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

Robin Wauters

Catbird Debuts VMShield 2.0 With V-Tracker

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Catbird today announced the immediate availability of VMShield 2.0 with V-Tracker.

VMShield 2.0 leapfrogs legacy virtual firewall technology to enforce compliance and policy of both network and VM state, regardless of location or movement of VMs. With V-Tracker, VMShield 2.0 combines proven virtual machine tracking capabilities with in-depth monitoring of suspect activity on the network itself; preserves policies across hosts, clusters and vendor platforms; and automatically blocks out-of-policy or compromised VMs from breaching data center security.

VMShield 2.0 with V-Tracker is the latest innovation in Catbird’s comprehensive line of cross-platform, non-invasive security solutions for virtual and physical networks. Catbird’s encyclopedic Virtual Infrastructure Security Engine (VISE) correlates hundreds of machine attributes with access control, network segmentation, vulnerability and IDP security events for both virtual and physical machines, across multiple clusters and data centers, to deliver broad asset awareness and defense-in-depth.

Moreover, VMShield’s internal or external cloud-based platform with stateless monitoring enables unprecedented visibility and control to track virtual machines across clusters and detect and thwart potential security and policy violations before they escalate to a breach.

Catbird V-Tracker uniquely fingerprints each VM it tracks, even through virtual machine mobility. In combination with Catbird’s ground-breaking TrustZones policy enforcer, these machines stay monitored and protected via the Catbird Control Center, validating and enforcing policies for all VMs within a given TrustZone. Catbird’s automated quarantine mechanism instantly shuts down non-compliant virtual machines. The architecture is designed with maximum flexibility and portability to allow for cross-host and cross-platform coverage and ease of use.

VMShield 2.0 delivers a highly-correlated approach to virtualization security, a key capability for TrustZone enforcement and data protection. At its heart is the Catbird VISE, enabling intelligence and protection not possible with simple virtual firewall technology and which goes well beyond simple segmentation and ACLs.

VMShield 2.0 with V-Tracker utilizes hypervisor APIs to be VM aware and is also designed for compatibility with Citrix Xenserver and Microsoft Hyper-V.

Unlike conventional host-based solutions, stateful appliances and proprietary hardware solutions, VMShield 2.0 leverages Catbird’s fully SOA and cloud-based stateless architecture and is 100% plug-and-play, web-enabled, and architected to have minimal impact on the virtual environment itself. VMShield 2.0 is available as part of Catbird’s flagship V-Security 2.0. The company is a VMSafe partner.

VirtualLogix Releases VLX Solution for Intel Atom Processor Z530 for Embedded Applications

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VirtualLogix today announced the release of its VLX virtualization software solution for the Intel Atom processor Z530 platform for embedded applications. VLX enables faster, more secure integration of the Intel platform into connected embedded device designs such as in-vehicle infotainment systems and industrial automation and control applications.Support of the Intel Atom processor Z530 on VLX software will enable Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) to:

  • Leverage the optimized low power technology and performance advancements of the processor without the operational and cost constraints associated with migration;
  • Convert and converge multiple OS environments on a common platform, reducing Bill of Materials;
  • Securely isolate the mission-critical execution domains from the less trustworthy ones; and
  • Innovate while meeting tight time-to-market deadlines, maintaining a flexible and scalable infrastructure that allows them to continue to evolve during this lifecycle without sacrificing performance or trust.

With the promise of a rapidly expanding ecosystem of mobile and connected applications once only available on the desktop, a number of fast-growing market segments are adopting embedded Internet devices. Viewing this market as an opportunity of greater than $10 billion by 2011, Intel predicts that an additional 15 billion devices will connect to the Internet by 2015.

Dell To Resell Reflex Systems’ Virtual Management Center

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Reflex Systems, provider of virtualization management and security solutions, yesterday announced a global reseller agreement that authorizes Dell’s worldwide direct and channel sales forces to sell Reflex VMC (Virtual Management Center).

Reflex VMC is designed to provide customers with the essential management capabilities needed to effectively manage the complex, dynamic virtual environment, capitalize on the existing virtualization investment, reduce cost through efficient management, minimize downtime and maintain a reliable virtualized infrastructure running critical business-line applications. The solution boasts innovative performance management features including discovery and mapping, configuration change monitoring, application and services discovery and monitoring, virtual network security, and reporting.

Reflex VMC is available for purchase now through authorized channel partners including Dell.

Lifeboat Distribution Offers Fresh Virtualization Solution Bundle, Courtesy Of DataCore and Virtual Iron

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DataCore and Virtual Iron today announced that distributor Lifeboat Distribution has unveiled a new promotion for their resellers when they purchase DataCore and Virtual Iron licenses together. Lifeboat will provide their resellers with additional margin and marketing support for selling the new bundle. Lifeboat Distribution is an international specialty software distributor for virtualization and other technically sophisticated products.

Services and solutions provider TelosIT already delivers solutions that combine DataCore with Virtual Iron. “Lifeboat’s decision to offer additional margin for using DataCore in conjunction with Virtual Iron is something we will leverage,” said Kevin Carlson, CTO, TelosIT. “This represents a very cost-effective option for resellers and the resellers taking advantage of this opportunity will soon see just what high performance solutions are possible when combining these two robust offerings.”

TelosIT has already enabled Matrix Design Group, an interdisciplinary firm providing professional engineering consulting to expand capacity and achieve dual-site data redundancy, while saving tens of thousands on lease renewals on its previous generation SAN with DataCore and Virtual Iron.

“With DataCore and Virtual Iron in place both administration and management were simplified greatly and I was able to further reduce my IT spending,” said Eric W. Smith, vice president, Matrix Design Group.

Oracle Releases Enterprise Manager 10g Release 5

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Oracle announced today its new management capabilities for Oracle VM through the release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Release 5 (10gR5).  With the new Oracle VM Management Pack, Oracle Enterprise Manager 10gR5 provides a comprehensive management solution that spans the entire lifecycle of applications and their virtual infrastructure.  The Oracle VM Management Pack helps customers accelerate the adoption of virtualization, enabling them to optimize IT resources, improve hardware utilization, streamline IT processes, and reduce costs – without adding the complexity and cost associated with multiple management tools. Customers can now manage both physical and virtual environments with a comprehensive top-down approach that provides a unique business perspective, enabling the understanding of user experiences and the business impact of IT issues, in addition to offering the best tools to manage each component in the stack individually.

Highlights of the New Oracle VM Management Pack

  • Manage virtual environments with an application perspective – allows customers to quickly diagnose whether the root cause of a problem is in an application component, in a virtual resource, or in a physical resource; enabling efficient consolidation and optimization of data center resources through virtualization.
  • Built-in configuration management – enables administrators to easily track application relationships and analyze configuration changes.
  • Policy-based management – helps reduce the on-going costs of IT compliance with the ability to define company specific policies for virtualization, to enforce configuration best practices and help achieve regulatory compliance.
  • Automated deployment – automates software deployment through Oracle VM Templates for packaged applications, middleware, database, and Oracle Enterprise Linux.
    • ISVs can now streamline deployment of their products and services for virtual environments by providing predefined templates.
  • Lifecycle automation – spanning test, deployment, patching and maintenance capabilities, including automated patching of operating systems and Oracle software running inside the guest virtual machines and live migration of guest virtual machines to other servers during server maintenance windows. This helps maximize return on investment in a virtualized environment, through simplified management across the application lifecycle.
  • High availability for virtual infrastructure – provides enterprise-class capabilities such as server pooling, automatic load balancing and server failover, helping to ensure business continuity in the virtual environment, usually associated with traditional high-cost physical servers.

Hyperformix Snags $3.8 Million More to Spur Growth in Virtualization Capacity Planning

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Hyperformix, provider of solutions for IT capacity and performance, today announced that it has secured a new round of equity and debt funding totaling $3.8 million. The funding will be used to drive accelerated growth and market penetration for its solutions aimed at the virtualization market. New investor LTI joins existing investors M/C Venture Partners and Morgan Stanley Venture Partners for the round.

Hyperformix will use the funds to expand engineering, marketing and sales of its IT capacity and performance solutions for virtualized environments.

The increasing importance of virtualization management in large scale IT shops has revitalized the market for IT capacity planning. According to Peter Klante, Hyperformix President and CEO, this funding will allow Hyperformix to solidify and accelerate its leadership position in this new and exciting market.

Hyperformix software’s advanced techniques produce accurate predictions of performance and capacity of key applications and deliver actionable insights through compelling interactive dashboards. Hyperformix can automatically assess the current health of IT systems and predict near- and long-term capacity and performance issues. Hyperformix solutions can be used in planning phases for IT changes, in test environments and to manage production environments.