News

Today, VMware unveiled the VMware Express during its inaugural stop at the 2010 VMware Partner Exchange in Las Vegas, NV.

This mobile datacenter, demo environment and briefing center has been built to bring VMware solutions directly to our customers across the USA and Canada during the 2010 Virtualization Tour. The VMware Express is sponsored by Cisco, EMC, Dell, MDS, NetApp, Xsigo, ChipPC, Amulet Hotkey and Teradici.

There are 5 demo stations covering both VMware desktop and server virtualization solutions.

Customers will have the unique opportunity to get hands on and dig deep into solutions with VMware Experts. There are demos highlighting the following products and solutions:

VMware View

• Best User Experience – Highlighting the power of the PCoIP display protocol to deliver a rich user experience, perfectly adapted for the network connection and end-point device.
• Follow-Me Desktop – Enabling immediate access to desktops, applications and data while ensuring a consistent user experience across sessions and endpoint devices.
• Access Across Boundaries – Providing access to desktops, applications and data anytime, anywhere regardless of network availability.
• Windows 7 Migration – Reducing the costs and complexity associated with desktop and application migration.

Wind River today released an updated version of Wind River Hypervisor, its embedded virtualization solution for single and multicore processors.

The new Wind River Hypervisor 1.1 release supports the latest Intel processors and enables new inter-virtual machine communication capabilities. Additionally, debugging of virtual boards is now supported by the latest version of Wind River On-Chip Debugging.

Wind River Hypervisor makes it easier for customers to consolidate systems and adopt virtualization and multicore technology in embedded devices. New features of Wind River Hypervisor include:

• Support for the latest Intel microarchitecture codename Nehalem-based processors, such as the Intel® Xeon® processor 5500 series as well as Intel Core i5 processor and Intel Core i7 processor utilizing advanced virtualization hardware assist capabilities.
• Integration with Wind River’s industry leading operating systems, including the latest versions of VxWorks and Wind River Linux, while also supporting other operating systems for greater flexibility.
• Additional capabilities for inter-virtual machine communication, including support for MIPC (multicore/multi-OS interprocess communication), and virtual network and serial ports.
• When used in conjunction with recently released Wind River On-Chip Debugging 3.2, optimized for development of multicore, multi-OS and virtualized environments, developers can debug the most complex system-level issues such as race conditions, memory corruption and core synchronization.

Wind River plans to broaden processor support for existing processor architectures, along with introducing additional processor architectures, including Freescale QorIQ, to Wind River Hypervisor throughout this year.

Multicore and virtualization are changing the way the embedded device market develops next-generation devices by providing more processing power, while lowering energy consumption, which can lead to a dramatic reduction in bill-of-material cost. First launched in June 2009, Wind River Hypervisor allows device software developers to take advantage of multicore and virtualization to configure unicore and multicore processors quickly and easily, thereby decreasing time-to-market for next-generation devices.

Wind River Hypervisor is a type 1 embedded hypervisor featuring a small footprint, minimal latency for device access, plus deterministic capabilities and optimizations for maximum performance. Wind River Hypervisor supports a variety of different processor architectures, taking advantage of hardware virtualization support when applicable. Embedded developers are utilizing hypervisors to enable the replacement of multiple boards or CPUs with a single board and/or a single CPU, create innovative new devices that leverage multiple operating systems and reduce complexity and hence risk when integrating multicore processors.

Champion Cloud Services, a unit of IT services delivery provider Champion Solutions Group, today announced a data recovery program that promises to remake the Disaster Recovery (DR) realm: “Cloud Continuity” DR services.

Leveraging the groundbreaking benefits of cloud computing, Champion’s Cloud Continuity services allow enterprises—especially growing mid-market businesses—to utilize an on-demand DR capability that delivers exactly the amount of IT resources needed, at the very time they’re needed most.

Unlike traditional disaster recovery paradigms, Champion’s Cloud Continuity solution requires no expensive outlays for a Disaster Recovery infrastructure comprised of defined hardware and software. In the event of an anticipated emergency, the infrastructure is “turned on” and automatically synchronizes with the data for full application availability; afterward it is restored into the business’ onsite, primary infrastructure. Customers pay only for the resources used during the disaster incidence.

Because every customer’s Disaster Recovery requirements are different, Champion Cloud Services is able to set a customized monthly DR fee based on the customer’s Recovery Time Objective (minimum acceptable downtime) and Recovery Point Objective (age of restored files).

DynamicOps today announced that it has enhanced its Virtual Resource Manager (VRM) software with NetApp® FlexClone technology, creating a fully-automated virtual desktop solution that significantly reduces desktop provisioning times and associated storage costs.

This new version of VRM is combined with a specialized NetApp module that leverages and orchestrates the FlexClone technology of NetApp arrays that are based on the NetApp Data ONTAP® operating system, including the IBM N series and N series Gateways.

The solution reduces the storage capacity needed for virtual desktops by as much as 50%.(1) This is accomplished by eliminating performance problems associated with multiple systems booting simultaneously and by providing an integrated operations management console for administrators and desktop support that also incorporates visibility for these groups with capacity management and charge-back metrics. At the same time, desktop support staff has the ability to rapidly provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops in a controlled and automated fashion.

With the FlexClone technology, VRM is a turnkey solution to rapidly provision virtual desktops in an automated, space-efficient manner, while reducing the operational cost of maintaining and supporting a large virtual infrastructure. Without VRM, IT organizations are required to make trade-offs between performance, cost, and agility, thereby making it difficult to justify large-scale virtual desktop deployments.

VRM with NetApp FlexClone technology is available immediately.

Jinan Yinquan Technology , one of the wholly-owned subsidiaries of China VoIP & Digital Telecom, today announced that it has launched its integrated datacenter and desktop virtualization solutions in Shandong University of Finance (the SDUF), a well-known finance university in Shandong Province.

Desktop virtualization separates a personal desktop computer from the physical machine through a client-server computing model. The resulting “virtualized” desktop is stored on a remote central server, instead of on the local storage of a remote client. Thus, when users work from their remote desktops, all the programs, applications, processes, and data are maintained and run centrally.

This solution can help users reduce cost and facilitate management, achieving higher energy-savings, lower emissions and more environmentally-friendly goals.Yinquan will provide SDUF with world-leading technology in the comprehensive datacenter solutions. It will help SDUF reduce investment and operating expenses, lowering the total cost of ownership. It will also help reduce the required number of servers in the datacenter, resulting in higher energy-savings, lower emissions and more environmentally-friendly effects.

Virtustream today announced that two senior executives have earned the coveted VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) certification. Sean Jennings, vice president, managed services and Matt Theurer, vice president, professional services were two of the first five technology professionals welcomed into the elite group of architects leading virtualization implementations around the world.

In addition to holding VMware Certified Professional (VCP) certifications on VMware vSphere 4 and its prior versions, each expert has taken the extra steps of passing both the Enterprise Administration Exam and the Design Exam, as well as successfully defending a VMware infrastructure design and implementation plan.VCDX is an advanced certification developed for design architects of enterprise deployments running on the VMware platform. Those who earn this certification have demonstrated their expertise in virtualization and their ability to design and architect a virtualization strategy while considering the entire data center and a company’s business needs.

Leveraging nearly a decade of virtualization expertise from Jennings, Theurer and other executives, Virtustream is helping its clients actualize the enterprise cloud by delivering unique cloud computing solutions backed by world-class service level agreements.

To ensure efficient adoption and utilization of cloud computing, Virtustream delivers a host of professional services for strategy and integration spanning all the layers of virtualization. Matt Theurer has been designing and deploying IT solutions for 20 years, architecting IT solutions to solve real world challenges for companies ranging in size from tens of users to tens of thousands of users. He was one of the first individuals ever certified on the VMware platform and holds many industry certifications from Cisco, EMC and Microsoft.

Sean Jennings has expanded Virtustream’s network of industry partners to offer clients a variety of options for application hosting, utilizing tools from industry leading vendors and Virtustream’s own unique cloud platform. Jennings has more than 20 years of experience enabling commercial and government enterprises of all sizes to gain efficiencies and competitive advantage through the design and deployment of creative, forward-looking IT solutions. He has earned numerous certifications from Checkpoint, EMC, HP/Compaq/DEC, Microsoft, Novell and VMware.