Virtualization.com

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

Robin Wauters

IBM Launches “Resilient Cloud Validation” Program

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IBM today said it would introduce a program to validate the resiliency of any company delivering applications or services to clients in the cloud environment. As a result, customers can quickly and easily identify trustworthy providers that have passed a rigorous evaluation, enabling them to more quickly and confidently reap the business benefits of cloud services.

Cloud computing is a model for network-delivered services, in which the user sees only the service and does not view the implementation or infrastructure required for its delivery. The success to date of cloud services like storage, data protection and enterprise applications, has created a large influx of new providers. However, unpredictable performance and some high-profile downtime and recovery events with newer cloud services have created a challenge for customers evaluating the move to cloud.
IBM’s new “Resilient Cloud Validation” program will allow businesses who collaborate with IBM on a rigorous, consistent and proven program of benchmarking and design validation to use the IBM logo: “Resilient Cloud” when marketing their services.
IBM has delivered remote technology services to clients for decades and has developed strict standards for service quality — from infrastructure design to process excellence. Through its new Resilient Cloud Validation program, IBM’s Business Continuity and Resiliency Services unit will build on its 40-year history of eliminating downtime in the most demanding business environments to help cloud service providers meet the highest standards of resiliency. In addition, IBM Research has developed end-to-end tools for assessment and discovery within a customer’s configuration, modeling, ROI analysis, optimization and migration to a highly virtualized cloud environment.
IBM announced today that Allscripts, a leader in delivering innovation technologies that improve the health of patients and the bottom line of physicians and other healthcare organizations, is the first company to begin the certification process. The designation is expected to enable Allscripts to enhance the current online data backup service it provides to better serve the needs of the 150,000 physicians who use the company’s electronic health records, e-prescribing and practice management solutions. Next Spring, Allscripts will release a new online backup service, powered by IBM, which will provide a simple, easy to deploy remote data protection service, helping to ensure that sensitive patient information and medical documentation will be encrypted, securely stored away from the customer location, and easily recovered at a moment’s notice.
IBM’s Business Continuity and Resiliency Services have 155 data centers around the globe, and offer a range of capabilities from advisory services to fully-managed resilient infrastructures. These teams are available today to evaluate current cloud architectures against resiliency best practices, identify, quantify, and prioritize gaps and risks, then provide the ongoing design assistance and management expertise to run more resilient infrastructures.
The IBM “Resilient Cloud” program will be available in early 2009.

Akorri Announces BalancePoint Plug-In For VMware vCenter

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Akorri has announced the availability of the BalancePoint Plug-In for VMware vCenter — a new capability sold with its BalancePoint software solution that allows VMware administrators to use BalancePoint directly from their VMware vCenter console, simplifying the management of virtualized environments.

“The BalancePoint Plug-In for VMware vCenter provides ‘single pane of glass’ management of a virtualized data center from within the vCenter console,” said Jeff Boles, senior analyst with the Taneja Group. “BalancePoint complements the element management aspects of vCenter by providing end-to-end performance management for all virtual and physical infrastructure components. This type of detailed insight goes well beyond basic utilization monitoring, and is absolutely critical to companies when they virtualize business-critical production applications.”

“We are excited to further our integration through our new Plug-In capability,” said Tom Joyce, president and CEO of Akorri. “Our goal is to simplify the management of heterogeneous virtualized server and storage environments. By adding this Plug-In we have taken an important step towards providing a unified management experience, which is essential for our VMware customers.”

VirtualLogix Now Supports All ARM Multicore Platforms

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VirtualLogix today announced support for all multicore platforms based on the ARM11 MPCore and ARM Cortex-A9 multicore processors in addition to the ARM Cortex-A8 processor. In aligning itself with the latest hardware advances in multicore, VirtualLogix is simplifying the adoption of industry-standard processors while paving the way for virtualization in mobile devices.

Virtualization enables developers to combine different execution environments into single core or multicore platforms, separating hardware management from the application support functions of operating systems. When combined with the security, software design flexibility and cost savings of virtualization, ARM multicore processors can assist developers in shrinking their development costs and time, leveraging unlimited processing power and responding faster to new market requirements.

During today’s ARM European Technical Conference, VLX will demonstrate multiple operating systems including a standard T-Kernel real-time operating system (RTOS) and several instances of Linux. VirtualLogix VLX enables the ARM11 MPCore to securely support multiple, concurrent operating system environments by virtualizing the system so that each OS believes it has control of the full platform. As a result, no immediate changes to OS applications are required. VirtualLogix VLX’s support of the ARM Cortex-A8 and ARM Cortex-A9 processors enables VirtualLogix customers to better support design flexibility, power management and high-performance while maintaining low costs.

VirtualLogix VLX with ARM support is available now.

Paessler Upgrades PRTG Network Monitor 7.0.9

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Paessler today announced an upgrade to its PRTG Network Monitor 7.0.9 that is intended to help IT systems and network administrators and the enterprises they serve keep their eyes on the virtualization prize – literally.

Network monitoring delivers essential information for planning and testing of virtualized environments. Using a solution such as PRTG Network Monitor offers valuable clues to expected long time demands of different enterprise applications. Furthermore, long term trends allow forecasts of expected performance peaks – precondition for adequate resource planning.

”PRTG delivers a real time monitoring without gap for the bandwidths and availability of the network the virtual systems are run at,” said Paessler. “The so achieved transparency is an important precondition to assure maximum performance and availability of the network and thus the virtualized servers and applications.”

In case of failures and disturbance IT systems and network administrators can react immediately and clear problems. Via analysis of long term monitoring data, weak spots can be discovered and the general performance of the network can be improved.

TechTargets Buys The Brian Madden Company

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In case you haven’t heard yet, congratulations are in order for The Brian Madden Company, as they’ve been acquired by TechTarget, the media company behind tech sites like IT Knowledge Exchange, NotebookReview.com and LabMice.net.

From Brian’s blog post:

First, my plan moving forward is to do the job I’ve been doing the past five-and-a-half years. I plan to blog, write, and speak about the application and desktop virtualization industry from a technical and independent standpoint. The great news is that by being part of TechTarget, I’ll be able to focus on this 100%. My life running The Brian Madden Company has been amazing, but running a small business is hard work. Really, really hard work. Over the years I was probably only able to spend half my time actually writing and doing my “day job.” The rest of my time was spent doing overhead BS tasks, like building and managing the website, setting up new advertisers in our banner ad system, rebooting servers, working with the accountants about taxes, and about 1,000 other things that required my time. All of this was critical, but none of it directly enhanced the value we bring to the community. That all changes by being part of TechTarget, and I think the most immediate change you’ll see is that I’ll be able to write a lot more than three articles per week.

As to whether I’ll “bolt,” all I can say is “no way!” I’ve been in this business too long to bolt now. I’ve been using Citrix for over ten years, and I think the next three-to-five years will be the most interesting yet. I didn’t come this far not to see this whole VDI thing through. But what about leaving TechTarget? Would I just sell to them and then leave? Again, no way! Working for TechTarget is my dream job–I get to keep the good parts of my old job–while other folks at TechTarget handle all the operational work that I wasn’t too interested in to begin with. Now I get to be a full-time blogger while someone else worries about keeping the lights on!

Regarding BriForum, we’re planning on having BriForum 09 in Chicago as planned. It will be the same BriForum as years past. The same community-led speaking process, the same independent focus, the same Geek Out game show, the same side-by-side video player, and the same DEMO Lab. The only difference is that I won’t have to personally print 500 name badges the night before, Gabe and I won’t have to manually enter all of the session info into our database, and I won’t personally have to lay out the Pocket Guide. Also, we’ll have a full-time sales department to help bring more products into the DEMO Lab and more attendees. And all of this means more technical content. Woo-hoo!

The same goes for BrianMadden.com. The website itself will stay the same. The URL will still be BrianMadden.com. Jon Brown (my new boss) put it best. “It’s like when Proctor & Gamble bought Gillette,” he said, “There are operational efficiencies on the back end, but people still buy the same Gillette products, and most of them don’t even notice Gillette’s not an independent company anymore.” TechTarget has won dozens of awards for editorial excellence and independence, and I’ll be able to write with exactly the same freedom that I’ve enjoyed the past five-and-a-half years on my own. This is absolutely critical to me, and something that Gabe and I really checked out before we moved forward with this deal. We talked to several the hundreds of TechTarget journalists, and we asked them point blank about whether they’d ever received pressure to change a story or to be nice to a certain vendor. And in every case, the journalists told us that they were able to write what they wanted, and if an advertiser got mad, that was too bad.

As I’ve alluded to a few times in this post, Gabe will also be part of TechTarget. His full-time job will be as a site editor for BrianMadden.com. Previously, Gabe spent probably 90% of his time at The Brian Madden Company doing overhead work–managing Exchange and our Blackberry server, making and editing DVDs for BriForum and our training class, backing up our servers, etc. All of that overhead work will go away, and you’ll see great technical articles (like this one) from him almost every day instead of just a few times per month.

The bottom line is that by being part of TechTarget, Gabe and I can focus on what we like to do most: writing for BrianMadden.com and hosting the best independent conference in the industry. This is the most exciting thing that’s happened for us since we’ve been part of The Brian Madden Company, and we’re eager to share that excitement with you. Just watch.

Lenovo Introduces Secure Managed Client

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Lenovo today announced Secure Managed Client (SMC), a storage-based desktop computing solution that can dramatically help businesses reduce IT costs and security risks by turning off hard drives and storing all data in a non-server remote location – all while offering users the flexibility and performance of a traditional desktop PC.

The SMC solution consists of a client, a hard drive-less ThinkCentre desktop PC Intel vPro technology, a Lenovo co-developed software stack and a centralized Lenovo Storage Array, powered by Intel.

SMC offers several significant benefits over current server-based computing options such as blade PCs, thin clients or desktop virtualization, most notably:

  • Preserves PC fidelity – SMC gives the end user a full Windows experience
  • Avoids IT complexity – SMC works with and enhances current IT process and tools
  • Safe and flexible investment – An SMC ThinkCentre can easily be converted back to a traditional desktop PC by re-enabling the hard drives
  • Energy efficient – An SMC ThinkCentre uses less energy than a traditional desktop PC
  • Security – Information from all desktops in an SMC fleet is stored in a safe, single location, significantly reducing the threat of on-site theft of data

Lenovo estimates that large enterprise customers in North America typically spend about $120 a month to fully manage a PC. This expense takes into account such things as deskside IT visits, call center support, and management costs. Lenovo further estimates that using the SMC solution can potentially reduce this expense to as low as $70 per PC.

The SMC solution is currently being offered on the ThinkCentre M57p1 desktop PC, and can also be offered on the ThinkCentre M58p2 in early 2009. The recently launched M58p is the greenest, most secure and most manageable ThinkCentre desktop yet.