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

Robin Wauters

3Tera To Debut AppStore, A Marketplace For Cloud Components

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3Tera has announced the introduction of the 3Tera AppStore, a marketplace for cloud components where enterprise users, software vendors and datacenter experts can exchange production-ready, scalable and highly available cloud components on a pay-per-use basis.

3Tera’s AppStore is a globally available portal offering enterprise-class, supported software stacks, packaged for use in public, private and hybrid AppLogic cloud deployments. The AppStore catalog spans all types of datacenter infrastructure elements and complete applications, from networking components (such as load balancers, firewalls, routers, traffic managers, content switches), server components (such as Web servers, directory servers, databases, application servers) and storage solutions, as well as application software stacks, management and monitoring tools.

Users of the 3Tera AppStore can find pre-configured, ready-to-use appliances to add to their 3Tera AppLogic catalogs provided by trusted software vendors. Many are free or offered on a trial basis, while others are offered on a pay-per-use basis. For ISVs, the AppStore provides a way to publish and distribute enterprise-class, production ready, cloud components and generate revenue every time users run them in public or private clouds powered by AppLogic. Datacenter architects and consultants can package and publish complete application infrastructures to the AppStore that are ready to run, complete with value-added capabilities such as clustered solutions, high-availability, disaster recovery, on-demand scalability or automated backups and security.

Initial AppStore partners include CohesiveFT, GlobalLogic, Layer 7 Technologies, SOASTA, Tap In Systems, and Zeus Technology.

3Tera is working with established infrastructure and software vendors to populate the AppStore catalog of available appliances. The Beta version of the 3Tera AppStore will go live in Q3 2009.

Xen 3.4 Released

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Xen.org is pleased to announce the latest release of the Xen hypervisor (3.4), which is is referring to as “the open source industry standard for virtualization”.

From the blog post:

“As part of the Xen community’s commitment to continuous improvement, the new hypervisor offers significant enhancements in the following areas:

•    Xen Client Initiative (XCI) Enhancements –Xen.org continues develop industry virtualization standards for desktop and client devices. Xen 3.4 contains the initial XCI code release providing a base client hypervisor for the community to extend and improve. This new version of the Xen hypervisor expands the hardware options for the leading open source virtualization platform.

•    Reliability – Availability – Serviceability (RAS) – In addition, Xen now delivers a collection of features designed to avoid and detect system failures, provide maximum uptime by isolating system faults, and provide system failure notices to administrators to properly service the hardware/software. The combination of these services provide for a robust Xen hypervisor with fault-tolerant and back-up capabilities built-in.

•    Power Management – Xen 3.4 improves the power saving features with a host of new algorithms to better manage the processor including schedulers and timers optimized for peak power savings.”

On average, Xen.org receives more than 750 new code submissions to the source tree each month from developers across the world working on an array of solutions within the hypervisor.

Exec Exodus At VMware: CIO Tayloe Stansbury And EMEA Marketing Director Reza Malekzadeh Split

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More and more high-profile VMware executives are leaving the company to start their own businesses or join other technology ventures. Virtualizatio.info brings us the news that both Tayloe Stansbury (former CIO) and Reza Malekzadeh (former Sr. Director, Products & Marketing, EMEA) have left the virtualization leader.

Stansbury is joining business service provider Intuit as CTO, while we don’t yet know which job Malekzadeh has accepted (or if he has already accepted another job for that matter) – his LinkedIn profile still shows his old role at VMware.

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Release: LiveTime’s 64 bit ITIL Service Management Virtual Appliance

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LiveTime Software, a leading provider of ITIL based Web 2.0 Service Management and Help Desk Software, today released version 5.5 of its highly integrated virtual appliance. The latest version of LiveTime’s JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) provides 64 bit native performance, Java 6, Apache Tomcat 6, Apache Web Server 2.2 and LiveTime 5.5. LiveTime’s virtual machine is available for all major virtualized environments such as VMWare, Sun Virtual Box and Citrix XenServer 5.0 and is also available in the Open Virtualization Format.

LiveTime’s JeOS is now production grade and recommended for all environments wishing to virtualize their service management solution. With 64 bit native performance and the ability to address more than 2GB of RAM, LiveTime can scale to any size organization. This version has been specifically optimized for SaaS provider networks and outsourced service providers using LiveTime in a muti-tenant environment. The appliance also includes support for symmetric multiprocessing for optimal performance across virtualized CPU’s.

LiveTime’s virtual appliance includes built-in debugging, configuration and management utilities. Simple guided menus provide easy access to networking, monitoring and general system utilities. The menu driven environment also supports automatic upgrades and SSL out of the box.

Organizations can now leverage LiveTime’s highly scalable ITIL Service Management software with the ease of installation of traditional software. The virtual appliance provides the necessary scalability and security that is difficult to achieve when deployed on existing hardware and operating systems. Since the system has been hardened at the operating system layer, LiveTime provides Just Enough Operating System for its needs. This makes the system easy to update and maintain and provides a very small footprint and a 170MB download.

Following Move To Acquire Sun, Oracle Buys Virtual Iron

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As had been rumored for quite a while, Oracle has now agreed to acquire Virtual Iron Software, a provider of server virtualization management software that enables dynamic resource and capacity management in virtualized data centers (we’ve covered the company quite a bit in the past).
This comes right off the heels of Oracle’s move to swallow Sun Microsystems.
The combination of Virtual Iron’s technology and Oracle VM’s server virtualization product is expected to provide more comprehensive and dynamic resource management across the full software stack. Customers are expected to benefit from better capacity utilization, streamlined virtual server configuration, and improved visibility and control of their enterprise software.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close this summer. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
“Industry trends are driving demand for virtualization as a way to reduce operating expenses and support green IT strategies without sacrificing quality of service,” said Wim Coekaerts, Oracle Vice President of Linux and Virtualization Engineering. “With the addition of Virtual Iron, Oracle expects to enable customers to more dynamically manage their server capacity and optimize their power consumption. The acquisition is consistent with Oracle’s strategy to provide comprehensive enterprise software management and will facilitate more efficient management of application service levels.”
(Source: ZDnet)

Michael Torto Appointed New CEO Of rPath

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rPath today announced that Michael Torto has been appointed CEO, positioning the company for growth in solutions for automating deployment and maintenance of complex applications across traditional, virtual and cloud-based environments.

“Enterprises have demonstrated strong interest in rPath technology for addressing the growing cost and complexity of application delivery,” said Tim Buckley, executive chairman of the board for rPath. “Mike has the ideal skill set and personal attributes to accelerate rPath’s growth as we harvest our deep R&D and market development investments to build a scalable business to serve enterprise markets. We’re very pleased to have Mike leading the next phase of our growth.”

Torto takes the CEO position as rPath continues its campaign to reform application delivery and system management, which typically remain time- and cost-intensive manual processes. rPath dramatically reduces the time, cost and risk of enterprise application delivery by automating the packaging, deployment, and maintenance of applications as complete and self-contained systems that are ready to run and manage in any traditional, virtual or cloud-based environment.

Prior to joining rPath, Torto served as president and CEO of Centive, a leader in incentive management software, where he led the company’s growth and expansion into global markets and through its acquisition by Xactly Corp. earlier this year. Before joining Centive, Torto was president and CEO of InCert Software, successfully transitioning the company from a start-up to a leading software provider. Before InCert, Torto served as president and CEO at Swan International, Inc., a provider of application delivery and self-healing software, which he led to a successful IPO on the European EASDAQ in April of 1999.

Mike Torto’s complete bio can be found at http://www.rpath.com/corp/about-us/management#torto.