News

Dell Gets Down & Busy With Virtualization

May 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

As expected, Dell today announced its broadest lineup of dedicated virtualization solutions ever. More than a dozen new servers, tools, and services aim to simplify the deployment and management of virtualization in enterprises of any size.

“Virtualization is quickly moving beyond hypervisors and hardware consolidation,” said Rick Becker, vice president of software and solutions, Dell Product Group. “Enterprises are looking for a broad array of servers, storage and services designed specifically for virtualized environments. Having been a leader in the first wave of virtualization, today we are signaling our intent to lead the second.”

Dell comes out with updated on-line tools, new e-commerce capability and expanded factory integration. With the updated Virtualization Advisor tool, customers have more options for building validated configurations online for virtualization deployments before purchase.

Through Dell.com/VMwareNow, customers can now upgrade PowerEdge servers purchased with VMware ESXi 3.5 to full VMware Infrastructure 3 enterprise licensing in a single click. Dell will also offer in coming weeks factory integrated VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition across a broad range of PowerEdge servers, including the PowerEdge 2950, R900, 1950, 2900, M600 blade and M605 blade.

The PowerEdge R805 offers 2X the memory and I/O capacity of Dell’s previous generation 2 socket servers. With a choice of VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition integrated hypervisors, the PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers can deliver the optimal platform for virtualized environments.

Dell EqualLogic storage arrays offer new advanced SAN-aware integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager for data protection and disaster recovery for virtualized environments at no additional cost in management tools.

Dell and Egenera are making virtualization and data center automation a reality beyond the blade chassis. The Dell PAN system is built on PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers and Dell/EMC storage, with Citrix XenServer and factory integrated as a complete, turn-key solution that consolidates and virtualizes server compute-resources into an entire Processor Area Network to be managed like hard drives in a SAN. The Dell PAN system can deliver rapid provisioning and re-deployment “in minutes”.

Dell today announced the expansion of its virtualization services to include:

Virtualization Simplification Workshop – for customers looking to determine which options are the most suitable for their specific business needs today, their technical environment and to meet future growth.
New Virtualization Operational Assessment and Process Automation accelerates selection of the right virtualization technology for their needs and define processes and tools to automate the management of virtualized environments.
New Virtualization Healthcheck – reviews existing virtualized production environments to identify technology, process and people issues impeding virtualization scale out and provides an actionable, results oriented plan.
Expanded Virtualization Assessment – taking into account multi-vendor virtualization considerations, advanced storage options, as well as green IT data center energy efficiency improvements.
Dell PAN Accelerator Service – integrating a full Processing Area Network within the customer environment to help ensure production readiness.
Expanded Design and Implementation Services – which features the latest Virtualization technologies, in addition to best-of-breed disaster recovery tools and techniques.
ProSupport Remote Advisory Services – fast access to technical experts for consulting on virtualization implementations.

These offerings are available today from Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services.

MonoSphere Introduces Storage Horizon 3.7, Adds Enhanced VMware Support

May 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

MonoSphere, a provider of storage capacity management software, yesterday announced Storage Horizon 3.7 boasting a range of new analytical capabilities which should greatly reduce the complexity and time required to manage today’s heterogeneous storage environments. Storage Horizon 3.7 includes enhanced support for VMware environments, a new automated chargeback capability, advanced analytics, advanced analysis of storage consumed by databases, and adds support for EMC Celerra and IBM DS and ESS arrays.

Storage Horizon 3.7 offers enhanced support for VMware server virtualization, helping storage teams understand to what extent and how rapidly applications running on guest operating systems are consuming storage at the array level. The new version visualizes storage abstractions and analyzes how VMware hosts are using storage, allowing IT departments to view storage usage details and the relationships between array LUNs, ESX servers, VMware file systems (VMFS), VMware virtual disks (VMDK), guest operating systems (OS), and guest OS file systems/raw devices, determining when additional storage is optimally required.

Neocleus Reveils Strategy For Its Endpoint Virtualization Approach

May 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Neocleus today announced (PDF) its strategy and approach for addressing the security, performance and IT manageability requirements of enterprise endpoints across a distributed network.

According to the company, current endpoint solutions are capable of connecting dispersed employees to the network but result in significant problems in the form of endpoint performance issues, usability complications and critical security vulnerabilities that can render networks defenseless. With corporate dependence on the functionality of these endpoints becoming paramount in their ability to generate revenue and drive enterprise growth, these problems are deemed simply unacceptable.

Neocleus Aims to tackle organizations’ most pressing endpoint issues – performance, manageability, security and cost. The company’s solutions, which include its Type 1 bare-metal hypervisor, enable critical IT tasks to operate in trusted virtual environments that run outside of and side-by-side with Windows while still offering complete access to all the capabilities offered by the underlying endpoint hardware.

“Endpoints are vast storage tanks of information and the gateway to accessing corporate data banks as well. As the variety of endpoints proliferates they become harder to control and more valuable to attackers,” said Charles Kolodgy, research director for Secure Content and Threat Management Research at IDC. “Applying virtualization to endpoints offers organizations significant advantages for securely delivering services, data and applications. Virtualization makes it possible to isolate critical corporate IT functionality without needing to be concerned about the other unauthorized applications residing on the machine.”

Neocleus contributes its technology to the open source community and remains “committed to creating an ecosystem of innovation that facilitates growth for partners and collaborators”. These open source contributions enable software developers to focus on building and maintaining high-performance applications without concern for performance or security issues that result from virtualization initiatives and technologies, and they do so without worrying about the underlying endpoint architecture.

VMware Releases Fusion 2.0 Beta 1

May 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

VMware has announced VMware Fusion 2.0 Beta 1, the first beta of the second iteration of their virtualization product for the Mac.

The video below gives you a tour of Fusion 2.0 Beta 1’s top new features, including:

Multiple monitor support (up to 10 displays!)
Improved networking and printing
Support for DirectX 9.0 Shader Model 2 (this is experimental, and it might not work on your Mac)
A refined UI for settings and VM management

There are more videos available on the product page.

Fusion 2.0 Beta 1 is available now, and the upgrade to the future version 2.0 will be free to all Fusion users.

ClearCube Spins Off Software Activities Into A New Company, VDIworks

May 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

ClearCube today announced that its software business is being spun-off and launched as an independent new company called VDIworks. ClearCube will continue to provide solutions for centralized desktop computing, including end-to-end desktop virtualization, while VDIworks will focus on software management platforms for creating, deploying and managing virtual desktop infrastructure. As independent companies, ClearCube and VDIworks intend to maximize their business potential and gain the flexibility to meet the demands of their respective target markets.

VDIworks and ClearCube have signed an OEM agreement whereby ClearCube will continue to market and promote the VDIworks software under the current Sentral VDI Management Software brand. The Sentral management software will continue to be an integrated component of ClearCube’s complete centralized desktop computing solutions. ClearCube customers will continue to be supported in their current license agreements with ClearCube. VDIworks will establish additional OEM relationships with third-party solutions vendors so they can deploy virtual desktop solutions to their customers.

VDIworks will target the emerging market of desktop virtualization. The new company has received seed funding from current ClearCube investors and will be seeking additional funding to support its “rapid growth and high market demand”.

“ClearCube and VDIworks provide solutions within growth markets, and ClearCube’s investors recognized this and decided separating the technologies would allow each entity to fully capitalize on the market opportunities,” said Rick Hoffman, former president of ClearCube and now president of VDIworks. “Both companies immediately offer mature products and can point to successful customer installations. Both companies benefit from established internal development and sales teams. As a result, both companies present superior solutions that can provide rapid return on investment while improving enterprise security and IT management capabilities.”

ClearCube also announced today that former COO Randy Printz has been promoted to president and chief executive officer. His team includes Doug Layne, worldwide vice president of sales and marketing, and Jeana Thomas, senior director of alliances and channels.

In other news, ClearCube has issued a second press release touting its “record growth in 2007 and exceptional financial performance in Q1 of 2008”. ClearCube achieved 38 percent business growth in the second half over the first half of 2007, and 34 percent increase in net revenue in Q1 of 2008 over Q1 of 2007.

VirtualLogix Introduces VLX vHA, Aims To Lead In High-Availability Assurance For Virtualized Environments

May 5, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VirtualLogix today released VLX vHA, which it claims is the industry’s first solution that enables high-availability (HA) assurances for communications equipment utilizing virtualization. VLX vHA comes integrated with VLX for Network Infrastructure and aims to increase system availability without the cost and scalability restrictions of traditional solutions.

“There are growing requirements to increase the up-time of all types of communications equipment in today’s competitive environment. Yet traditionally, high-availability techniques have been mostly applied in high-end core networks due to complexity and hardware cost,” said Mark Milligan, Vice President of Marketing at VirtualLogix. “Now, VLX vHA enables our customers to take full advantage of high availability combined with virtualization. Built on an open architecture supporting standard Service Availability Forum interfaces, VLX vHA also provides a viable option for organizations looking to utilize their existing high-availability software in the new, virtualized, multicore environment.”

VLX vHA offers fault recovery and system management services across virtual and physical domains, allowing companies to increase the availability of communications equipment and other critical embedded systems. vHA also offers scalability with wide range capabilities from hardware and guest OS management to the restart of applications from a known state. This allows the introduction of the appropriate level of availability based on system requirements.

VLX vHA is available as an option with VLX for Network Infrastructure real-time virtualization software.

[Source: LinuxDevices]