Archives for November 2009

From blog.xen.org:

The Xen community is pleased to announce the addition of Fujitsu and VA Linux Systems Japan K.K. to the Xen Advisory Board. Fujitsu and VA Linux Systems joins other leading enterprise vendors to offer expertise and leadership to promote the Xen hypervisor as the industry standard in open source virtualization. The addition of these two influential vendors based in Japan provides Xen with an enhanced customer prospective in the server, client and cloud virtualization markets.

Over the last two years, Fujitsu has significantly increased their contribution to the Xen.org community. Fujitsu hosted the inaugural Xen Summit Asia event in 2008 at their Makuhari Lab, submitted a substantial number of accepted patches for the Itanium (IA64) Xen hypervisor and the following Xen features: PV SCSI driver, PV USB driver, VTd SAN boot support, and guest dump. The company has also been a leader in defining and contributing to the newly launched Xen Client Initiative (XCI) and Xen Cloud Platform. Finally, Fujitsu has recently released a benchmark tool for virtualization, AutoVMbench.

VA Linux Japan has also been a great Xen evangelist with presentations at Linux.con.au 2007, Japan Linux Symposium 2009, Xen Summit Boston 2008, Xen Summit Asia 2008, and Xen Summit Fall 2006. They have also sponsored 2 Xen Conferences in Japan in 2007 and 2008 with sizeable audiences. On the development side of Xen, VA Linux Japan is the current Xen/IA 64 maintainer and has contributed large amounts of code for PCI passthrough, I/O schedulers and bandwidth control, domU core-dump, and Linux upstream of domU pv_ops/ia64.

“Having Fujitsu and VA Linux Japan join the Xen Advisory Board is another milestone for the Xen community, demonstrating the broad reach of the project,” said Ian Pratt, founder of the xen project and Chairman of Xen.org. “With Fujitsu’s and VA Linux Japan’s industry leadership and strong presence in the Asian marketplace, the Xen.org community is further strengthened, ensuring a continued leadership position as the open source hypervisor of choice.”

“Fujitsu is committed to contribute to the open source with Xen community, and we are excited to join the Xen Advisory Board,” said Chiseki Sagawa, president of the SOP Strategy and Development Office at Fujitsu. “With the openness and enterprise-class features of the Xen Cloud Platform, customers can freely choose best of enterprise ready cloud platform from various vendors.”

“VA Linux Japan has been contributing to the Xen community since its inception, offering high-quality consulting services for the Xen virtualization technology in Japan. Today’s announcement of joining the Xen advisory board gives us a confidence that our efforts toward the Xen open source projects have been widely recognized.” said Iehisa “Ike” Nakamura, president and CEO, VA Linux Japan. “We are proud to be a member of the Xen advisory board. VA Linux is committed to support the adoption of the Xen technology and XCP in Japan and continue to contribute to Xen.org.”

The Xen Advisory Board provides oversight and guidance to the Xen project for all community activities, technology development, and management of the Xen® trademark. The Xen Advisory Board includes membership from the top eight contributors to the Xen project, as well as the key vendors delivering the Xen hypervisor. Current advisory board members are Citrix, HP, IBM, Fujitsu, Intel, Novell, Oracle, Red Hat, Sun Microsystems, and VA Linux Japan

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Citrix Systems today announced the general availability of Citrix Dazzle for Windows and Mac, along with new versions of Citrix Receiver for Windows, Mac, iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

The new releases make virtual desktops far more compelling for end users, enabling unprecedented levels of flexibility, mobility and self service. As the first self-service “storefront” for enterprise applications, Citrix Dazzle gives corporate employees 24×7 self-service access to a broad array of applications, desktops and content, allowing them to choose exactly what they need, when they need it. Citrix Receiver is a lightweight software client that makes accessing virtual desktops and applications on any device as easy as turning on your TV. Together, Dazzle and Receiver work with Citrix XenDesktop, the company’s market-leading desktop virtualization solution, to power self-service IT for a wide range of virtual desktops, giving every user in the enterprise instant access to their corporate desktops and applications from whatever device is most convenient at the time.

Multiple factors are converging to make 2010 a breakout year for desktop virtualization. As 2009 draws to a close, desktop virtualization is progressing along the same rapid trajectory that server virtualization enjoyed two to three years ago – moving quickly from test labs, to pilots, to full scale production deployments. As virtual desktop technologies continue to mature, an increasing number of enterprises are proving their mainstream viability by rolling out large-scale virtual desktop implementations to thousands of users, improving security and reducing desktop management costs by up to 50 percent in the process.

The desktop virtualization market is expected to accelerate further in 2010 with the highly-anticipated arrival of Windows 7 as organizations of all sizes take time to evaluate their enterprise-wide strategies for desktop computing. Many experts, in fact, expect desktop virtualization to ultimately surpass server virtualization, in part because of the sheer size of the potential markets. While server virtualization currently has an addressable market size of approximately 35 million servers worldwide, desktop virtualization has the potential to impact more than 600 million desktop users in corporate environments alone.

While the benefits of server virtualization are almost exclusively focused on IT agility and cost savings, desktop virtualization has the unique advantage of benefiting both the end user and IT. Centralized management of employee desktops gives IT what it wants most – greater security, control and cost savings. At the same time, going virtual at the desktop also gives end users what they want most – flexibility, choice and self service. Through the power of virtualization, Windows desktops can be delivered by IT as an on-demand service to any device. This flexibility gives users the ability to work from any device they choose, and to self select the services they need, when they need them. At the same time, IT gains all the benefits of centralized management and control, ensuring unprecedented security of corporate resources, and significantly lowering desktop management costs. The combination of Citrix XenDesktop at the head end, and Citrix Dazzle and Receiver on each device, enable customers to respond to the growing demand from both users and IT administrators for a simpler, richer, more powerful desktop computing experience.

While early VDI-only (virtual desktop infrastructure) products allowed only one model of desktop virtualization, XenDestkop 4 with its new FlexCast delivery technology gives customers the flexibility to deliver any type of virtual desktop, to any user, on any device – and to change this mix at any time. This unprecedented flexibility makes virtual desktops a practical reality for every type of employee – from task workers and office workers, to power users and mobile employees.

To reach broad, enterprise-wide deployment, virtual desktops must also provide a great experience for end users. Citrix addresses the first part of this equation with its market-leading HDX™ technology, which ensures a high definition experience for all end users, regardless of their location or device.

The addition of self service capabilities with Citrix Dazzle and Receiver significantly enhances virtual desktop user experience by enabling employees and contractors to get instant, secure, self-service access to their full Windows desktop and everything on it from whatever device is most convenient.

Dazzle is a user-facing application that runs on any Windows or Mac computer. It acts as the storefront for all the applications IT has centrally staged in head-end infrastructure products like XenDesktop. To select an application in Dazzle, users simply browse and search based on application name, description or type. Dazzle also interfaces directly with Citrix Merchandising Server, the head-end management system that makes it easy for IT to actually start “merchandising” apps to users, not just delivering them.

Dazzle is fully integrated with Citrix Receiver, the universal software client that makes it easy for users to access corporate apps and desktops from any device they choose. With the new Receivers for Blackberry and Android, Citrix has extended anytime access to applications to even more mobile devices. Together, Citrix Dazzle and Citrix Receiver with XenDesktop bring the power of desktop virtualization to millions of devices.

Citrix Dazzle, Citrix Receiver and Citrix Merchandising Server are free of charge to any Citrix XenDesktop or Citrix XenApp customer.

The following versions of Dazzle and Receiver will be generally available to all Citrix customers in December:

• Dazzle 1.1 for Microsoft Windows; Dazzle 1.2 for Apple Mac
• Receiver 1.2 for Windows and Mac
• Receiver 2.0 for Apple iPhone (available at the Apple App Store)
• Receiver 1.0 for RIM Blackberry (available at the Blackberry App World store)
• Receiver tech preview for Android by Google

ParaScale today introduced ParaScale Cloud Storage software (PCS) R2.0.

The new release targets enterprise storage administrators who must economically scale capacity and performance, and service providers who want to offer a variety of storage cloud services. ParaScale’s open solution leverages any commodity hardware running Red Hat Enterprise Linux OS or CentOS, and can integrate applications directly onto storage nodes. PCS R2.0 also provides integration capabilities into virtualized environments and web services.

This latest release of ParaScale Cloud Storage software reflects the growing realization by global customers that existing approaches to managing their stored data assets prevent them from rapidly delivering a pool of storage that easily scales capacity and performance independently and economically. PCS R2.0 removes these obstacles as a software-only solution that can be downloaded from the web and applied to any standard Linux platform to enable hundreds of commodity servers to be clustered together as a file repository, as a storage cloud with massive capacity and parallel throughput, or as a disaster recovery option for virtualized environments.

One of the key features of PCS R2.0 enables ParaScale to function as a back-up for virtual machines and their respective data. In the event of a failure, the virtual machines can be booted directly from ParaScale and be up and running in seconds without having to move around VM images.

Additional key features of ParaScale Cloud Storage software R2.0 include:

• Web service API expansion through SOAP and REST to provide configuration, administration, and provisioning support – Enterprises and service providers can provide self service options through the web and integrate ParaScale functionality into third-party dashboards, control panels and workflows.
• Synchronous replication based on policy per multi-tenant instance – Administrators can enable protection strategies that include up to eight synchronous copies to different data sets.
• Private cloud multi-tenancy support including metered usage for chargeback – A ParaScale cloud can be partitioned to provide different service levels as well as deliver usage based metrics and pricing to internal and external customers.
• Proactive reporting and monitoring capabilities – Instead of requiring customers to provide detailed information and perform recovery activities, ParaScale R2.0 provides remote monitoring combined with auto healing capabilities.

ParaScale Cloud Storage software R2.0 will be available November 30th. Pricing is based on the physical capacity within the cloud with deployments starting in North America at a list price of 95¢/GB.

Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), today announced the availability of a new white paper entitled, “Interoperable Clouds – A White Paper from the Open Cloud Standards Incubator.”

This white paper summarizes the current work within the DMTFOpen Cloud Standards Incubator, including usage scenarios for cloud interoperability, the cloud service lifecycle and a cloud reference architecture. The white paper also highlights the incubator’s ongoing activities, including the formation of new sub-groups and upcoming informational specifications.

The “Interoperable Cloud” white paper is the first document released by the DMTF Open Cloud Standards Incubator. It will be followed by a series of informational specifications concentrating on cloud security, infrastructure protocols and data artifacts. The incubator has already formed new sub-groups to begin addressing these areas. The resulting specifications will address the interfaces between cloud service providers and cloud service consumers, and between cloud service providers and cloud developers – collectively known as the cloud provider interface. Cloud interoperability standards that result from this work will be designed to reduce lock-in and increase agility for cloud computing adopters taking advantage of a multi-provider, mixed cloud environment.

DMTF’s Open Cloud Standards Incubator expects the cloud provider interface will encompass several major sub categories that make up the interface between cloud service providers and cloud consumers. These subcategories will ultimately be comprised of profiles that span object models and wire formats. The group anticipates that some profiles will be addressed through integration with other DMTF working groups, and through cooperation with other standards bodies.

The “Interoperable Cloud” white paper, along with the deliverables it outlines, is the culmination of several months’ work within the Open Cloud Standards Incubator. Since its launch in late April 2009, the group has been collaboratively analyzing various aspects of clouds and identifying ways to offer solutions that will accelerate the adoption of interoperable and portable cloud service offerings. The complete white paper is available for download on the DMTF Web site.