News

Vizioncore Updates vRanger and vCharter Pro

July 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Vizioncore has released an upgrade to its backup and restore solution for virtualization environments, vRanger Pro 3.2.4. With vRanger Pro, administrators can schedule regular image-level backups of virtual or physical machines – while the machine is still running. Images can be stored either locally in the SAN or sent as compressed files over a WAN to remote locations to support disaster recovery strategies. vRanger Pro also enables restore of individual files efficiently with an explorer tree through which users can easily identify and “grab” needed files.

vRanger Pro 3.2.4 is a minor update to the core 3.2 functionality. There are two key components of this release: VCB Differential Backups and Support for FIPS encryption. Also included in this release are several bug fixes.

In addition, Vizioncore has released a minor dot release to its enterprise-level virtualization monitoring solution, vCharter Pro 3.0.1. Key improvements include support for external Oracle databases (versions 9i or 10g) and a significant number of bug fixes. The 3.0.1 version of vCharter Pro now also supports installation on the 64-bit version of Windows Server 2003.

ScaleMP Takes vSMP Foundation to Dell PowerEdge Servers

July 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

ScaleMP today announced the availability of its vSMP Foundation Standalone software on the Dell PowerEdge server platforms. The vSMP Foundation Standalone software aggregates multiple x86 and cluster-based systems into a single virtual shared memory system, reducing overall system management complexity while providing “maximum processing and memory capabilities”.

The Dell PowerEdge blade servers running the vSMP Foundation Standalone software allows customers to create single, virtual Symmetrical Multiprocessor (SMP) systems with up to 32 sockets (128 cores) and up to 1 TB of shared memory. According to the company, High Performance Computing (HPC) users can achieve additional cost effectiveness with entry-level solutions using two Dell PowerEdge 1950 III servers and vSMP Foundation Standalone software, in order to create a high-performance virtual four-socket system.

ScaleMP

ScaleMP’s vSMP Foundation Standalone aggregation platform provides its customers with:

Up to 1 TB of shared memory for large memory requirements
Up to 128 cores virtual SMP, with high memory bandwidth
Ease of use and lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for applications, with simplified cluster and I/O architecture management
Improved utilization through a centralized and consolidated architecture

BlueBear Says Kodiak and Koala Can Unchain Virtualization from Data Centers

July 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

We’re going to let you discover what the Washington-based startup BlueBear is trying to do with Koala (“the world’s smallest, most powerful virtualization-ready server”) and Kodiak (“the industry’s only application that’s both hypervisor-agnostic and cross-platform”) for yourself on their fun and informative website.

Here’s the takeaway:

Kodiak is largely built on Adobe AIR, is deployable on Windows, Mac and Linux, provides native support for VMware and Xen servers (Hyper-V support planned), comes with a visual map user interface, and allows unlimited consoles. Not only is it free of cost, its soon to be shared SDK coupled with Adobe’s Flex IDE allows high extensibility for end-user customization. Watch the teaser video here.

We’d use it if only for the fun names and cool website copywriting (“written and optimized from scratch by actual bears, …”), but unfortunately, it’s invite-only so far.

[Source: Flex RIA]

Microsoft To Release System Center VMM 2008 Soon

July 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Diane Prescott, Product Manager, System Center at Microsoft posted an article on the official SC blog today sharing that the launch of the next version of Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) is imminent, specifically in Q4 2008. The beta was formally introduced by the company end of April 2008.

System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2008 will be available as a stand-alone product, while the current version only comes bundled with Server Management Suite Enterprise. Prescott also said something about the pricing structure:

“[SCVMM 2008] will follow the licensing model set forward by the SMSE. It will be sold as a per-device enterprise server management license (ML) and will include rights to the management server. Because we’ll be selling the VMM 2008 enterprise server ML on a per-device basis, which makes sense in the context of virtualization, we’ll be targeting a price which will be approximately 10-15% less than the SMSE at that time it’s generally available. Additionally, because of the new value and functionality being added to the various System Center offerings over the next year, including VMM, Operations Manager and Configuration Manager, we will be implementing a price increase to the SMSE of approximately 10-15% in the same time frame. We’re still working on the specifics regarding the pricing and licensing of VMM 2008 and the SMSE and we’ll have further details to share in early August.”

Next to support for Hyper-V, SCVMM 2008 will also offer management capabilities for VMware ESX environments, allbeit through VirtualCenter.

Microsoft

New Linux Kernel: More Support for Virtualization

July 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Nearly three months in the making, the new Linux kernel (version 2.6.26) announced by Linus Torvalds through a mailing list, boasts read-only bind mounts, “big-iron” KVM ports, USB webcam support, 802.11s mesh WiFi, built-in support for remote kernel debugging, and a host of embedded architecture improvements, among other enhancements.

Among the most significant improvements are changes to the Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) virtualization software, first included in the kernel in February of last year. KVM normally uses the technique of full virtualization, which simulates all the underlying hardware necessary to run a given client system, with the support of virtualization technologies built into AMD and Intel chips. The latest kernel update adds limited support for paravirtualization, a technique that only partially virtualizes the hardware in order to improve performance.

KVM has also, for the first time, been ported to non-x86 hardware platforms Intel IA64 and IBM PPC and S/390, developers said.

[Source: ZDNet UK]

VMware Formally Releases ThinApp 4.0 Into The Wild

July 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Only a few days later than anticipated, VMware has released ThinApp 4.0, its first application virtualization solution (formerly called Project North Star) after snapping up Thinstall earlier this year.

ThinApp 4.0 (build 2200) is the next major release of the former Thinstall solution called Application Virtualization Suite 3.2, and has certain new features, such as:

Application Sync: enables you to deploy application updates. Application Sync automatically checks for and installs updates to your packaged applications. Updates might include changes such as a new version, service pack updates, or configuration changes in the package.ini file
Application Link: connects deployed applications. For example, you can establish a relationship between a deployed instance of Microsoft Office 2003 and a new Microsoft Office plug-in. Application Link enables you to establish a link between applications without having to encapsulate them into the same executable package

A trial download is available here.

ThinApp comes bundled with VMware Workstation under the name ThinApp Suite. The company offers a starting package for 50 concurrent clients at $6,050 (including a 12×5 Gold Support yearly subscription), with additional clients starting at $47.19 (including a 12×5 Gold Support yearly subscription).

VMware