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Savvis Aims To Deliver IT Infrastructure In The Cloud

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Savvis today unveiled Savvis Cloud Compute, a new virtual data center hosting and private cloud computing solution providing enterprises with an opportunity to cut costs without having to sacrifice security or performance.

With the introduction of an advanced customer portal, these new offerings feature enhanced user control and flexibility in provisioning virtual compute and storage capabilities on top of both private and shared platforms. This enables “right-sized computing” via the ability to purchase fractional compute resources on demand by the “instance” with flexible month-to-month business terms.

Savvis Cloud Compute provides essential benefits for enterprises that have substantial fluctuations in web traffic and computing requirements from heavy business day peaks. Immediate benefits are available for SaaS applications, seasonal web eCommerce traffic, and financial trading applications. In addition, Savvis Cloud Compute assists in the implementation of disaster recovery for back-office locations, and shifting test and development environments to lower cost footprints.

Savvis Cloud Compute inaugurates Savvis’ moving its utility compute and storage solutions into the cloud and marks the first in a series of new, integrated value-added IT solutions delivered in cloud technology that Savvis will roll out this year.

The News:

  • Savvis Cloud Compute delivers secure, enterprise-class cloud compute and storage functionality designed to meet customer requirements for on-demand, scalable, flexible and cost-effective managed hosting services for business-critical applications and infrastructure.
  • Businesses with seasonal or unpredictable computing needs will benefit from easy access to more efficient, low-cost, IT resources provisioned in near-real time, helping them maintain a competitive edge by limiting financial risk, keeping IT costs in check, and enabling speed to market. Customers can tap the benefits of cloud computing without significant initial investment and minimum commitments. This zero capital expenditure model appeals to customers that want to reduce their capital budgets without sacrificing IT growth in the long run.
  • Ideal for production and pre-production environments, Savvis Cloud Compute provides flexible infrastructure, delivering greater end-user control through the SavvisStation Portal to add servers and storage capacity automatically and in minutes. This combines with comprehensive capacity management reporting to help customers optimize their IT spend by anticipating and acting on changes in demand.

Savvis Cloud Compute operates seamlessly with other Savvis utility and dedicated services providing customers with the ability to map complex enterprise application needs to the most appropriate service enabling affordable, business-critical performance.

VirtualLogix To Unveil Virtualized Android Phone Solution

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VirtualLogix today announced the availability of the Android mobile phone environment on a range of 2G/3G cellular system solutions from ST-Ericsson, on a Linux single processor (ARM926) platform.

This solution relies on VirtualLogix’ VLX virtualization software to enable developers to create low cost, high volume phones that provide state-of-the-art user experience and services while effectively preserving the predictability and performance of communication and multimedia functionality. VirtualLogix will demonstrate the solution at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

VLX-patented, innovative virtualization technology brings the benefits of server-side virtualization functionality to mobile devices. Designed for real-time performance, VLX delivers a high performance communication capability which minimizes latency and communications between software running in separate containers on the same processor. Through a shared device framework, VLX provides an innovative and structured mechanism for sharing peripheral devices between different execution containers to enable multi-vendor support. VirtualLogix’ virtualization software allows developers to predictably add new functionality to mobile devices post-delivery, without compromising the initial configuration of any device.

Veeam Expands Partner Program

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Veeam Software, provider of systems management tools for VMware ESX host environments, today announced the next phase in its ProPartner program, with added benefits and opportunities for VMware VAR partners in 2009. Basic, Silver and Gold partner levels have been defined, with increasing benefits and opportunities at each level.

At the same time, Veeam has completed the integration of partner programs from nworks, which Veeam acquired in 2008. Veeam and former nworks partners are organized into a global two-tier distribution network to better serve end user customers seeking to back up and recover, report and document, monitor performance, plan capacity and control VM sprawl, manage configuration and change, and otherwise manage VMware infrastructure.

In addition, Veeam announced that its partner network now has more than 1,400 ProPartners worldwide. Partner benefits include up to 65% additional revenue and margins for every VMware ESX deal.

Veeam’s ProPartner levels include:
  • Gold ProPartner – by invitation/approval. Requires at least one VMware certified professional (or equivalent HP or Microsoft designation) on staff. Benefits include NFR keys, internal-use licenses, marketing programs, deal registration, access to the ProPartner portal, and use of the Gold ProPartner logo to designate this elevated partner status.
  • Silver ProPartner – requires approval by regional channel management team. Benefits include NFR keys, internal-use licenses, marketing programs, access to the ProPartner portal, and use of the Silver ProPartner logo.
  • Basic ProPartner – provides any other VAR or reseller who wants to quote or sell Veeam products with access to the ProPartner portal and a starting point to begin working with Veeam.

LeftHand Networks Delivers Entry-level SAN for Virtualized Environments

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LeftHand Networks (an HP company) today announced an entry-level storage area network (SAN) solution that improves performance and reduces storage costs within virtualized server environments for midsize businesses.

The LeftHand SAS Starter SAN helps customers efficiently deploy their first virtualization projects by simplifying the process of creating, accessing and managing shared storage resources.
As customers deploy virtual server environments, they frequently encounter unforeseen system performance bottlenecks. To further complicate matters, server virtualization increases the number of required connections to a SAN. This increased system complexity makes it more difficult and costly to troubleshoot when bottlenecks do occur. The LeftHand SAS Starter SAN reduces costs and mitigates these performance issues by automatically balancing data volumes across all disk drives, network connections and processors.
The SAS Starter SAN includes management tools that provide replication, thin provisioning and snapshot capabilities. These capabilities help ensure data availability even as the environment becomes more complex. In addition, customers can purchase only the capacity they need, easily increasing both the capacity and performance of their system without experiencing any disruption. The SAS Starter SAN can scale to more than 80 network ports and 320 disk drives to accommodate business growth.
LeftHand also introduced a higher capacity SATA Starter SAN that offers a 25 percent reduction in the cost per gigabyte (GB) of disk drive capacity than the previous generation. The solution’s storage capacity has increased 33 percent to 12 terabytes (TB) while maintaining its current list price. The SATA Starter SAN is ideal for customers who want to consolidate storage for Microsoft Windows or Linux servers.
The SAS Starter SAN and the higher-capacity SATA Starter SAN are available immediately through LeftHand Networks’ resellers and value-added resellers in the United States as well as value-added distributors throughout Europe.
Pricing starts at $35,000 for the 4.8 TB SAS Starter SAN and $30,000 for the 12 TB SATA Starter SAN.

LynuxWorks Debuts LynxSecure 2.0

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LynuxWorks today announced the availability of LynxSecure 2.0, a next-generation separation kernel and embedded hypervisor for high assurance systems, on the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processor-based systems.

LynxSecure takes advantage of Intel’s latest hardware-enhanced Intel Virtualization technology (Intel VT) to provide a standards-based, secure software platform for applications with low, medium and high assurance requirements running concurrently on a single system. This meeting of two new technologies generated much interest when previewed with multiple operating systems being run simultaneously on a single Intel chipset with real-time performance and security applications being demonstrated.

LynxSecure was designed from the ground to up to offer a reliable, secure and extendable platform to meet the demanding needs of embedded software developers building complex systems that require application separation. Designers of military, aerospace, medical and financial systems can utilize the safety and security features offered in LynxSecure, and combined with Intel’s latest processors gives very low latency when compared with traditional multi-cpu systems. LynxSecure 2.0 works closely with Intel VT to enable multiple, heterogeneous operating systems (OS) to coexist on the same platform, enabling developers to build a diverse array of applications on a single processor, reducing hardware costs and allowing for easier reuse of legacy software.

The latest generation of Intel Core2 Duo processors offers a number of new features and enhancements that are applicable to embedded developers. Intel’s enhanced virtualization provides hardware-enhanced I/O virtualization and facilitates interactions between the embedded hypervisor and the guest operating systems running on it. There are some new integrated security features which include integrated TPM building blocks and a network outbreak containment block that improve network security with new packet filtering capabilities. Enhancing of both the on-chip power management features and the graphics capabilities offers better performance at lower power, a real benefit for embedded applications.

LynxSecure, with its extremely small code size, maintains hard real-time characteristics and determinism for real-time applications. The software is the first separation kernel & hypervisor to bring multi-core processor support to the high assurance world, providing scalability from deeply embedded applications up to workstations and servers.

LynxSecure is designed to run on any 32-bit or 64-bit processor with a memory management unit (MMU) and provides 100% application binary compatibility between a standalone OS and its virtualized version. Like all LynuxWorks’ products, LynxSecure is based on open standards, but it also offers the highest real-time, safety and security capabilities, conforming to the MILS standard and certifiable to DO-178B level A.

Leostream (Finally) Ships Connection Broker 5.3

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Leostream Corporation, a developer of virtual hosted desktop software, has finally gotten around to updating its Connection Broker software to version 5.3.

To get an idea of what changed, you can check the release notes here (PDF).

Here’s a quick run-down:

  • Citrix XenApp support when used with Leostream Connect (Windows and Linux® version) and Wyse thin clients.
  • Remote upgrade feature for Leostream Connect client
  • New > Status > Downloads page with links for downloading the Leostream Agent, Leostream Connect, and Leostream Documentation
  • New ability to specify multiple authentication server addresses inside one record on the > Users > Authentication Servers page
  • New Domain option on the Test Login option on the > Users > Users page
  • Allow additional special characters on smart card logins
  • Enhanced USB support in policies when used with Leostream Connect version 2.2
  • Context sensitive help for Connection Broker forms
  • The Templates pool has been removed from the > Resources > Pools page. Please, use VMware® VirtualCenter to view the templates you use for provisioning
  • Bulk upload feature, to import users, desktops, and clients from a CSC-file.
  • Additional columns available on the > Users > Users page to list Active Directory attributes for users