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Robin Wauters

Symantec Helps Companies Deploy, Monitor And Manage Virtualized Applications With ApplicationHA

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Symantec has announced the latest version of ApplicationHA, its high availability solution for VMware virtual environments that provides customers the ability to confidently virtualize their business critical applications.

The latest version of Symantec ApplicationHA extends the existing capabilities for disaster recovery with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager integration and provides a dashboard to monitor and manage hundreds of applications within VMware vCenter Server.

Symantec ApplicationHA, based on the industry-leading Veritas Cluster Server technology, provides high availability for business-critical applications through application-level visibility, control, and recovery in VMware environments. ApplicationHA runs inside a VMware guest operating system and fully integrates with VMware High Availability. In the event of an application failure, ApplicationHA coordinates recovery and restarts the application and/or virtual machine.

With this release, Symantec provides an application-aware Disaster Recovery solution through integration with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. In the event that VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager fails over the virtual machine from the primary site to the disaster recovery site, Symantec ApplicationHA continues to monitor the health of the applications after recovery and re-establishes communication with VMware High Availability.

Additionally, ApplicationHA ensures that the application components come online in the right sequence during testing and actual disaster recovery scenarios. Finally, application status is recorded in the compliance report during SRM’s test or actual disaster recovery.

ApplicationHA now features new reporting and management functionality that allows IT professionals to centrally monitor hundreds of applications within virtual machines from a single dashboard.

By centrally managing and monitoring all applications within virtual environments, organizations can have better visibility into the health and needs of such applications. ApplicationHA now provides a summary list of virtual machines, an inventory of applications inside them and the status of each application.

ApplicationHA is now also easier to install. Installation previously required leveraging the product installer. ApplicationHA now enables a push install directly from the VMware vSphere client. This allows the user to simply install the VMware vCenter Server plugin and do everything else — from install, configuration, and on-going management of ApplicationHA directly from the VMware vSphere client.

These enhancements enable the installation experience to be similar between Linux and Windows guest OSs.

Symantec ApplicationHA 5.1 SP2 has a list price of $350 USD per virtual machine.

Symantec ApplicationHA supports major platforms including Windows, RedHat Enterprise Linux, and SuSE Linux Enterprise.

IDC Evaluates The Desktop Virtualization Software Market

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IDC expects the desktop virtualization market to make significant gains in both revenues and total customer count well into the second half of the decade. As the solutions mature, they will become increasingly applicable to more organizations and a greater breadth of vertical industries.

A new IDC MarketScape report evaluates the current capabilities and long-term strategies of 12 desktop virtualization software vendors.

The report, IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Desktop Virtualization 2011 Vendor Analysis, evaluates vendors in the desktop virtualization space by analyzing their current capabilities as well as their longer-term strategies that impact their ability to provide solutions and gain market share going forward. It utilizes a scoring and ranking model based on both qualitative and quantitative criteria, which results in a graphical illustration of each vendor’s position in the competitive landscape.

Among the vendors evaluated in the report, IDC placed just one – Citrix – in the “Leaders” category.

Citrix was recognized for its comprehensive set of technologies and a firm strategic grip on where it wants to take its product lineup.

IDC placed seven vendors in the “Major Players” category – Desktone, Kaviza, Microsoft, MokaFive, Quest Software, Virtual Bridges, and VMware.

The vendors that were placed in the “Contenders” category were Red Hat, Unidesk, Virtual Computer, and Wanova.

Oracle Launches New Oracle VM Template For MySQL Enterprise Edition

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In an effort to enable more efficient and lower cost deployments of virtualized MySQL environments, Oracle has announced the first Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition.

The new Oracle VM Template for MySQL helps eliminate manual configuration efforts and risks by providing a pre-installed, pre-configured and certified software stack that includes Oracle VM Server for x86, Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and MySQL Enterprise Edition.

By pre-integrating the world’s most popular open source database with Oracle Linux and Oracle Virtualization technologies, enterprise users and ISVs can quickly and easily deploy and manage a virtualized MySQL database server for Web and cloud-based applications.

“Oracle is committed to helping MySQL users more efficiently deploy and manage high-performance web and cloud-based applications at a lower cost,” said Tomas Ulin, vice president MySQL Engineering, Oracle. “With the introduction of the first Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition, customers can benefit from a fully integrated solution that is backed by Oracle’s world-class support, enabling faster deployments, increased reliability and higher uptime for MySQL applications in virtualized environments.”

Open Virtualization Alliance Gains 65 New Members

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The Open Virtualization Alliance, a consortium committed to fostering the adoption of open virtualization technologies, including Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), today announced broad industry support and adoption with the addition of 65 new members to the consortium.

With this, the consortium has achieved nearly ten-fold growth in membership since its establishment just one month ago, and today includes members across a wide spectrum of hardware, software, services and cloud computing businesses.

In May, BMC Software, Eucalyptus Systems, HP, IBM, Intel, Red Hat and SUSE announced the formation of the Open Virtualization Alliance. The goal of the alliance is to provide education, best practices and technical advice to help businesses understand and evaluate their virtualization options, including open source alternatives such as KVM. Since the formation of the consortium, leaders throughout the virtualization industry have quickly expressed strong interest in participating in the Open Virtualization Alliance.

Today, the following companies join as general members of the Open Virtualization Alliance:

Abiquo, AdaptiveComputing, Afore Solutions, Arista Networks, Arkeia, autonomicresources, B1 Systems, BlueCat Networks, Brocade, Carbon 14 Software, Cfengine, CheapVPS, Cloud Cruiser, CloudSigma, CloudSwitch, CodeFutures, CohesiveFT, Collax GmbH, Convirture, Corensic, Dell, enstratus, EnterpriseDB, Everis Inc., Fujitsu Frontech, FusionIO, Gluster, Inc., Grid Dynamics, Groundwork Open Source, HexaGrid Computing, IDT us, Infinite Technologies, Information Builders, Killer Beaver, LLC, Likewise, Mindtree Ltd, MontaVista Software, Morph Labs, nanoCloud, Neocoretech, Nicira Networks, Nimbula, novastorm, One Convergence, OpenNebula / C12G Labs, Providence Software (XVT), Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, Qindel, RisingTide Systems, ScaleOut Software, Sep Software, Shadow Soft, Smartscale, StackOps, stepping stone GmbH, Storix, UC4, Unilogik, Univention, Usharesoft, Virtual Bridges, Vyatta, Weston Software Inc, XebiaLabs and Zmanda.

Security Virtualization Startup Raises $9.2 Million Series A

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Bromium, emerging from stealth mode to develop technology in the areas of virtualization and security, has announced it has closed a $9.2 million series A round of funding with Andreessen Horowitz, Ignition Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners.

Founded by Gaurav Banga, Simon Crosby and Ian Pratt, Bromium is focused on the delivery of infrastructure solutions that permit enterprises to safely embrace two major trends in IT: consumerization and cloud computing.

The Bromium Board of Directors is drawn from business leaders and technologists with extensive experience in infrastructure software, virtualization and security: Peter Levine, venture partner at Andreessen Horowitz; Frank Artale, managing director at Ignition Ventures; and George Kurtz, worldwide CTO and executive vice president at McAfee. Bromium has already attracted top engineering talent from Microsoft, VMware, Oracle, McAfee and NVIDIA.

Prior to founding Bromium, CEO Gaurav Banga was CTO and SVP, Engineering at Phoenix Technologies. Simon Crosby (co-founder and CTO) joins Bromium from Citrix, where he was CTO of the Data Center & Cloud Division. He joined Citrix through the acquisition of XenSource in 2007, which he also co-founded and led as CTO.

Ian Pratt (co-founder and SVP Products) is the chairman of Xen.org and was co-founder of XenSource. Prior to Bromium, he served as vice president of advanced products in the Virtualization and Management Division at Citrix.

Egenera Appoints John Humphreys VP of Marketing

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Egenera, provider of open converged infrastructure software for data center management, has appointed John Humphreys vice president of marketing.

Humphreys most recently was senior director, Data Center and Cloud Marketing at Citrix Systems. There he led the revitalization of the XenServer virtualization platform and had responsibility for developing marketing strategy, defining packaging and pricing, leading program execution, driving customer engagements and pre-sales activity, and acting as a primary spokesperson.

Prior to Citrix, Humphreys was vice president of the virtualization practice at IDC, a global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications and consumer technology markets.

Humphreys will report to Egenera’s president and CEO, Pete Manca.

Egenera was founded in Massachusetts in 2000 and pioneered the blade server and converged infrastructure markets.

Its flagship product, Egenera PAN Manager Software, makes data centers more agile and reliable while reducing capital expenditures and operating costs.