News

VM6 Software, provider of all-in-one IT virtualization infrastructure software, today announced the launch of its global partner program.

VM6 Software is providing value-added resellers (VARs) and system integrators (SIs) an opportunity to quickly expand into the fast-growing virtualization market for small to medium businesses (SMBs), as well as remote and branch offices.

VM6 Software provides SMBs and remote and branch offices a comprehensive solution for server consolidation, high availability, provisioning and virtual machine management. By focusing on previously unaddressed markets, VM6 Software’s global partner program enables channel partners to expand their product portfolios, increase their professional services revenue and differentiate themselves from competitors.

By launching the global partner program, VM6 Software plans to increase its reach into the virtualization and virtualization management markets by attracting new partners with established customer bases and industry expertise who focus primarily in the SMB space. Benefits to partners include:

• In-depth sales and technical training on VM6 Software solutions;
• Joint marketing programs and campaigns;
• Redistribution of all generated leads to channel partners for closing; and
• A fully integrated opportunity registration program that allows partners to register their deals directly into VM6 Software’s CRM tool and get additional discounts.

Prior to offering its solution VM6 VMex, VM6 Software was a virtualization systems integrator.

As such, the company understands the requirements reseller and integration partners need to provide expert service and support to end users. VM6 VMex leverages Microsoft Hyper-V to create one solution for SMBs and remote offices to provision, consolidate, manage and protect all workloads without the need for expensive hardware or storage area networks (SANs).

Xen.org announced the release of the Xen Cloud Platform (XCP) 0.5, a complete open-source cloud infrastructure platform with a powerful management toolstack based on open APIs, support for multi-tenancy, QoS and detailed metrics for consumption based charging.

The XCP 0.5 bits have been tested extensively (including 100,000s of CPU-hours) and are considered suitable for production use.

XCP 0.5 contains the following features:
* xen 3.4.2
* linux 2.6.27
* openvswitch
* fully signed windows PV drivers
* improved SR-IOV support
* heterogeneous machine resource pool support
* templates for many different guest types (including latest Ubuntu, Debian)
* full-featured enterprise-class management toolstack
** multi-host resource pools
** live VM snapshots, checkpoints, migration
** disaster recovery support
** flexible storage, networking, host power management
** event tracking, progress notification
** performance monitoring and alerting
** XMLRPC-based API and powerful CLI

XCP-unstable development has been happening in parallel with the stabilization of XCP 0.5 and there are lots of cool new features in the pipeline.

What’s coming next in XCP-unstable:
* automatic weekly builds on xen.org
* xen 4.0
* linux 2.6.32
* libxenlight integration
* new vhd-based storage management service
* local disk storage optimizations
* DRBD integration
* network performance improvements
* improved support for boot-from-SAN (including multipath)

GroundWork Open Source, provider of commercial open source system and network management software, today announced the general availability of GroundWork Monitor Enterprise 6.2.

The latest release of GWOS’ flagship product GroundWork Monitor provides new capabilities for customers operating complex monitoring solutions including user controls for service providers, improved monitoring for VMware ESX and vCenter, a new Java monitoring agent.

In addition, Release 6.2 includes integration with Neustar’s Webmetrics external performance monitoring solution, enabling users to compare their end-users’ experience with internal performance measures.

Features included in GroundWork Monitor Enterprise 6.2 include:

– Role-based Infrastructure Views —Enables administrators to restrict the items a user can see based on their organization, expertise, location or job function. Role-based views provide end-users with the information they need and enables disparate departments to share a single installation of GroundWork Monitor Enterprise.

– Updated VMware Monitoring — Improved support for VMware’s ESX and vCenter-line of server virtualization solutions.

– Java Monitoring — New Java monitoring agent that provides deep insight into Java application servers and containers. Best practice monitoring profiles for RedHat JBoss, Tomcat and IBM Websphere are included.

– Dashboard Customization — New dashboard customization options and finer grained controls make GroundWork Monitor more powerful when used in a Network Operations Center (NOC).

10ZiG Technology, developer of Thin Clients and Network Appliances, today announced that their Thin Clients are the first to ship with Windows Embedded Standard 7.

Windows Embedded Standard 7 (WES 7), the componentized form of the Windows 7 operating system, provides improvements in security, management and end user experience. Features include support for Windows® Aero® interface, video viewing in Windows Media Player 12, IE8, multi-monitor support and bi-directional audio.

The new Easy Print technology enables users to print to local printers without the need to install printer drivers on the server and allows for a more consistent printing experience between local and remote sessions. In addition, support for a more feature-rich RDP 7 offering accelerated bitmap rendering, multi-media redirection streaming, and network topology awareness allows for an enhanced experience in a virtual desktop environment.

Two new 10ZiG V-Series Thin Clients are available with Windows Embedded Standard 7. These units, the RBT-617v and XTC-6000v, are energy efficient, flexible, powerful and optimized for desktop virtualization with VDI clients pre-installed including Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View 4 with PCoIP, or Quest vWorkspace.

10ZiG’s Thin Clients are available for purchase through 10ZiG’s resellers. Proof-of-concept demos are available.

Vizioncore , a wholly owned subsidiary of Quest Software, today announced the availability of a new version of vConverter , enabling virtual-to-physical, virtual-to-virtual and physical-to-virtual server conversions. vConverter now supports Microsoft Hyper-V systems in addition to VMware environments.

vConverter now enables the conversion of physical systems into an image file on virtual servers within either Hyper-V or VMware environments as well as within mixed environments. Administrators can also convert virtual machines between VMware and Hyper-V systems.

The new virtual-to-physical recovery capability allows administrators to restore virtual images onto physical systems. This means that physical systems can be converted, protected, replicated and recovered on virtual systems with the option to recover the images back to physical systems.

vConverter Features:

• Converts physical systems into virtual machines (VM) quickly and easily
• Converts VM images between VMware and Hyper-V platforms
• Recovers physical systems from virtual machine images
• Enables physical systems to be converted, protected, replicated and recovered on virtual systems and physical systems
• Applies image-based data protection to physical systems
• Unifies protection and recovery of physical and virtual systems
• Leverages virtual infrastructures for physical data protection
• Allows for the flexible adoption of strategies for virtual servers
• Facilitates trouble-shooting of physical systems with virtual infrastructure

This new version of vConverter is being offered with a free 90-day trial key, after which a full version can be purchased for $299 per physical system.

Compushare announced today that they have opened a data center in Chicago to enhance their Critical Systems Recovery solution. This disaster recovery solution provides rapid failover, backup and full “point in time” restoration of servers in 60 minutes or less. It will be considered a hot site for organizations and institutions across the country.

Compushare will now be able to host a secondary appliance at this highly secure facility that will allow for nightly replication of server images through virtualization. In the event of a declared disaster, Compushare can now recover critical servers to a virtual server and provide secure connectivity via the Internet from an alternate site of choice.

This new feature will  benefit financial organizations with only a single location or multiple offices in close proximity to each other who would have a higher probability of a local or regional disaster impacting their entire company’s ability to continue to conduct business