Virtualization.com

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

Robin Wauters

Connectria Adds Private Cloud Computing Offering

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Connectria Corporation, a global provider of hosting solutions, today announced that it has added Private Cloud Computing to its portfolio of managed services.

Connectria’s Private Cloud Computing is aimed at its traditional enterprise-class customers. Similar to typical Cloud Computing solutions, Private Clouds are intended to deliver the benefits of Cloud Computing, however the computing environment is fully dedicated for the sole use of a specific customer.

Connectria’s Private Cloud Computing will enable customers to specify a custom configuration of virtualization software, servers and storage from a multitude of vendors, along with a customized approach for delivering managed services to each customer.

Hyper9 Releases Andrew Kutz’ Virtualization Mobile Manager

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Hyper9 released yesterday a browser-based management and monitoring tool that allows Virtualization administrators to control their virtual infrastructures from a mobile device.

The Virtualization Mobile Manager (VMM), which was created by Andrew Kutz, a well-known developer in the VMware community, has been in beta for the last month, where hundreds of virtualization administrators have used the product in the field and provided positive feedback to Hyper9.

During the beta period, VMM demonstrated its ability to work with VMware Server 2, VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware vSphere 4, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer 5. The application will also work with almost any mobile device, including the Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android and Windows Mobile Devices.

VMM also offers the ability to monitor host and VM performance statistics (CPU, Memory), control VMs and take action on the go – start, stop, pause, reset and disable network – all of which were important features to the beta users. Hyper9 is doing its part to make VMM a compelling offering, by giving users the ability to manage up to five VMs for free as well as special introductory pricing of $199.00 for up to 1000 VMs.

Layer 7 Release SecureSpan Virtual Appliance For Cloud Governance

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Layer 7 Technologies today announced the availability of the Layer 7 SecureSpan Virtual Appliance for cloud governance. The Virtual Appliance offers all the features of the SecureSpan family of hardware appliances, including sophisticated runtime governance, agent-less SOA management and industry-leading XML security in a VMware or ESX-based soft appliance. The Layer 7 Virtual Appliance for cloud governance allows organizations to secure cloud-based interactions, monitor service level conformance and adapt to changing conditions and needs.

Traditionally, Layer 7 customers have deployed the SecureSpan Virtual Appliance as a budget-friendly alternative to hardware appliances. The SecureSpan Virtual Appliance for cloud governance incorporates the new Layer 7 Enterprise Service Manager (ESM), which is a lightweight method of centrally managing, tracking and measuring application services no matter where those services reside: in enterprise SOAs, as part of a Software-as-a-Service offering or in cloud (both public and private) initiatives. With the Virtual Appliance for cloud governance, Layer 7 customers can seamlessly reuse their existing, on-premise SOA governance solution for their cloud-based initiatives.

In addition to cloud governance, Layer 7 enables organizations to control, monitor and adapt application services in a variety of enterprise settings, including internal environments and between external domains (such as partners or branch offices). Only Layer 7’s highly automated and interoperable gateway solutions, available as hardware, software and virtual (VMware) appliances, are capable of holistically governing today’s complex and ever-changing ecosystem of application services, no matter where they reside.

Bluepoint Solutions Debuts Virtual Backup and Recovery Services

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Bluepoint Solutions, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing and electronic document management software technology for financial institutions, announced the availability of a cohesive Virtual Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution (Virtual BDR), designed to backup and virtualize multiple servers.

Bluepoint clients now have the capabilities of Virtual BDR to backup and restore information. According to a recent ICSA survey, U.S. businesses lose more than $12 billion per year because of data loss and 93 percent of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. If, for any reason, a file is lost or corrupt, the system archives the information, recovering the most current version of data just prior to a data loss event.

In addition to its on-site backup efforts, the system offers off-site backup storage as well. The encrypted data is stored simultaneously at two off-site data centers, so in the event of a system disaster, natural or manmade, a backup server can be shipped to an institution within one day to get you back up and running without having to wait for lengthy server replacements and complicated server restores.

Bluepoint’s offerings are fully monitored and managed 24/7 by its Network Operations Center. Daily verification tests are performed to maintain the integrity of the data. Bluepoint encrypts data before it leaves a server with an encryption key that only the institution controls. The data is encrypted again for its transfer over the Internet. Files are stored in encrypted form on multiple servers in high-security facilities. The data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption technology, which cannot be read without the corresponding keys, ensuring the highest level of security for the data.

Vizioncore Updates Virtualization Management and Optimization Solutions

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Vizioncore today announced the general release of updates to two of its key products: vOptimizer Pro 2.2, Vizioncore’s storage and VM optimization tool, and vFoglight 5.2.6, an updated version of the company’s popular performance monitoring solution.

Vizioncore vOptimizer Pro 2.2 brings the ability to scan an organization’s VMware vCenter Server and ESX Hosts in order to determine the amount of over-allocated virtual storage that exists unnoticed. According to industry analysts, as much as 90% of storage in virtual infrastructure may be unused because of over allocations at the initial point of provisioning. vOptimizer Pro helps reclaim storage from across the data center to help increase utilization, reduce costs and improve performance.

Key features of the vOptimizer Pro 2.2 include:

  • Infrastructure Scanning – Locating and determining the amount of unused virtual storage across the virtual infrastructure enables the customer to see exactly how much storage is being wasted. Furthermore, the product can estimate the total potential savings gained from reclaiming wasted storage and generate a report for use within the business
  • Broader OS Support – vOptimizer Pro now includes full support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows 2008 giving customers the ability to reduce or defer storage acquisition costs across even more environments
  • Enhanced Browsing – Improved ability to select virtual environment targets to be scanned, making an easier task of space reclamation
  • VMware vSphere 4 Support – vOptimizer Pro 2.2 supports VMware’s latest virtual infrastructure

vFoglight is expanding in the areas of capacity planning to help optimize resource utilization and chargeback to help IT recover infrastructure costs.

The new features of vFoglight 5.2.6 include:

  • Capacity Planning – Determining the required infrastructure resources needed to support organizational growth and change is among the greatest challenges for VM administrators. To help combat this challenge, a new capacity planning module, included with vFoglight Pro, builds on the “Migration Modeler” to allow “What If ..?” scenarios for moving VMs to or from actual or hypothetical physical servers.
  • Measured Resource Utilization (Chargeback) – For customers who meter for the use of infrastructure, vFoglight includes Measured Resource Utilization (MRU). MRU is based on measured consumption of IT resources in the infrastructure and can, for instance, help IT understand which user, group or application is using physical servers or VMs.

With vFoglight, administrators can view their entire infrastructure through detailed architectural representations and use out-of-the-box alerts and expert advice to detect, diagnose and resolve problems affecting performance and availability. vFoglight also allows administrators to plan, manage and optimize infrastructure capacity for improved performance and better resource utilization. And for organizations that seek to recover costs for the use of infrastructure, vFoglight supports leading chargeback models to track infrastructure usage and costs. Finally, vFoglight integrates with existing tools and monitoring frameworks already in place helping organizations leverage existing investments.

Trial versions of vOptimizer Pro 2.2 and vFoglight (available in Standard or Pro editions) are available to download free here.

BlueBackUp Goes Virtual With Backup Product For ESX Environments

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BlueBackUp, a subsidiary of Oodrive Technologies, is enriching its focus on big company needs by offering an outsourced backup solution for virtual VMware ESX environments.

Thanks to its VMware ESX plug-in coupled with “Delta Block” technology, BlueBackUp is today proposing a complete protection solution for VMware environments. This offers hot backup possibilities in respect of critical applications (databases, etc.) and restoring an entire machine as well as a single file.

Main Features of the BlueBackUp Solution for Virtualised Environments

– Complete protection of the ESX environment: backup of the ESX server
and all its virtual machines in their entirety – applications, set-ups,
and so on and so forth.

– Hot backup of virtual machines: applications no longer have to be
stopped in order to start the backup. So there’s no activity slowdown.

– Restore granularity: possibility of restoring a virtual machine in its
entirety (OS, settings,…) or individual files (Exchange database,
SQL,…).

– Delta Block technology: only the blocks within the files that have been
altered since the last backup are sent in an encrypted and compressed
format, which seriously limits the bandwidth requirements.

– Automatic delocalisation of the backups (and images) to BlueBackUp’s
external storage servers.

Advantages for Companies Working with VMware:

– Fewer risks of data loss, thanks to the automatic delocalisation of
their virtual machines to top-security data centres.

– Less down time following a data loss, thanks to the restore procedures’
granularity.

– Fewer resources used for backup tasks, thanks to the Delta Block
technology, which prevents any deceleration of virtual environment
performance.

With this protection solution for ESX virtual servers, combined with its exclusive restore tools, BlueBackUp is reinforcing its determination to focus on big company needs and is clearly positioned as the specialist in terms of complex environmental backup.