Virtualization.com
News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing
VMware has announced it is offering its VMware vSphere Essentials product package at up to 50% off the list price through June 15, 2010.
With a low up-front investment, vSphere Essentials delivers enterprise-class virtualization capabilities that enable small offices to consolidate and manage application workloads while reducing hardware and operating costs. Through this promotion, VMware will offer SMBs award-winning virtualization starting at less than $500.
Microsoft yesterday announced new investments around desktop virtualization technologies and solutions, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), to help organizations of all sizes increase flexibility, employee productivity and IT cost savings.
Microsoft outlined improvements that make it easier to access desktop virtualization.
More information on today’s announcement and Microsoft’s virtualization strategy is available here.
Pivot3 announced two new core products and enhancements to its full suite of scalable storage solutions today.
Pivot3 also unveiled the HardBank server, a ruggedized version of the MiniBank that is ideal for military, air-constrained and mobile applications that experience harsh environments with extreme dust, vibration and heat.
The Pivot3 MiniBank server individually handles up to 70 cameras with 2 – 8TB of RAID storage supporting VMS applications from more than 30 open systems partners. MiniBanks are easily configured together to support larger camera counts with up to 48TB of shared SAN storage and embedded VMS failover protection. It is designed for distributed environments typically found in retail, financial, educational and corporate markets.
The HardBank and MiniBank are both powered by the latest Intel Nehalem CPUs, which double VMS performance through the use of hyper-threading and pipelining. Both products are backed by Pivot3 world-class service and support, configuration assistance, and a three-year warranty.
The company also announced that a new Surveillance Feature Pack would be included free of charge with all systems. The Feature Pack includes RAID 6x, which protects data in the case of five simultaneous drive failures; a Recording Interruption Alarm that alerts users if displayed video is not being recorded; and Predictive Drive Sparing, which pre-emptively identifies bad drives before they fail.
Pivot3 will be demonstrating its new solutions at booth #6034 at the 2010 ISC West conference in Las Vegas, March 24-26, 2010. The MiniBank and HardBank will be the company’s first products offered through distribution.
VMware has announced the availability of VMware’s ThinApp 4.5 application virtualization solution.
ThinApp 4.5 enables rapid adoption of Microsoft Windows 7 in the enterprise by providing compatibility for legacy and custom applications across multiple Windows operating system environments. With ThinApp 4.5, enterprises can quickly migrate existing applications to new Windows operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 7, eliminating conflicts between operating environments, and extending the life of application investments.
VMware data shows that leveraging ThinApp 4.5 for application virtualization can reduce the costs associated with migration by as much as 25% while migrating systems up to 40% faster by accelerating the application compatibility, testing and deployment processes required for application migration.
VMware ThinApp 4.5 new advanced enterprise features include:
VMware ThinApp Application virtualization software isolates applications from the operating environment, increasing compatibility and manageability across multiple operating systems common in the enterprise. By enabling enterprises to manage and deliver applications from a central source, VMware ThinApp streamlines application security, updates, patches and performance while delivering applications instantly to nearly any device.
The result is significantly reduced application management costs of up to 60%. Increased compatibility across operating systems ensures investment protection for legacy and custom applications even as the underlying operating system changes. Enterprises considering upgrading to Windows 7 can avoid the costly process of recoding, retesting and recertifying existing applications on the new operating systems through application virtualization on VMware ThinApp.
VMware ThinApp 4.5 will be generally available on March 17, 2010, through VMware sales and the company’s extensive network of OEM partners and channel partners. Pricing for VMware ThinApp Suite is $5000.00. VMware ThinApp is also bundled in View Premier for $250 per concurrent user.
Core Security Technologies, provider of the CORE IMPACT family of comprehensive enterprise security testing solutions, has issued an advisory disclosing a vulnerability that could affect large numbers of organizations and consumers using Microsoft’s Virtual PC virtualization software and leave them open to potential attack.
A Core Security Exploit Writer working with CoreLabs, the research arm of Core Security Technologies, found that affected versions of Virtual PC hypervisor contain a vulnerability that may allow attackers to bypass several security mechanisms of the Windows operating system to compromise vulnerable virtualized systems.
The issue may also transform a certain type of common software bug into exploitable vulnerabilities.Microsoft’s Virtual PC hypervisor is an element of the company’s Windows Virtual PC package, which allows users to run multiple Windows environments on a single computer. The hypervisor is a key component of Windows 7 XP Mode, a feature in Microsoft’s latest desktop operating system aimed at easing the migration path into the new OS for users and enterprises that need to run legacy Windows XP applications on its native OS.
Affected versions of the product include: Microsoft Virtual PC 2007, Virtual PC 2007 SP1, Windows Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. On Windows 7 the XP Mode feature is affected by the vulnerability.
Microsoft Hyper-V technology is not affected by this problem.
The issue was reported to Microsoft in August of 2009. The vendor indicated that it plans to solve the problem in future updates to the vulnerable products.
Windows Virtual PC and Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 are desktop systems virtualization applications from Microsoft that are used to run one or many virtual hosts on a single physical system. Windows Virtual PC is used to run Windows XP Mode applications directly from a Windows 7 desktop.
In Microsoft Virtual PC and Windows Virtual PC, the Virtual Machine Monitor (VMM) is responsible for mediating access to hardware resources and devices from operating systems running in a virtualized environment. A vulnerability found in the memory management of the Virtual Machine Monitor makes it such that memory pages mapped above the 2GB level can be accessed with read or read/write privileges by user-space programs running in a Guest operating system.
By leveraging this vulnerability it is possible to bypass several security hardening mechanisms of Windows operating systems, such as Data Execution Prevention (DEP), Safe Exception Handlers (SafeSEH) and Address Space Layout Randomization (ASLR). As a result, some applications with bugs that are not exploitable when running in a not-virtualized operating system are rendered exploitable if running within a guest OS in Virtual PC.
In particular, a vulnerable application running in Windows XP Mode on Windows 7 may be exploitable in a virtual environment, while the same application running directly on a Windows XP SP3 operating system is not.
The vulnerability invalidates a basic assumption about the memory management operations of the Windows operating system on which several security hardening mechanisms rely for correct operation. As a result, those defense-in-depth mechanisms should no longer be considered effective enough to prevent exploitation of un-patched vulnerabilities in Windows applications running on systems virtualized using the Virtual PC hypervisor. Additionally, software bugs that may have been dismissed as not security-relevant due to being not exploitable and for which security patches may not be readily available could become exploitable vulnerabilities due to the Virtual PC hypervisor bug.
For more information on this vulnerability and the systems affected, please visit: http://www.coresecurity.com/content/virtual-pc-2007-hypervisor-memory-protection-bug
Virtustream, a privately held infrastructure services firm, today announced xStream, the first truly hybrid enterprise cloud platform that delivers cost and resource savings through flexible internal (private) and external (off-premise) cloud environments.
xStream is available as a dedicated or multi-tenant platform, managed or unmanaged, on and off premise, and it has the flexibility and elasticity built-in to accommodate a wide range of enterprise IT environments at any stage of virtualization adoption.
xStream increases operational efficiency and ROI and offers greater financial flexibility through its consumption-based pricing. Clients purchase the amount of infrastructure resources they need as multi-tiered workload infrastructure units with integrated High Availability and Disaster Recovery. The hybrid cloud environments are managed through a single, centralized subscription-based deployment, and offer end-to-end service-level agreements for those deployments. xStream’s self service personalized portal provides role-based access for administering, monitoring, controlling and reporting on the virtual private data center solution.
xStream’s patent-pending “on-boarding” process leverages deep expertise in virtualization and cloud computing with proprietary data collection and analysis tools that profile the application workloads and translate them into cloud-based resource requirements to deliver an optimized and tailored resource model. In this way, Virtustream’s cloud solutions are able to deliver a minimized total cost of ownership and a short-term return on investment based on decisions made at the onset of a project.
xStream is based on Virtustream’s track record of nearly a decade of providing virtualization solutions, and it serves as the foundation for additional offerings including professional services and managed services.
Virtustream’s xStream platform offers a number of additional differentiating features that deliver benefits and efficiencies to enterprise IT, including:
– Better resource utilization due to aggregate workload focus
– transformation and on-boarding toolkit
– Vendor agnostic approach to leverage best of breed hardware and software
xStream is available immediately and is priced on a subscription basis by contacting Virtustream.