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Archives for February 2010

NComputing Announces Support For Windows MultiPoint Server 2010

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NComputing, the global leader in virtual desktops with over 15 million daily users, today announced that the company’s full product line will support the new Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 operating system from Microsoft Corp. (MSFT). NComputing virtual desktop kits are based on the company’s vSpace desktop virtualization software and are available in three product lines which are designed to bring ultra low-cost computing to customers ranging from enterprises to small businesses, as well as schools, NGOs and governments.
Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 works with vSpace as an economical platform to deliver virtual desktops to low-cost thin clients with pricing and performance that will be attractive to a wide range of customers.
California School Sets Up NComputing / Windows MultiPoint Server Lab
Rheem School in Moraga, California set up a lab based on Windows MultiPoint Server with NComputing vSpace software and U170 (U-series) clients to the delight of faculty, staff, administration and teachers.
–       The new shared PCs run considerably faster and more reliably in the new lab than the four year old PCs run in the older lab.
–       The 30-seat lab was set up in a matter of hours because of the simplicity of installing the Windows MultiPoint Server operating system on 5 shared PCs and the NComputing USB plug-and-play clients.
–       The Windows MultiPoint Server and NComputing combination is the most cost-effective way to give Rheem’s students a state-of-the-art Windows 7 user experience.
The NComputing Product Line
NComputing has three product lines, which are based on how the thin clients connect to the PC/server.
–       The X-series, which connect through a PCI card, and which deliver superb multimedia at the lowest possible cost.
–       The U-series, which is the simplest solution to connect, because they just snap into standard USB ports. They deliver top-notch multimedia at very low prices.
–       The L-series, which connect through standard Ethernet networks, and as such deliver the most flexible architectures and configurations.
Quotes
“The strong support we’ve already seen from NComputing will be instrumental to the development of valuable, innovative solutions for the Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 platform,” said Ira Snyder, general manager, Windows MultiPoint Server at Microsoft.  “The creation of shared resource computing solutions like NComputing’s  using Windows MultiPoint Server will provide even more policymakers, teachers, and students with access to affordable, security-enhanced, and easy-to-use technology.”
“In just three years, NComputing has established itself as the only desktop virtualization company that delivers ultra-low cost, with great performance, and in a variety of models that allow customers to buy the perfect solution,” said Stephen Dukker, CEO and chairman of NComputing. “The new Microsoft and NComputing partnership is helping us deliver even more choices for our customers. This will expand the market even faster than it has been growing.”
“We researched many virtual desktops over the past year,” said Courtney Guinn, Director of Instructional Technology. “We were impressed by the simplicity of the NComputing and Windows MultiPoint Server solution and the fact that it required no new infrastructure.”
“The thing that kills us over time is that PCs have to be replaced every four years or so. So even if we get a good budget one year in ten, it creates an obligation that we can’t afford to keep up with. By sharing PCs with Windows MultiPoint Server and NComputing, we’ve drastically reduced the amount of money we need to keep up,” said Guy Seltzer, district Network Administrator
Tags
NComputing, desktop virtualization, virtual desktops, thin clients, educational computing, enterprise computing, Microsoft, Windows MultiPoint Server
Links
NComputing website Windows MultiPoint Server page: www.ncomputing.com/wms
Video
A video about the Rheem deployment is located at : www.ncomputing.com/wms
About NComputing, Inc.
NComputing, Inc. is the fastest growing desktop virtualization company in the world with millions of users in 140 countries. The company’s award-winning, patented technology lowers desktop computing costs, improves manageability, and reduces both energy consumption and e-waste. It is the perfect solution for leveraging the power and potential of PCs and cloud computing. To learn more about NComputing, visit http://www.ncomputing.com.
The NComputing solution takes advantage of the fact that today’s PCs are so powerful that the vast majority of users only need a small fraction of the computing capacity. NComputing taps this unused capacity so that it can be simultaneously shared by many users. Each user’s monitor, keyboard and mouse are connected to a small and highly reliable NComputing thin-client device, which is then connected to the shared PC. NComputing’s award-winning vSpace desktop virtualization software provides each user with a rich multimedia computing experience and their own computing session. Organizations typically save at least 50% on hardware costs, 75% on support costs, and 90% of electricity costs by installing NComputing.

NComputing today announced that the company’s full product line will support the new Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 operating system from Microsoft.

NComputing virtual desktop kits are based on the company’s vSpace desktop virtualization software and are available in three product lines which are designed to bring ultra low-cost computing to customers ranging from enterprises to small businesses, as well as schools, NGOs and governments.

Windows MultiPoint Server 2010 works with vSpace as an economical platform to deliver virtual desktops to low-cost thin clients with pricing and performance that will be attractive to a wide range of customers.

NComputing has three product lines, which are based on how the thin clients connect to the PC/server.

–       The X-series, which connect through a PCI card, and which deliver superb multimedia at the lowest possible cost.

–       The U-series, which is the simplest solution to connect, because they just snap into standard USB ports. They deliver top-notch multimedia at very low prices.

–       The L-series, which connect through standard Ethernet networks, and as such deliver the most flexible architectures and configurations.

CA Snaps Up 3Tera

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CA, Inc. (NASDAQ:CA) today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held 3Tera®, Inc., a pioneer in cloud computing. 3Tera’s AppLogic® offers an innovative solution for building cloud services and deploying complex enterprise-class applications to public and private clouds using an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI). Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.
With 3Tera—which follows CA’s recent acquisitions of Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore—CA continues to aggressively expand its portfolio of solutions to manage cloud computing as part of an integrated information technology management program.
3Tera enables enterprises and service providers to provision, deploy and scale public and private cloud computing environments while maintaining full control, flexibility and reliability. 3Tera also makes it easy for service providers to offer application stacks on demand by adding applications to the AppLogic catalog, where they can be deployed to a low-cost, shared cloud infrastructure. 3Tera’s customers include more than 80 enterprises and service providers globally, which use the cloud computing technology to provide services to thousands of users.
“CIOs can use cloud computing to build and manage a new type of IT ‘supply chain’ across today’s virtualized internal and external technology infrastructure,” said Chris O’Malley, executive vice president of CA’s Cloud Products & Solutions Business Line. “3Tera technology is a powerful addition to the total solution CA provides for optimizing these high-value supply chains—from the mainframe to the cloud.”
Rapid, Simplified Cloud Enablement
Using the intuitive GUI and drawing from a catalog of pre-configured virtual server and software components, AppLogic simplifies the design and deployment of composite applications as a single logical entity in the cloud. By unifying application configuration, application deployment, and a virtual server fabric—functions that are otherwise typically performed in a fragmented manner—AppLogic helps reduce costs, improve productivity and increase service quality.
“3Tera eliminates the manual, error-prone tasks that have historically hampered an organization’s ability to deploy IT services to the cloud,” said Barry X Lynn, CEO of 3Tera. “As part of CA, we can bring rapid and simple cloud enablement to a dramatically larger group of customers, leveraging the thousands of CA sales, services and support professionals.”
In addition to AppLogic, 3Tera provides a cloud computing marketplace that allows software vendors to provide developers with production-ready cloud components and full applications that are available on a pay-as-you-go basis. This greatly facilitates exchanges of value between developers, service providers and customers.
Integration with Virtual and Physical Management Technologies
By streamlining cloud-based deployment of composite applications, 3Tera adds significant new capabilities alongside CA’s existing virtual and physical infrastructure management functionality—including that provided by CA Spectrum Automation Manager, the CA Service Assurance line of products, and the recently acquired assets of Cassatt and Oblicore.
CA plans to integrate AppLogic with these and other key technologies to provide customers with a comprehensive set of tools for delivering, managing and optimizing cloud computing as part of overall enterprise IT environment.  CA also plans to extend support of 3Tera, which currently operates on the Xen virtualization platform, to include both VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V™.
“AppLogic is a software platform that helps IT departments and service providers rapidly create and deploy cloud applications,” said Rachel Chalmers, research director at The 451 Group. “By adding this technology to its own strengths in IT management, CA is offering an intriguing value proposition to customers who want to both take advantage of the cloud’s adaptability and maintain rigorous control of the their virtual service delivery infrastructure.”
To learn more about CA and cloud computing, visit http://www.ca.com/cloud.

CA today announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately-held 3Tera. With 3Tera—which follows CA’s recent acquisitions of Cassatt, NetQoS and Oblicore—CA continues to aggressively expand its portfolio of solutions to manage cloud computing as part of an integrated information technology management program.

Terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

3Tera’s AppLogic offers an innovative solution for building cloud services and deploying complex enterprise-class applications to public and private clouds using an intuitive graphical user interface (GUI).

3Tera enables enterprises and service providers to provision, deploy and scale public and private cloud computing environments while maintaining full control, flexibility and reliability. 3Tera also makes it easy for service providers to offer application stacks on demand by adding applications to the AppLogic catalog, where they can be deployed to a low-cost, shared cloud infrastructure. 3Tera’s customers include more than 80 enterprises and service providers globally, which use the cloud computing technology to provide services to thousands of users.

Using the intuitive GUI and drawing from a catalog of pre-configured virtual server and software components, AppLogic simplifies the design and deployment of composite applications as a single logical entity in the cloud. By unifying application configuration, application deployment, and a virtual server fabric—functions that are otherwise typically performed in a fragmented manner—AppLogic helps reduce costs, improve productivity and increase service quality.

In addition to AppLogic, 3Tera provides a cloud computing marketplace that allows software vendors to provide developers with production-ready cloud components and full applications that are available on a pay-as-you-go basis. This greatly facilitates exchanges of value between developers, service providers and customers.

By streamlining cloud-based deployment of composite applications, 3Tera adds significant new capabilities alongside CA’s existing virtual and physical infrastructure management functionality—including that provided by CA Spectrum Automation Manager, the CA Service Assurance line of products, and the recently acquired assets of Cassatt and Oblicore.

CA plans to integrate AppLogic with these and other key technologies to provide customers with a comprehensive set of tools for delivering, managing and optimizing cloud computing as part of overall enterprise IT environment.  CA also plans to extend support of 3Tera, which currently operates on the Xen virtualization platform, to include both VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Abicloud announced 1.0.0, funding, and a new CEO for Abiquo

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Abiquo , the Open Source Cloud company from Barcelona, has been busy the last couple of weeks. Last week they announced two important milestones in their existence.

First of all a round of 1.5M euro Series A funding was announced
€1 million comes from Nauta Capital, another 441.000 Euro comes from Caja Navarra
and another 100.000 Euro comes from their new CEO, Pete Malcolm .

The bio of their new CEO, Pete Malcom reads as follows “Pete joined Abiquo in 2009 to boost the international expansion of the Company, thanks to his extensive experience in making companies with a strong technical profile successful. He is a British serial entrepreneur and technologist, best known as the Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Orchestria Corporation, which was acquired in January 2009 by CA Inc.. for an undisclosed sum. Previously, Pete was Benchmark Capital Europe’s first Entrepreneur In Residence, and prior to that, Senior Vice President of Business Management with CA. He is the inventor of more than 150 patents in the field of software.”

Abiquo lets us know that with this fresh money they will be able to strengthen the commercial efforts for their solutions on both national and international level.

Apart from the organizational updates Abiquo yesterday also announced the first formal release of abiCloud 1.0.0 together with this first formal release it has also changed it’s license from a
combination of the Mozilla Public License (MPL) and Common Public Attribution License (CAPL) to the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) Version 3.

The change of license was inspired by simplicity, the community is much more at ease with a familiar license such as the LGPL for everything then with a mixture of 2 lesser known licenses for different modules.

Diego Mariño co-founder and VP Community Solutions at Abiquo says that the change to LGPL gives the community greater flexibility ““the LGPL license keeps the Cloud open and keeps the organizations that promote it in the black. Proprietary software can use abiCloud as a component without losing the proprietary nature of that software.”

With a couple of big key european players integrating abiCloud in their cloud strategy abiquo is set for growth.

AbiCloud is sill vendor neutral, providing concurrent support of all major hypervisors, as well industry standards such as the Open Virtualization Format (OVF).

When asked how their product differentiates from the other open source cloud platform vendors there are two remarking features that stand out, they offer an impressive gui for their end users while not neglecting the skilled sysadmins by giving them a CLI that can connect with the API.

Secondly they claim really easy management of users, organisations , datacenter resources, virtual-datacenters and virtual apps. So easy that you can define a hierachy of resources and users rights in minutes .

AbiCloud 1.0.0 is available for immediate download at www.abicloud.org.

XN Suite

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Back in the early days Monitoring your Xen platforms was pretty simple xm top was pretty much all there was available. The folks over at xnCORE have release their management framework for Xen that is supposed to make administrating and monitoring Xen servers much easier.

Their xnCORE software suite for Open Source Xen server is a modular software which is available most common Linux distributions.

It has different modules :

  • Their xn-manage module combined with xn-web provide you a facility for managing your vserver online.
  • The xn-mem module is a memory distributor to your Xen vservers. Using xn-mem you can to overcommit the memory of your physical server
  • The xn-mon module creates graphical statistics on a virtual server’s usage, in these statistics you can see
    Vserver runtime, Current memory assignment, amount of assigned processors , processor usage, load averages, disk io opertions etc all in different intervals

  • The xn-traff module will as you might already expect monitor the network traffic of your virtual network servers

It is all tied together in their PHP based web application xn-web

If you want to take a look, the software is availble for download from their download center

OpenNode

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Estonia’s latest Virtualization product is called OpenNode

OpenNode is a CentOS based opensource server virtualization solution , providing the users an easy method to do bare-metal installations supporting both OpenVZ container based virtualization and KVM full virtualization technologies on the same physical host.

The first public preview of their OpenNode technology is available from sourceforge , and a central management framework for multiple OpenNode servers is under development. In the planning are an AJAX based web management framework and a CLI management interface based on func. (Fedora Unifeid Network Controller)

OpenNode is a respin of CentOS, providing a customized CentOS installer which has a couple of special features.OpenNode provides the end user with an easyh to use automated LVM setup, it installs a minimal number of packages that are needed for out of the boxox openvz and KVM support. OpenNode is based on a stable RHEL5 2.6.18 series kernel provided by the OpenVZ project on which they added also support for KVM .
It has automated bridge networking setup for both KVM and OpenVZ veth interfaces.

Their plan is to bridge the gap that Fedora / Redhat leaves because they aren’t supporting openvz while following CentOS as close as possible upstream apart from applying the OpenVZ patches.

OpenNode has been developed by Active Systems from Estonia, who will provide paid support and development for OpenNode.

Oracle VM Manager , the book Review

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Late 2009 the nice folks over at Packt Publishing sent me the book on Oracle VM Manager by Tarry Singh. Some people say that a technology only becomes relevant when there are books being published about it, so for Oracle VM Manager Tarry’s book marked that milestone.

Tarry did a very nice job writing an introductory book on Oracle VM Manager , He splits the book in 2 big parts, Deploying Oracle VM Manager , and using it. After a good introduction on Virtualization he uses the bigger part of the first 100 pages of the book details the concepts behind Oracle VM Manager and it’s different setups, he clearly documents the different components , Oracle VM Manager, VM Server and VM Agent.
The first three chapters cover the installation of both the Oracle VM Manager and Oracle VM server, all pretty straight forward with a lot of scree
nshots.

The second part of the book is more interresting , it document the deployment of Virtual machines based on the different available options Oracle V
M server has available , how to manage VM server pools and how to create and manage HA setups with this framework.

Tarry saves the best for last ,the last chapter on troubleshooting and gotchas is where the reader will turn to when he runs into problems with his setup , together with the Command Line Tools appendix this is probably the part of the book that will be reused after you have read it once .

Oracle DBA’s that are new to Oracle VM and Xen in general might want to have this book on their shelve.