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VKernel Announces Availability For ESX Virtualization Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer

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VKernel Corporation, a provider of virtual appliances for managing virtual server environments, today announced general availability of its Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer Virtual Appliance. Other than being a mouthful, the Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer immediately identifies current and future capacity bottleneck issues in VMware ESX environments, which can lower the cost of each virtual machine while ensuring
higher performance.

VKernel

From the press release (PDF):

“VKernel’s patent-pending technology continuously monitors CPU, memory, and storage utilization trends in VMware ESX environments across hosts, clusters, and resource pools. VKernel’s quick-to-install virtual appliance model gives users a simple, single-screen management dashboard that displays detailed capacity information to effectively plan for the addition of new hosts, clusters, and resource pools. By customizing capacity thresholds, users can receive alerts via email and SNMP.”

“When properly detecting capacity bottlenecks, organizations can increase performance and reduce downtime problems that lead to escalating business and IT costs and negative perceptions of virtualization within business units,” said Alex Bakman, founder and CEO of VKernel. “The real challenge for IT staffs is finding a solution that helps them identify capacity bottlenecks without wasting countless man-hours sifting through hundreds of management reports. Within minutes, our Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer can show exactly where capacity bottlenecks are today and where problems are likely to occur to maximize virtual machine utilization.”

The VKernel Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer Virtual Appliance is currently available with pricing starting at $199 per CPU socket. You can download a full production 14-day trial version of the VKernel virtual appliance here.

[Source: Server Virtualization Blog]

Transitive Welcomes IBM Platform Unification

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Transitive Corporation, a US-based provider of cross-platform virtualization software that enables the execution of applications across diverse computing platforms, today welcomed IBM‘s unification of its former System i and System p enterprise server families into a common Power Systems product line.

Transitive

The company claims this unification represents a significant market expansion for the PowerVM Lx86 solution that was developed for IBM by Transitive. PowerVM Lx86 is available for all of IBM’s new Power Systems models, which offer POWER6 processors, simplified pricing, increased application choice and reduced energy and administration costs.

The IBM platform unification means that customers using previous System i servers can boost performance and energy efficiency by moving their mission-critical workloads to the new systems (including cost-effective blade options) while continuing to use the same applications and operating systems they have depended on for two decades. These customers can also take advantage of IBM’s PowerVM virtualization — which allows them to create up to 80 virtual partitions per server — as well as using the PowerVM Lx86 cross-platform virtualization solution to run thousands of additional mainstream Linux/x86 applications on the very same Power Systems servers.

“IBM continues to work very closely with Transitive to address the needs of customers interested in reducing server sprawl and saving money by consolidating multiple diverse workloads onto Power Systems servers,” said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Power Systems. “By making PowerVM Lx86 available to the unified Power Systems customer base, the universe of applications that can easily be consolidated by these customers increases beyond AIX, i and Linux on Power native applications to include virtually all Linux/x86 applications as well.”

[Source: Marketwire]

Wyse Launches New Class of Desktop Appliance Solutions Designed for Citrix XenDesktop

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Wyse Technology today announced that it will bring to market a new class of appliances, specifically designed for the new Citrix XenDesktop product line (due to be unveiled soon at Citrix Synergy 2008). By combining Wyse’s new appliances with the desktop delivery capabilities found in Citrix XenDesktop, enterprises will “have a comprehensive solution for delivering desktops to office workers with the best user experience, simplest administration and lowest cost of ownership”, according to the press release.

Wyse

“The Wyse Viance family of devices provide unique features beyond what’s currently available that deliver easy set-up time and management, fast performance, rich multimedia experience, broad USB peripheral compatibility, multi-display support, and quick access to online end-user support. In addition, these appliances only use 13 to 19 watts of power making them a very “green” solution.”

“Wyse has partnered with Citrix in the past to sell thin clients for Terminal Services and Presentation Server, but now a new, bigger opportunity has emerged” said John Abbott, chief analyst of the 451 Group. “Desktop virtualization all but forces an appliance model onto the desktop — users typically aren’t keen to control a virtual PC image with a physical PC. Citrix and Wyse are in a good position to capitalize on the fast-growing VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) sector and push thin clients into the broader marketplace for the first time.”

Entry-level pricing of the new Wyse Viance appliances starts at $399.00 with volume shipments beginning this quarter. Existing Wyse thin clients that support XenDesktop are available today with prices starting at $299.00.

[Source: EarthTimes]

LeCroy Announces I/O Virtualization Support In The PCI Express Summit Protocol Analyzer

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LeCroy Corporation, a supplier of oscilloscopes and serial data test solutions, announced today a new analysis package for its Summit T2-16 Protocol Analyzer that will support testing and debugging in I/O virtualization-based applications.

LeCroy

LeCroy aims to support the new industry Single-Root I/O Virtualization standard (SR-IOV 1.0) and the Multi-Root I/O Virtualization standard (MR-IOV). Both technologies are PCI-SIG workgroup extensions to the PCI Express standard that make it possible for a single PCI Express system to behave simultaneously as several different machines using shared hardware.

The industry is developing this technology for several reasons, including an increase in cores per socket, reducing network costs, increasing system resiliency, and eliminating redundancy in peripherals and ports across network infrastructures.

“Virtualization is a key trend in enterprise, and the PCI-SIG’s Single-Root I/O Virtualization (SR-IOV) technology nicely complements Intel’s own Directed I/O (VT-d) technology in providing higher performance I/O for virtualized systems,” said Jim Pappas, Director of Initiative Marketing for Intel Corporation. “Tools such as the PCI Express I/O Virtualization analysis package from LeCroy will help companies reduce the complexity of development.”

LeCroy protocol analyzers have been at the forefront of PCI Express development. All LeCroy protocol analyzers feature a hierarchical display, real-time statistics, protocol traffic summaries, detailed error reports, powerful scripting, and the ability to create user-defined test reports which allow developers to troubleshoot intricate problems and finish their projects on time.

[Source: Businesswire]

VMware Releases Upgraded Virtual Disk Development Kit 1.0

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Recently, VMware quietly released version 1.0 of its Virtual Disk Development Kit, a collection of C libraries, code samples, utilities, and documentation to help you create or access VMware virtual disk storage.

VMware

The release notes tell us this enables a wide range of solutions, including:

  • Creation of virtual machine disk files to store backup of physical images.
  • Read access to virtual disk to enable off-line centralized scanning of virtual machines for anti-virus.
  • Write access to virtual disk to enable off-line centralized patching of virtual machines.
  • Read access to virtual disk to enable off-line software package analysis of virtual machines.

    • The new API supports managing two kinds of disks; Managed Disks (local virtual diskfiles) and Hosted Disk (virtual disk files on you ESX/VMFS systems). This means the API will allow you to access disks remotely and opens a low of new opportunities for companies making virus scanning software, backup, forensic, etc.

    To obtain the software, navigate to the VMware Developer Center and under the heading SDKs and APIs, click Virtual Disk. For download you will need to provide your email address and registered password.

    The relevant VMware Community can be found here.

    [Source: Run-Virtual]

    HP Updates HP-UX, Introduces Four New Operating Environments

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    We missed this last week, but HP announcing four new operating environments (OEs) with the latest release of HP-UX 11i v3, Update 2, was just too big a deal not to cover.

    HP

    Designed to simplify UNIX deployments on HP Integrity servers, the new OEs enable customers to reduce costs and accelerate time to solution for immediate out-of-the-box productivity. They deliver fully integrated UNIX virtualization and high availability features, as well as a full range of HP software, with the HP-UX 11i operating system, in a single package.

    Users don’t have to buy the pre-packaged deals; they can just buy the OS and then add middleware products à la carte. But HP claims customers can save money by purchasing the packaged deals, as well as the time in not having to buy and install each separate feature they want.

    With the new update, the operating environments include Base, High Availability, Virtual Server, and Data Center. High-Availability and Virtual Server both have everything Base has, but with unique features to one another. High-Availability, for example, has HP Serviceguard, software that helps clustered server environments prevent downtime. The Virtual Server OE, meanwhile, has Virtual Server Environment, HP’s virtualization environment for its Unix servers.

    The latest release of HP-UX 11i v3 Update 2 also delivers improved performance. According to HP’s announcement, customers can achieve up to a 100 % increase in network speed, as well as continued acceleration of the mass storage stack, which controls I/O devices such as SCSI logical units. In addition, Update 2 simplifies blade management and consolidation while advancing multi-OS usability. The new release facilitates upgrades by enabling virtual partitions on v3 to combine HP-UX 11i v1, v2 with v3 on a single machine.

    [Source: SearchDataCenter.com]