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News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Robin Wauters

Release: Virtual Computer NxTop 1.1 (Introducing System Workbench)

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Virtual Computer today announced the availability of NxTop 1.1.

Since it was first released for sale in April 2009, NxTop has differentiated itself with its ability to deploy a single, centrally managed Windows desktop environment to all users while maintaining user-specific personalization on each PC. Release 1.1 brings further innovation in this area by introducing System Workbench.

This new element of NxTop’s management system employs file system layering to isolate elements of the system to improve backup performance, retain end-user installed programs and settings and provide desktop IT managers with tools to manipulate the file system and registry. NxTop 1.1 is available immediately through the company’s NxTop Now! program which provides early adopters access to the product prior to general availability.

Since its inception, NxTop has allowed IT administrators to build a single, Windows virtual image that can be shared across their entire organization. Updates to this shared image are performed centrally on the NxTop Center management console. At boot time, NxTop presents a Windows desktop to the end-user that is a composite of the latest shared system image, user-specific profiles and settings, and any non-permanent PC data such as caches and index files.

With System Workbench, IT administrators can now control which aspects of their “gold” operating system image may be customized and retained by the end-user. Through a policy-based interface with a simple XML-based authoring language, System Workbench provides powerful new capabilities, such as:

  • A framework for whitelisting applications that can be installed into a shared image by an end-user into a persistent layer that survives a self-cleaning reboot or IT-generated system update.
  • Granular, policy-based control to map files and directories onto different layers of the virtual file system. This allows, for example, the ability to exclude large but non-essential user files such as Outlook OST cache files and Windows index files from being included in NxTop’s automated user data backups. It also allows the system to retain customized user settings for poorly designed programs that store such information in system folders instead of the user’s profile area.
  • Manipulation of programs, data files and settings for system features such as offline folders, file sharing, and antivirus databases to survive patching of shared operating system images.

In addition to System Workbench, the NxTop 1.1 release includes:

  • NxTop Engine performance enhancements, including near-native network speed via paravirtualised networking.
  • Simplified Microsoft Active Directory configuration and testing, easing integration into Microsoft environments.
  • Enhanced user backup capabilities, including optimized data transfer, management of restore points, and compression of virtual hard disks to improve performance and disk utilization.
  • Improved wireless support, including WPA/WPA2 Personal across all major wireless chip sets.
  • Improved scalability and performance in NxTop Center, including background task processing and a 50 percent reduction in image preparation time.

ASG Debuts New Virtualization Management Solution, Aims To Eliminate Virtual Sprawl

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ASG Software Solutions, the originator of ASG’s Business Service Portfolio (BSP), today announced the immediate availability of ASG’s BSP Virtualization Management, a new solution that monitors the real-time performance, health, and efficiency of both virtual and physical IT environments.

Today, businesses are hastily deploying virtual machines (VMs) throughout their enterprises to achieve cost benefits and performance improvements. However, the difficulty in tracking and monitoring the performance of rapidly propagating VMs across the enterprise has resulted in few organizations realizing the long-term cost savings and IT performance benefits of virtualization. This lack of insight into VMs, coupled with a growing and more complex IT systems infrastructure, intensifies the need for both physical and virtual environments to be monitored, managed, and coordinated to maximize IT performance and efficiency across the enterprise.

By providing complete visibility of all virtual and physical environments in a unified dashboard view, ASG’s BSP Virtualization Management allows organizations to continuously monitor the health of their entire infrastructure in real time. Using the solution, IT Operations directors can discover and map application dependencies between virtual systems and the underlying physical infrastructure, which, in turn, enables them to identify and eliminate areas of actual or potential virtual machine sprawl.

ASG’s BSP Virtualization Management

  • Optimizes the three key phases in the virtualization lifecycle
  • Capacity planning: Equips organizations to virtualize physical systems by logically discovering, mapping, and assessing the current IT environment
  • Real-time performance monitoring: Enables the optimization of both physical and virtual systems at all times using a single solution
  • Asset planning: Recognizes system resources to properly assess retirement of physical servers and unneeded VMs to reduce sprawl while maximizing data center efficiency
  • Offers immediate root cause analysis of problems, bottlenecks, and trending to optimize the performance of physical and virtual systems
  • Regularly generates on-demand reports, a central feature of all ASG’s Level 2 BSP solutions, and addresses performance issues for incidents, uptime, saturation, and utilization
  • The flexible and scalable solution is classified as a Level 2 solution in ASG’s Path to Optimization, a program designed to help IT executives leverage their current IT investments, complemented by ASG’s BSP solutions and best practices, to progress towards improved IT service delivery and proactive Business Service Management (BSM).
  • ASG’s BSP Virtualization Management is offered both as a standalone solution and as a core component of ASG’s BSP Enterprise Performance Management, which monitors the entire IT environment, including mainframe, distributed, and virtualized systems, databases, and applications.

Lenovo’s Latest Servers Well Suited For Virtualization

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Lenovo today announced its latest line of servers, the ThinkServer TD200 and TD200x tower servers as well as the RD210 and RD220 rack servers. The new servers offer small to mid-sized businesses the latest in performance with several choices of Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors and vastly expanded memory and storage. These ThinkServers are also equipped for virtualization and several power saving features to help customers cut their energy usage without sacrificing performance.Equipped with the latest Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors, the new ThinkServers are up to three times faster than their predecessors. With high-speed DDR3 memory up to 128GB, the latest models offer more memory than previous Lenovo servers. These highly scalable, dual processor servers also offer increased storage capacity with up to 12 hard drive bays in the rack models and up to 16 in the tower models.

Lenovo’s new ThinkServers are virtualization-ready and are equipped with several time and cost saving features that help customers seamlessly transition to a virtual environment. The latest ThinkServers come with an onboard connector for an embedded hypervisor. With the expanded memory and storage capacity on the new models, customers can consolidate several legacy servers onto a single new ThinkServer to save on hardware costs and energy usage while boosting their return on investment. Lenovo supports a variety of virtualization solutions from Microsoft, Novell, VMWare and Red Hat.

The ThinkServer TD200, TD200x, RD210 and RD220 are the most energy efficient servers from Lenovo yet, featuring low wattage processor and memory options, and small form factor hard drives. Select models are compliant with Energy Star for Servers 1.0, finalized in May 2009, which provides a 30 percent reduction in power usage compared with other x86 servers that do not meet the standard. In addition, the ThinkServers’ power supplies are more than 92 percent efficient, meaning more energy is translated into usable power.

The new ThinkServers come with the Integrated Management Module (IMM), which provides complete, “always-on,” out-of-band server management capabilities via an easy-to-use Web interface. With IMM, users can remotely access and manage their ThinkServer from anywhere, anytime, even if the server has crashed or is turned off.

Select models come with IMM Premium, giving users full control of their ThinkServer (including the mouse, keyboard and video) from remote locations, as well as the ability to connect local drives remotely to their ThinkServer through virtual media.

Servers are a critical IT mechanism at the heart of many businesses. That’s why Lenovo’s server solution provides total support for both hardware and software to help customers without IT departments quickly set up, update and manage their servers.

In addition to its standard warranty, Lenovo offers ThinkServer customers a 90-day trial of ThinkPlus Priority Support services so customers have the complete support they need during the critical first days after their server purchase. This provides services such as next business day warranty service, 24×7 hardware and software phone support as well as priority call routing to advanced technicians. For customers who need on-site hardware installation and online training, Lenovo also offers the ThinkPlus Productivity service plan.

The RD210 and RD220 are available immediately, and TD200 and TD200x will be available starting July 2009. The ThinkServer RD210, RD220 and TD200x are available worldwide through business partners and Lenovo sales representatives. The TD200 is available through Lenovo sales representatives for special bid. Pricing for the RD210 starts at approximately $1,699 and $2,199 for the RD220. The TD200x starts at approximately $2,699.

Andreessen, Horowitz Back Cloud Computing Startup WebappVM

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A new cloud computing startup funded and advised by legendary entrepreneurs turned investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz plans to help enterprise companies deploy and manage applications in the cloud. Other webappVM team members have experience at Cisco Systems, Tellme, and Juniper Networks, according to the company’s web site.

WebappVM is the name of the Redwood City company, and they’re building a “self-monitoring application cloud” for web applications that will provide enterprise-style app management capabilities to public and private clouds.

The company is backed by Shasta Ventures and Sierra Ventures as well as Andreessen and Horowitz, who recently raised $300 million to fund early-stage investments.

webappVM was previously known as OSS-1701, and was founded in May 2008 by CEO Issac Roth and CTO Tobias Kunze Briseño. Roth most recently worked as director of product management at the Wily Computing business of Computer Associates, while Briseno was a senior development manager at Lycos Europe.

Roth recently demonstrated webappVM’s technology at Sun’s CommunityOne event, describing it as “a special kind of virtual machine” that allows developers to build an app on a local machine, upload it to the cloud (in this case Sun’s OpenCloud) and immediately begin running the application with built-in management tools.

(Via Data Center Knowledge)

Phoenix Technologies Announces $13.05 Million Registered Direct Common Stock Offering

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Phoenix Technologies has entered into definitive purchase agreements with selected new and existing institutional investors to sell 5,800,000 shares of its common stock, at a price of $2.25 per share in a registered direct offering. Federated Kaufmann Fund was the lead investor in the offering.

The per share purchase price represents an approximate 22 percent discount to the three day volume-weighted average price of Phoenix’s common stock. The company expects to receive gross proceeds from the offering of $13.05 million and net proceeds of approximately $12.0 million, after deducting placement agent’s fees and other offering expenses.Phoenix intends to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes. The offering is expected to close on or about July 2, 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

The shares of common stock are being offered by the company pursuant to its existing shelf registration statement, which as amended, was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 26, 2009. A prospectus supplement describing the terms of the offering will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which forms a part of the effective Registration Statement.

Needham & Company, LLC served as exclusive placement agent for the offering. The shares of common stock may be offered only by means of a prospectus.