Virtualization.com

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

News

Virtutech Boasts Virtualized Software Development Leadership

by Leave a Comment

Virtutech,  provider of virtualized software development (VSD) solutions, today announced new metrics that solidify the company’s position as the VSD platform vendor of choice for electronic systems developers.

Virtutech claims it is experiencing a growing demand for its Simics platform across all dimensions of the marketplace with:

  • More than 10,000 Simics end users based on licenses issued
  • More than 100 processors and virtual platforms deployed
  • More than 1,000 devices modeled on Simics and immediately available in the platform model repository
  • Simics has become the de facto commercial standard for enablement and development on Power Architecture;
  • More than 30 Fortune 500 companies rely on Virtutech.

Virtutech recently announced version 4.0 of its flagship Simics development platform, which debuted Simics Accelerator. Simics Accelerator is designed specifically to boost performance and scalability of large-scale simulations, including features such as memory page sharing and multi-threading support, which leverages the multi-core aspects of their host environment.

Early in June, Virtutech announced the fastest mixed level of modeling simulation supporting SystemC as well as C-based models with its Simics SystemC Bridge. This was followed shortly thereafter by Virtutech and Freescale’s joint announcement of a Hybrid Simulation capability to solve the critical need performance analysis and optimization of the system-on-chip (SoC) model when developing for complex multicore processors.

Virtutech appointed David Pefley as the company’s first chief financial officer. Pefley has more than 20 years experience in financial management, most recently as senior vice president, CFO and board member of Yield Dynamics where he led the company to a successful acquisition. He has served in various financial management positions, including corporate controller at KLA-Tencor Corp for 10 years.

Virtutech

KACE Releases Virtual Appliance Enabling Remote OS Provisioning

by Leave a Comment

KACE, a management appliance company we covered earlier this year, today announced the industry’s first virtual remote appliance to deliver remote operating system (OS) provisioning. As part of its KBOX family of appliances, the new KBOX Virtual Remote Appliance allows a central KBOX to extend full systems provisioning to remote offices, helping organizations to eliminate the cost and time associated with manual imaging approaches.

Consisting of an easy-to-deploy virtual appliance that resides in an organization’s remote offices, Virtual Remote Appliances work in conjunction with a central KBOX Systems Deployment Appliance to push out entire OS deployments to offices outside of a corporate network, oftentimes hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away.

By automating machine provisioning at remote offices, KACE gives IT administrators a centralized way to execute deployment tasks, such as hardware independent network OS installation, disk imaging, software distribution, configuration management, and recovery at any location.
Virtual Remote Appliances allow the KBOX to provision systems in any remote office, including the ability to:
  • Provision from a centralized deployment library of operating systems, disk images, drivers, and applications;
  • Perform hardware independent network OS installation (scripted installation);
  • Deploy disk images;
  • Utilize a GUI-based pre-installation environment for the recovery of corrupted systems;
  • Deliver full reporting capabilities for system history, installation, and images.
Virtual Remote Appliances are available now and included at no additional cost with the purchase of a KBOX Systems Deployment Appliance.
KACE

Secerno Introduces Database Security Solution for Virtual Environments

by Leave a Comment

Database security provider Secerno today announced the availability of its Secerno.SQL database activity monitoring and blocking solution as a virtualized appliance on the VMware platform. This, according to the company, marks the first availability of its appliance-based database protection in a virtualized environment, allowing enterprises the same database protection afforded by hardware yet with the utilisation, management and cost benefits of a virtualized application.

Secerno’s virtualized database protection product is powered by its patent-pending SynoptiQ technology. The company chose VMware’s technology platform based on its penetration into more than 20,000 corporate customers.

“This unique announcement comes at an exciting time for Secerno. We have just secured funding that allows us to respond to market opportunities and customer demand,” said Steve Hurn, CEO of Secerno. “In this case, we are bringing Secerno to a virtualised environment to offer organisations more variety in their deployments and reduce their overall costs in terms of resources and expenses. Virtualisation is emerging as a key strategy for companies, and we are delighted to be the first to offer this option for database activity monitoring and blocking.”

Secerno.SQL for VMware is set to be available this quarter.

Secerno

3PAR Introduces New Incentive Program V-TIP

by Leave a Comment

3PAR announced today its Virtual Technology Incentive Program (V-TIP) which is designed to combine the benefits of 3PAR Utility Storage with financial incentives offered by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for datacenter storage virtualization and thin provisioning projects.

The financial incentives offered to 3PAR customers by PG&E reward 3PAR customers for deploying “energy-smart storage”. PG&E rebates are based on the amount of energy savings achieved by datacenters through storage virtualization and the use of 3PAR Thin Provisioning and other thin technologies from 3PAR. To qualify for these financial incentives, Northern and Central California PG&E customers must apply for and be accepted into the rebate program prior to deploying a new 3PAR-based storage implementation.

Financial incentives from PG&E are just a part of the energy and environmental benefits from 3PAR Utility Storage. According to a Wikibon Energy Lab case study, customers replacing older storage technologies with next-generation 3PAR InServ arrays have saved as much as 90%* on annual energy costs related to powering and cooling their storage systems.

[Source: MarketWatch]

VMware Planning Massive New Data Center In Washington

by Leave a Comment

According to Data Center Knowledge, VMware is planning to locate a new data center in East Wenatchee (North Central Washington), leasing no less than 100,000 square feet of space in a new facility being built by Sabey Corporation on its Intergate.Columbia campus. VMware will be the biggest leaser by far; their data center will take up about two-thirds of the 189,000 square foot second building.

Company spokeswoman Melinda Marks said that VMware will use its new data center to expand research and development.

Quest Software Releases Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite 5.10

by Leave a Comment

Patrick Rouse, Sales Engineer at Quest Software, wrote up a blog post to announce that their Provision Networks division has shipped the new version of the company’s cross-platform VDI connection broker, Virtual Access Suite (VAS) 5.10. The 5.9 version was released to the public in December of 2007, and had one service pack, so all the following features are new to version 5.10:

Web Portal – Web-IT:

  • Web-IT migrated to ASP.Net 1.1 to ASP.Net 2.0
  • Web-IT config files migrated from text to XML files to support future automation
  • Web-IT Integration With Juniper Secure Access
  • Smart Card login support

Clients:

  • Ticketing – Secure tickets will be issued per connection request, obviating the need to embed hashed user credentials inside .pit connection files
  • Enhanced Multi-monitor support
  • Updated Linux and Java Clients
  • PXE Boot Linux Client
  • LiveCD Linux Client
  • All AppPortal Client settings can be stored in a single configuration file
  • Java Client fully supported via Secure Gateway

Connection Broker & Management Console:

  • Support for Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Support for Virtual Iron 4.3.x
  • Dynamic Computer Group Auto-expansion – Auto Provisioning of new computers
  • Server Provisioning
  • Delete computers that have not been used in a specified number of days
  • Realtime enumeration of running processes on Managed Computers
  • Termination of running processes on Managed Computers.
  • Power Management of ACPI and WoL (Wake on LAN) capable computers and servers
  • MSI Package Deployment to Computer Groups or Managed Computers and servers
  • Disable/Enable Computer Groups or Managed Computers during maintenance cycles
  • Unique Computer names enforced across Desktop Groups and Data Centers
  • Display Realtime License Usage
  • Retrieval and display of VM Template Sizes
  • Wizard Driven Managed Desktop creation
  • Streamlined Softgrid Integration
  • Option to bypass proxy settings for Console to Broker communication
  • Verification of sufficient disk space on target storage when provisioning servers or desktops.

Task Automation for Power Management (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Power Off
  • Power On
  • Reset
  • Resume – for VMware and Hyper-V
  • Standby – for ACPI & WoL Devices
  • Suspend -for VMware and Hyper-V
  • Wakeup – for ACPI & WoL Devices

Task Automation for Operating System operations (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Log off user
  • Reset Session
  • Restart O/S
  • Shutdown O/S

Task Automation for Virtual machines (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Delete VM
  • Delete VM not accessed in a specified number of days

Task Automation for Miscellaneous Tasks (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Copy file to computer
  • Enable/Disable Computer
  • Initialize Computer
  • Run Program/Script on Computer

Task Automation for MSI Packages (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Install MSI Package
  • Update MSI Package
  • Uninstall MSI Package

Setup Program:

  • Wizard-based setup program to automate database creation, upgrade, and management of VMware trust store and Virtual Iron jar libraries
  • Terminal Servers and Connection Brokers are automatically added to the Provision Farm in the Provision Management Console.

Experience Optimization Pack:

  • Bi-directional Audio – Microphone Redirection
  • Local Text Echo – Latency Masking for typing over latent networks
  • Multi-media Redirection – seamlessly redirects multi-media content to the client CODEC for local playback. – This will be released as a separate 5.10 update, as it has not been released from QA yet.