Archives for January 2010

International Computerware, a global datacenter consulting firm, today announced the introduction of the vCube, the first partner driven datacenter solutions platform.

The vCube design was developed around ICI’s intellectual property and vast experience in datacenter architecture and integration utilizing their proven consulting methodology nCubed: Now, Next, Nirvana.

The vCube is a “process driven” modular architecture built upon “proven technologies” making it the complete datacenter solutions platform. It is comprised of servers, switches, unified storage, virtualization, monitoring, information protection, and other modular components creating a simplified, flexible, and customer configurable solution.

Through ICI’s extensive industry leading partnerships, the vCube’s design provides a tailor-made compute platform that can leverage clients’ technology preferences, skills, and relationships. Jamie Shepard, EVP of ICI, said, “During ICI’s collaboration with customers on design it’s not our intent to compromise a client’s existing datacenter partnerships; rather, our aim is to integrate their server and switch layers into our vCube design.” From the results of an nCubed assessment, existing HP, Dell, or Cisco servers and Brocade or Cisco switches can be incorporated. The foundation of the initial vCube offerings consists of VMware’s vSphere Virtualization Platform, Apparent Networks PathView Network Monitoring Solution, EMC Unified Storage, EMC Information Protection Modules (Avamar orData Domain), and APC rack and power equipment. All vCubes are racked, configured, and tested at ICI’s Innovation Facility in Marlborough, MA.

As of this announcement, there are two vCube offerings immediately available for datacenter deployments. The Infrastructure as a Service (I.a.a.S.) vCube and the Desktop as a Service (D.a.a.S.) vCube. Both vCube offerings allow organizations to easily and cost effectively manage their own internal private clouds; Furthermore, ICI has included two “Best-of-Breed” technologies such as Akorri’s BalancePoint for the Infrastructure as a Service (I.a.a.S.) vCube and Liquidware Labs’ Stratusphere and ProfileUnity for the Desktop as a Service (D.a.a.S.) vCube.

The I.a.a.S. vCube provides organizations with a complete datacenter solutions platform that incorporates the ability to run VMware Virtual Machines, provision EMC storage via multiple protocols while connecting everything with a robust multi-Gigabit network enhancing all advanced features of the vCube. Alongside the fundamental features of the vCube the organization has built-in monitoring and backup capabilities in a 1 or 2 rack configuration. The I.a.a.S. vCube comes in multiple size configurations based on the number of max supported Virtual Machines. The I.a.a.S. vCube models are: I-vCUBE-96, I-vCUBE-192, I-vCUBE-384, I-vCUBE-576, I-vCUBE-768, and I-vCUBE-1152 maximum Virtual Machines. These models are based on proven technical assumptions which can be configured differently for any organization. To be able to monitor the entire stack including storage through the application Akorri BalancePoint has been included.

The concept behind the D.a.a.S. vCube is to enable an organization with a complete datacenter solutions platform that is based upon the ability to deliver VMware Virtual Desktops to all end-users in the organization. To be able to do this the vCube incorporates the ability to provision EMC storage via multiple protocols while connecting everything with a robust multi-Gigabit network enhancing all advanced features of the vCube. Additionally, the vCube has built-in monitoring and backup capabilities in one, two, or three rack configurations. The D.a.a.S. vCube comes in multiple size configurations based on the number of maximum supported Virtual Desktops. The D.a.a.S. vCube models are D-vCUBE-256, D-vCUBE-512, D-vCUBE-1024, D-vCUBE-2048, D-vCUBE-3072, and D-vCUBE-6144 maximum Virtual Desktops. These models are based on proven technical assumptions which can be configured differently for any organization. To be able to monitor the entire stack including storage through the application LiquidWare Labs has been included.

Alongside the Virtual desktop component the D.a.a.S. vCube includes VMware’s ThinApp for Application Virtualization. Through the use of ThinApp, ICI will help clients optimize their desktop infrastructure management by installing and updating their desktop applications from a centralized repository.

3PAR, global provider of utility storage, announced two new 3PAR InForm software plug-ins for VMware vSphere and VMware vCenter Server which provide virtual machine (VM)-aware snapshots, rapid online VM recovery, and VM-to-storage mapping.

Together, 3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere and the 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter Server enable joint 3PAR and VMware customers to simply, efficiently, and non-disruptively protect, recover, and manage virtual machines and related storage resources in their virtual datacenter and cloud computing environments.

3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere was designed to give VMware administrators the benefits of rapid provisioning of new virtual machines from VM copies, cost-effective use of storage resources for disk-based VM backup and rapid recovery, and superior granularity over the recovery process by enabling the creation of hundreds of VM-aware, point-in-time snapshots without the use of agents. Recovery Manager gives administrators automated protection and recovery of Virtual Machine Disks (VMDKs), VMware vStorage Virtual Machine File Systems (VMFS), individual VMs, and even individual files within VMware vSphere environments.

3PAR Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere and the 3PAR Management Plug-In for VMware vCenter Server are available immediately. The Management Plug-In is available at no charge to 3PAR customers. Recovery Manager for VMware vSphere starts at US $3000 per InServ Storage Server.

VMware has announced availability of both Java and Python open-source software development kits (SDKs) for the  VMware vCloud API, making it easier for developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to jumpstart their projects by flexibly leveraging private and public cloud services.  The new Python and Java SDKs for the VMware vCloud API will further simplify and accelerate developers’ ability to leverage VMware vCloud services.

VMware partners Cloudera and WebAppVM also announced new solutions for VMware vCloud Express developed with the VMware vCloud API and the SDKs.

Key open-source client libraries and tools for the VMware vCloud API are now available from standard cloud software resources including Dasein, jclouds and libcloud, underscoring the strong interest from the open-source community in supporting the VMware vCloud Initiative. These new libraries and tools will help make the VMware vCloud API more accessible to a large and diverse set of developers, ISVs and solution partners. For ISVs, these libraries combined with the VMware vCloud API are standardizing and simplifying the integration path to public clouds offered through VMware vCloud Express providers.

Cloudera is an active libcloud contributor and uses libcloud in its Hadoop offering for VMware vCloud Express, and WebAppVM leverages jclouds for its VMware vCloud Express solution. The Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop allows users to store, integrate and analyze data inexpensively and easily by leveraging VMware vCloud Express and the VMware vCloud API to dynamically provision resources, process jobs and deprovision resources. The WebAppVM solution enables users to configure and scale a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering on VMware vCloud Express so they can rapidly on-board and monitor cloud-based applications.

Other open-source tools are also VMware vCloud-enabled through the jclouds plugin. Ant, an open-source Java build tool, leverages this plugin to enable open-source tools and the developer ecosystem to gain access to the VMware vCloud API. Developers using Apache Maven, a software project management and comprehension tool, can also use the jclouds plugin to extend their existing projects to VMware vCloud Express.  All these tools are ready for developers to use in their standard workflows and leverage VMware vCloud Express. VMware has also made a number of open-source contributions to the Cloud Tools project, which powers the SpringSource Cloud Foundry service, enabling Java developers to deploy, test, and manage applications for VMware environments via VMware vSphere and the VMware vCloud API.

Symantec has announced NetBackup 7 to help enterprise-level organizations protect, store and recover information with greater efficiency and reliability through a single, unified platform.

The latest release of NetBackup enables organizations to simplify information management while reducing data stores and network traffic by integrating deduplication everywhere — at the client, media server and on third party hardware appliances — thus reducing overall costs. NetBackup also delivers complete virtual machine protection to increase backup and recovery speeds of data within virtual environments and adds new backup replication for fast, cost-effective disaster recovery.

With NetBackup 7, Symantec delivers on its data deduplication everywhere strategy to help organizations reduce overall storage consumption in physical and virtual environments by adding data deduplication technology into the backup client and at the media server. By integrating deduplication closer to the data source at the client, NetBackup increases the speed and efficiency of backups in remote offices, data centers and virtual environments and reduces network traffic by up to 90 percent. Deduplication built into the backup client eliminates the need for additional specialized hardware and configuration since customers just need to upgrade to the latest version to realize dramatic storage savings.

NetBackup also helps enterprises to better leverage third party storage appliances from hardware partners through the Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) program. According to the 2010 State Of The Data Center report, 62 percent of survey respondents said deduplication should be both built-in to backup software and implemented in deduplication appliances. Integration with NetBackup through OST allows organizations to also leverage deduplication hardware from a wide range of partners, including Quantum, ExaGrid Systems, FalconStor and more.

As the adoption of virtual technologies increases, so do backup challenges and complexities. NetBackup simplifies virtual server data protection by standardizing backup of Hyper-V and VMware, increasing the backup speed of virtual environments through both deduplication and block-level incremental backup technology, and delivering efficient single file restore capabilities.

In the 2010 State Of The Data Center survey, organizations cited granular recovery within virtual machine images as the biggest challenge in virtual machine data protection. NetBackup 7 delivers instant file recovery from a block-level incremental backup for VMware vSphere environments and easy recovery of an individual file or folder from an image-level backup of a Hyper-V virtual machine. By leveraging NetBackup’s deduplication and incremental backup technology within virtual environments, organizations can dramatically increase the speed of backups while reducing storage for virtual machine backups up to 95 percent. NetBackup also enables IT administrators to reduce the impact of backup operations on virtual machines by using off-host for Hyper-V and block-level backup technologies for VMware.

Newly integrated replication technology within the NetBackup platform allows organizations to transfer up to 95 percent less data between various locations. This helps ensure quick and easy recovery of applications and backup data anywhere and at any time, reducing costs and management cycles associated with tape-based disaster recovery. NetBackup also adds backup catalog replication as a standard feature within the main console, which further simplifies and streamlines disaster recovery.

To help customers centrally manage their data protection environments and provide a single view of their backup and recovery operation, NetBackup 7 introduces a built-in reporting and management console called OpsCenter. This new console standardizes monitoring and reporting of both backup and archive information for key Symantec products including NetBackup, NetBackup PureDisk, Backup Exec and Enterprise Vault. Organizations can also leverage advanced analytical features and report on third party backup products using OpsCenter Analytics. This combined functionality allows organizations to reduce disaster recovery risks across locations and standardize how they view both backup and archive information.

Symantec offers a broad array of services to help organizations deploy, integrate and operate highly effective NetBackup environments. NetBackup Services help organizations get the most from their NetBackup investments by improving storage efficiency, infrastructure use and recovery times.

Symantec NetBackup 7 is scheduled to be available worldwide on Feb. 1, 2010 with a suggested price of $7,995 USD for an Enterprise Server and five client licenses.