News

Xsigo Systems today announced that its Xsigo I/O Director, an award-winning virtual I/O technology, has been verified as Citrix Ready.

The Citrix Ready program helps customers identify third-party solutions that are recommended to enhance virtualization, networking and cloud computing solutions from Citrix. The Xsigo I/O Director completed a rigorous verification process to ensure compatibility with Citrix XenServer, providing confidence in joint solution compatibility.

The Citrix Ready program makes it easy for customers to identify complementary products and solutions that can enhance Citrix environments. Customers can be confident that the Xsigo I/O Director has successfully passed a series of tests established by Citrix, and can be trusted to work effectively with Citrix XenServer, an enterprise-class, cloud-proven server virtualization platform that delivers the critical features of live migration and centralized multi-server management.

Virtualization projects that use Citrix XenServer products coupled with virtual I/O technologies, like the Xsigo I/O Director, further optimize efficiencies and realize additional cost-savings benefits. The Xsigo I/O Director is an enterprise-class solution that provides LAN and SAN connectivity for up to hundreds of Citrix XenServer hosts. Under software control, any XenServer host may be configured with access to any LAN or SAN — “virtually”. Because vNICs and vHBAs can be configured on-the-fly without a server reboot, the server’s network connectivity is highly flexible and reconfigurable.

As a result, Citrix XenServer combined with Xsigo virtual I/O allow customers to receive predictable application performance by: dynamically allocating server bandwidth; isolating resources by assigning connectivity to a specific server; and achieving QoS by controlling both network and storage bandwidth to specific virtual NICs and HBAs.

VMware today announced that VMware Express will hit the road this week.

VMware Express is a state-of-the-art mobile datacenter, demo lab and briefing center designed to bring desktop virtualization and cloud computing solutions from VMware directly to customers and partners across the United States and Canada. VMware Express Virtualization Tour 2010 will stop in 150 cities and is sponsored by AMD, Cisco, Dell, EMC, MDS Micro, NetApp and Xsigo.

Unveiled at VMware Partner Exchange Feb. 8 in Las Vegas, Nev., VMware Express contains five demo stations showcasing VMware desktop and server virtualization solutions, highlighting VMware View, VMware vSphereand the VMware vCenter family of products. VMware Express also contains a fully equipped conference room for customers to discuss VMware solutions with technical experts, and it can enable lab environments on the fly both inside and outside the vehicle.

Zenoss, corporate sponsor of open source IT monitoring and management solution Zenoss Core, today announced the general availability of Zenoss Core version 2.5.2 under the GNU General Public License (V2).

As part of this release, Zenoss Core now offers new monitoring capabilities for the Xen Hypervisor via the Zenoss Xen monitoring plug-in, or Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack.

The Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack discovers guests on Xen para-virtualized hosts and provides monitoring of performance and availability via SSH. While the Xen hosts run on physical servers, the virtual guests are listed per host and linked back to any discovered instances on the network. With this ZenPack, administrators can quickly find the associated hosts and guests and monitor their Xen virtual infrastructure along side their entire physical, virtual, and cloud-based IT environment through a single interface.

Version 2.5.2 of Zenoss Core and the Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack are available for download from the Zenoss Open Source Community website:

• Zenoss Core 2.5.2: http://community.zenoss.org/community/download
• Xen Virtual Hosts ZenPack: http://bit.ly/9f374I

Layered Technologies yesterday launched its new partner program during the Channel Partners Conference & Expo 2010 in Las Vegas.

The new program is designed to engage partners who want to include the best dedicated hosting, virtualization and cloud computing technologies as part of the overall services and value delivered to their end-use customers.

Unlike typical channel programs that merely provide reseller discounts, Layered Tech’s new program assigns partners dedicated account managers, sales engineers and project managers. In addition, the program’s new, feature-rich Partner Portal will give partners the ability to order online, as well as access joint-marketing materials and training resources such as webinars to help partners sell more deals and close them quicker. The Partner Portal also will automatically authenticate partners when they sign in and will apply the proper pricing, discounts and special offers based on the partner’s Silver, Gold or Platinum status.

System integrators, VARs, SaaS providers and technology consultants will find Layered Tech’s new partner program particularly appealing because it streamlines and strengthens their ability to sell and deliver dedicated and virtual/cloud computing IT infrastructures and services.

One such partner is San Carlos, Calif.-based Burstorm, which focuses on helping businesses identify the best network, co-location, compute and storage cloud services to help solve complex business and IT problems. Conceived, founded and operated by technology visionaries who have helped lead companies such as Oracle, Yahoo, and Applied Materials, Burstorm became a Layered Tech partner so it could bring the best enterprise-class IT infrastructure solutions to its customers.

Founded in 2004, Layered Tech is a global provider of managed dedicated hosting, on-demand virtualization/cloud computing and Web services. With eight top-tier data centers around the world, the company’s infrastructure powers millions of Web sites and Internet-enabled applications including e-commerce and software as a service (SaaS). Layered Tech has seen rapid growth in recent years, and in 2009 was ranked in the top 15 percent of Deloitte LLP’s Technology Fast 500 and was also named to the Inc. magazine list of the 5,000 fastest-growing private companies.

Virtual Bridges, developers of the VERDE suite for desktop virtualization, and ZSL, an ISV and global software solutions and services provider, today announced a worldwide reseller agreement.

Under the terms of the agreement, the Virtual Bridges VERDE suite will be an integral component of ZSL’s PowerCube DaaS (Desktop as a Service) packaged service offering.

VERDE 3.0, announced in December 2009, is the only solution available today which runs in both networked and disconnected environments. In addition, VERDE uniquely offers the ability to run Linux and Windows guest sessions, enabling significant operating cost reductions over Windows-only environments. In partnership with the IBM Client for Smart Work and Canonical’s Ubuntu server and desktop offerings, VERDE also provides the choice of opting for a lower-cost cloud computing alternative.

PowerCube, launched in January at the 15th annual Lotusphere, was recognized as a finalist for the IBM Lotus Awards recognizing exceptional IBM PartnerWorld members, in the category of Best CTO Award. ZSL’s PowerCube DaaS is a virtualized desktop environment powered by IBM’s Client for Smart Work running on Linux desktops and virtually enabled using VERDE and available as private and public cloud offering and as on-premise model. ZSL offers PowerCube DaaS with suite of services that includes end- user segmentation, TCO analysis, BPM-based role identification and SOA to application migration, pilot and production deployment.

Currently, Virtual Bridges offers its product suite through a network of more than 40 partners. Today’s announcement marks a major step toward realizing its aggressive partner network development strategy. To learn more about joining Virtual Bridges’ rapidly expanding partner network, click here.

Intel and RealVNC have collaborated to embed VNC remote control technology in the all new 2010 Intel Core vPro processor family to provide IT professionals with a built-in, fully graphical remote control capability to facilitate problem diagnosis and resolution.

KVM and KVM-over-IP solutions have been available for many years in the form of external hardware add-ons.

Intel’s collaboration with RealVNC makes out-of-the-box KVM functionality a feature of Intel vPro Technology.

This innovative solution enables IT professionals, with PCs based on Intel vPro technology, to see the system as the user sees it providing an advantage even when client software is not functioning, or while PCs are rebooting, in BIOS setup screens or an operating system failure. In combination with the other Intel vPro Technology features, IT departments can troubleshoot and in many cases recover systems viewing the system as if they were physically there, helping reduce downtime to a minimum.Efficiency is improved as the need for desk-side visits is further reduced.

In previous case studies with customers remote control has reduced average desk-side visits by up to 50 percent. Intel KVM remote control promises to improve on that experience.