Robin Wauters

ScaleMP, a provider of virtualization solutions for high-end computing, today announced an addition to its vSMP Foundation product line, vSMP Foundation for Cloud.

The new solution enables dynamic, on-the-fly aggregation of x86 servers into larger SMP virtual systems. Based on the award-winning vSMP Foundation product line, vSMP Foundation for Cloud enables the provisioning and re-provisioning of large virtual-machine resources within existing cloud infrastructure — creating true cloud elasticity and drastically cutting costs.

vSMP Foundation for Cloud offers flexible, on-demand creation of virtual machines on a per job, per project or per customer basis. The solution eliminates the need to deploy dedicated end-of-the-aisle shared memory systems, allowing for real-time deployment of virtual large memory systems aggregated from cloud resources and redeployment back to the compute grid upon completion of application or batch jobs.

Key features of vSMP Foundation for Cloud:

• On-demand provisioning and re-provisioning of SMP systems for cloud infrastructure leveraging existing provisioning infrastructure
• Seamless integration with systems management and provisioning tools
• Support for any programming model (serial, throughput, multi-threaded or large-memory) without machine boundary
• Aggregation of up to 16 x86 servers to create virtual SMP with up to 128 cores and 4 TB of main memory utilizing Intel’s latest generation of Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series (codenamed Nehalem)

vSMP Foundation for Cloud is currently available in beta, and will be generally available on December 1, 2009.

Red Hat yesterday announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers, the newest product set in the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers is designed to enable pervasive adoption of virtualization, with a comprehensive end-to-end solution combining a standalone hypervisor and powerful virtualization management.

In February 2009, Red Hat announced plans to deliver the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization portfolio, building on its leading Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating system platform, offering the proven security, performance, scalability and cost advantages of open source virtualization technology.  Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers entered a worldwide beta in June 2009. Extensive collaboration with large enterprise beta customers, such as Comviva, Host Europe, NTT Communications, Qualcomm and Swisscom, resulted in enhanced product capabilities designed to meet enterprise requirements for deploying and managing heterogeneous virtualization and cloud environments.

In September 2009, Red Hat delivered the foundation of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization with Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, which offers next-generation Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization technology.

Today, Red Hat delivers the next phase of the portfolio with the availability of Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Servers, which includes the following components:

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor:
A standalone, lightweight, high-performance hypervisor designed to host Linux and Microsoft Windows virtual servers and desktops. It provides a solid virtualization foundation for cloud deployments and other highly dynamic IT environments. Using KVM technology, the hypervisor provides high performance and security coupled with memory sharing technology, which permits more efficient guest consolidation, and enterprise features such as live migration.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager for Servers:
A platform for configuring, provisioning, managing and organizing virtualized Linux and Microsoft Windows servers.  It is designed for customers who seek to reduce the cost, complexity and time required to manage large-scale virtualization deployments. With a rich set of management capabilities and powerful search and grouping features, Virtualization Manager equips customers with the ability to efficiently control a virtualized infrastructure.

Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization for Desktops remains in private beta today and is expected to be made generally available in early 2010.

Parallels today announced the availability of Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac.

This is the latest version of the number 1 Mac system utility, currently enabling more than 2 million users to run Windows, Linux and other operating systems side-by-side with Mac OS X.

According to performance research conducted by Crimson Consulting Group, Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac performs 22% faster than the nearest Windows-on-Mac competitor in standard productivity testing of Windows 7 64-bit on a MacBook Pro. In addition, version 5 is up to 300% faster for virtual machine operations than the previous version. For 3D and graphics performance, tested under the industry standard 3Dmark 2006 Professional test suite the new version performs up to 7 times better.

Users can test this for themselves with a free trial from www.parallels.com/desktop.

There are more than 70 new features in Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac, many of which give users the flexibility to work in the way they want. Users can choose how much or little Windows they want to see, from running Windows in Full Screen mode where Windows completely covers the Mac user interface to the new Crystal view mode which makes Windows completely disappear. Users can even get a Mac-like experience in their Windows applications, using the intuitive Apple Trackpad Gestures technology to pinch, swipe, and rotate as they do in Mac applications.

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac introduces more than 70 new features and enhancements:

• Full support for Aero in Windows Vista and 7 through Windows WDDM driver, including Aero Flip 3D
• Virtual machine size automatically optimized for best performance with Parallels Compressor
• Improved performance for Linux guest OS from KVM paravirtualization

• A more Mac-like experience in their Windows applications through Apple Trackpad Gestures technology (pinch, swipe, rotate and more), horizontal scrolling and the application of Full Screen active corners and curl page effect
• Copy & Paste fidelity for formatted text and complete layouts including images, even between Windows and Linux guest OSs
• Freedom and flexibility to run Windows and Mac applications across multiple monitors

• 7 times better graphic performance for games and 3D applications than the previous version with Direct X 9Ex with Shader Model 3 and OpenGL 2.1 support
• Superior graphics performance for Linux guests through OpenGL 2.1 support
• Full hardware resources can be utilized with support for 8 virtual CPUs, 64 bit Windows and Snow Leopard Server 64 bit
• Easily move PCs (including Windows 7) and 3^rd party virtual machines to the Mac  with the enhanced Parallels Transporter

Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac is available in English, German, French, Italian and Spanish starting today- Additional localized versions will soon be available in Chinese, Czech, Hungarian, Japanese, Polish and Russian in the coming weeks

The standard retail price (SRP) of Parallels Desktop 5 for Mac is $79.99, including $175 worth of additional software for free: Parallels Internet Security 2009 by Kaspersky (1 year subscription); Acronis Disk Director Suite 10.0 (Disk Management); Acronis True Image 11 Home (Backup and Recovery Solutions). Current Parallels Desktop users can upgrade their existing software for $49.99. Users that purchased version 4.0 on or after October 1^st 2009 qualify with a proof of purchase for a free upgrade to version 5.

Wyse today announced an alliance with NetSupport for its NetSupport School software, the class leading software solution that provides teachers with the ability to instruct, monitor and interact with their students.

By integrating NetSupport School, Wyse’s desktop provisioning software and energy efficient zero clients, educational institutions are able to deploy more effective Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) infrastructures for learning and teaching.  Wyse and NetSupport will work together to deliver the most optimized ICT environment for primary and secondary schools, as well as universities and colleges.

Wyse thin computing software and devices are in use today by thousands of schools, colleges and universities worldwide.  The company’s Wyse WSM provisioning software delivers a computer infrastructure that provides a reliable experience to teachers, an engaging experience for students, while still offering the same functionality as traditional PCs.  From an ICT support point of view, Wyse WSM provides classroom computers that are automatically updated and maintained centrally and supports all of the latest curriculum software including multimedia applications and peripherals such as whiteboards, webcams and projectors.

When combined with Wyse desktop or mobile zero client devices, education institutions can create a more efficient learning environment and not just in terms of teaching, but also in regards to energy consumption and noise levels. With no moving parts, zero clients are silent in operation and with a typical energy consumption of 7-15 watts, they use as little as 10% of the energy consumed by a regular PC. The lower energy use also results in lower heat emissions keeping classrooms cooler.

NetSupport School classroom management software helps teachers keep students on task and focused on the applications and content relevant to the area they are studying. Teachers and Technicians have access to dedicated consoles that allows them to monitor students’ computers or terminals and both deliver classroom instruction and control student activity. Through the software teachers can deliver rich multimedia presentations, show their screen to all students, control Internet, application and printer usage as well as deliver instant surveys and full interactive testing. The latest version of NetSupport School also provides full Audio Monitoring and Language lab functionality as well as new electronic journals for each student, providing a full record of all activity undertaken during the class.

3Leaf Systems today marked a significant milestone as it announced a disruptive set of technologies that enable the “Dynamic Data Center”.

The company launched the x86-based Dynamic Data Center – Server for the AMD Opteron family of processors and outlined plans for supporting the Intel QPI 1.1 interconnect beginning with the Sandy Bridge processors. With an innovative product portfolio, world-class partners, and strong financial backing, 3Leaf Systems is helping original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and enterprises to exploit industry standards in brand new markets and make data center infrastructures more agile and scalable while dramatically reducing both capital and operational costs.

3Leaf Systems technologies will enable enterprises to treat x86 servers as building blocks and coalesce them into contiguous pools of CPU, memory, and storage that can span across multiple physical machines and be allocated or de-allocated as needed. This will enable customers to build dynamic “systems” of any configuration, and flexibly push and pull specified resources across silos on-the-fly and without rebooting.

In the dynamic world of cloud computing, flexibility and agility are essential for increasing revenue, maximizing return on investment, and delivering against service-level agreements. 3Leaf Systems technologies enable the deployment of a massively-scalable cloud infrastructure based on cost-optimized building blocks while also enabling service providers to defragment and thus monetize unused server capacity.

Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) are seeking innovative ways to differentiate offerings while keeping R&D costs at bay and addressing new markets such as cloud computing, data warehousing and data mining, high-performance computing, and social media. By integrating 3Leaf Systems technologies, OEMs can expand their offerings, tap into new market opportunities or fill a current product gap. In the process, they are able to achieve significantly lower costs, faster time-to-market, and the possibility to serve both the Intel and AMD x86 markets.

In addition to the traditional enterprise, eCommerce and social media companies, 3Leaf Systems technologies are also revitalizing the High-Performance Computing community. HPC customers today face challenges in flexibility, cost management, software optimization time, and realized performance as a fraction of peak speeds. 3Leaf Systems Dynamic Data CenterServer™ brings back to the HPC community powerful shared memory systems, but with the industry-standard hardware and software that are critical customer requirements.

The 3Leaf Systems technology is ideal for Multi-Disciplinary Science since it can be used simultaneously as both a distributed memory cluster and a shared memory system. Customers can run existing or even old applications and achieve higher productivity when creating new parallel applications. At the same time, they can take better advantage of their investment in memory (sometimes more than 50 percent of the system cost) by minimizing unnecessary data replication and eliminating memory waste. Such a “distributed-and-shared” system architecture also minimizes system management costs by providing a single management image.

3Leaf Systems is committed to working with global technology leaders to drive a common vision for the dynamic data center. Working with AMD, LSI, and Intel has been essential for the company’s progress and its ability to support 100 percent of the x86 industry-standard server market.