appliance-based systems management and virtualization technology. This acquisition also builds on the product momentum KACE has made throughout the year in the virtualization market, including the recent launches of the Virtual KBOX Systems Management and KBOX Virtual Remote Appliances offerings.

KACE

Dell’s Latest Virtualization Play

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Dell has announced a series of products and updates around their virtualization offering. Here’s the takeaway:

  • New Dell PowerEdge full-height blade servers
  • Pre-installed integration and support of Microsoft Hyper-V for centralized management of virtualized environments
  • Advanced EqualLogic integration across multiple hypervisors
  • New services help customers simplify the design, deployment, security and management of virtualized environments: Infrastructure Consulting Services for Microsoft Hyper-V deployments, Site Recovery Manager (SRM) + Lifecycle Management for VMware environments

More information in the press release.

The most exciting news is that the company added to its EqualLogic product line a new, highly-scalable array – the PS5500E – and introduced advanced software features, including the EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware edition to improve data protection for virtual server environments.

The PS5500E builds upon Dell’s EqualLogic family with 24 or 48 terabytes (TB) of raw capacity in a 4U array – more than doubling the density and tripling the capacity of its predecessor model, the PS5000E, with equivalent hard disk drives. With the PS5500E, an EqualLogic SAN can scale up to 576 TB under a single management interface. This new array can be combined in the same SAN group with the existing EqualLogic systems. It provides an ideal solution for consolidating common tiered business data and applications such as file services, moderate I/O email, databases and virtual server environments. It can also be deployed for capacity-intensive near-line storage tiers and for disaster recovery sites.

You may be interested in the fact that Dell has also set up a dedicated section on its website about Microsoft Hyper-V.

Dell