News

Release: New Version Of KACE Virtual Kontainers

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

KACE, a systems management appliance company, today announced a new version of its application virtualization technology, KACE Virtual Kontainers.

New functionality, including easier patching and expanded application compatibility, positions the company at the forefront of application virtualization innovation and offers users an even easier to implement and maintain solution, leading to significant time and money savings.

Application virtualization, which allows users to run applications without the need for a traditional installation, is notoriously known for high-costs and complexity. KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0, offered via a single, integrated Web-based console, provides users with an easier, faster and significantly less expensive alternative for creating, deploying and managing virtual applications.

This major new technology release includes considerable improvements in the areas of application compatibility and support for updating and patching virtual applications. And with the ability to publish applications via self-service user portal, KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0 reduces administrative overhead even more.

KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0 pushes traditional application virtualization technologies to a new level by extending the benefits beyond the features typically associated with these solutions. Some of the new features in the new KACE Virtual Kontainers release include:

Improved application compatibility by way of a new signature update service which allows for KACE to respond more rapidly than any other application virtualization product when it comes to adding support for changes to Windows, middleware and challenging new applications;
The ability to easily update, patch or modify an existing virtual application package directly, without the need to start over with each required change;
Self-service user portal support so administrators can provide virtual applications via a simple Web-based interface, saving time associated with ad-hoc deployments and keeping user desktops uncluttered with software they do not need;
Command line support for administrators that prefer to script operations themselves, including the ability to create a Kontainer package from the command line.

KACE Virtual Kontainers 2.0 is available immediately. Pricing starts at $3,995 per 100 computers. Volume discounts are available.

KACE saves its customers both time and money. Systems managers are increasingly forced to wear many hats throughout the day to work on a myriad of IT functions. KACE helps consolidate these functions by providing a single appliance for all projects, while delivering easy-to-use, comprehensive systems management that is affordable. The KBOX family of systems management and deployment appliances fulfills all of the systems management needs of an enterprise, from initial computer deployment to ongoing management and retirement.

VMware To Debut New Products: VMware Go and vCenter Product Family

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware is launching two new products at VMworld, its annual conference, tomorrow.

The first is a suite of VMware’s existing virtualization solutions, called the VMware vCenter Product Family. The suite is built on top of VMware’s vSphere 4 to help enterprises create and maintain dynamic and flexible IT infrastructures.

VMware says that they have received an overwhelmingly positive response the latest generation of vSphere 4, with approximately 75 percent of customers planning to upgrade to VMware vSphere 4 within the next six months.

VMware’s second product launch is targeted towards small to medium sized businesses. VMware Go is a free beta service that makes it simple for clients to get started with virtualizing their applications. A web-based service, VMware Go will lets companies run multiple operating systems and applications on a single server, helping SMBs to spend less money on hardware, energy and server administration.

Via Between the lines.

NetQoS Launches Network-Based Virtualization Management Offerings

August 31, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

For all its benefits, server virtualization masks critical data that IT organizations need to ensure optimal delivery of applications across the network to end users. With new virtualization capabilities, the NetQoS Performance Center unearths this data and combines it with network and application performance information from the physical environment to show how well the entire infrastructure is supporting application delivery.

The NetQoS Performance Center bridges the gap between the virtual and physical environments by collecting and analyzing application response times, traffic flows via Cisco IOS NetFlow, and device performance statistics within multi-tiered, virtual hosts as well as into and out of the virtual environment. The new offerings include:

· NetQoS Response Time Virtual Collector: This software only version of the NetQoS Performance Center application response time monitoring capability runs as a virtual machine in VMware, Microsoft or Citrix environments to provide visibility into the communications between each virtual server residing on the same physical machine. In addition, the Virtual Collector monitors the traffic between each virtual machine and the physical infrastructure.

· NetQoS NetFlow Reporting for Virtualized Environments: The NetQoS Performance Center network traffic analysis capability now supports NetFlow statistics exported from the Cisco Nexus 1000v and the VMware vSwitch to help network groups monitor how virtual application traffic is impacting network performance.

· NetQoS Performance Center Integration with VMware vCenter: The NetQoS Performance Center retrieves device health information from the VMware vCenter API to report data such as the number of virtual machines running on a host, CPU utilization, disk usage, and memory utilization.

By integrating the performance data from these three sources in one management console, the NetQoS Performance Center is uniquely positioned to help IT organizations understand how applications are performing across the infrastructure and better manage virtualization. For instance, the ability to measure the before and after impact of infrastructure changes, isolate the source of latency to the network, application or server, and predict bandwidth consumption will help IT organizations solve problems faster and make more informed decisions about which applications to virtualize. In addition, correlating device health information alongside response time and traffic flow information in the NetQoS Performance Center is important as network groups troubleshoot latency and other performance issues in real time.

Is The Virtualization Market “Up For Grabs”?

August 28, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Read-worthy article from InternetNews writer Stuart J. Johnston, claiming that the virtualization market is up for grabs based on a report by Information Technology Intelligence (ITIC), who surveyed 700 corporations worldwide and found that server virtualization deployments “have remained strong throughout the ongoing 2009 economic downturn.”

Among its conclusions are that Microsoft, despite a late start in most virtualization markets, is becoming the come-from-behind favorite, at least in the area of application virtualization.

“Thanks to the summer release of the new Hyper-V with live migration capabilities, with Hyper-V 2.0, Microsoft has substantially closed the feature/performance gap between itself and VMware’s ESX Server,” the report states.

Another top level take away for Microsoft: “Three out of five — 59 percent of the survey respondents — indicated their intent to deploy Hyper-V 2.0 within the next 12 to 18 months.”

“With Hyper-V, Microsoft has a very credible, competitive offering,” DiDio toldInternetNews.com. “Hypervisors, in general, have been commoditized” due to Microsoft’s commodity approach to virtualization.

For instance, Citrix is the market leader in desktop virtualization with a 19 percent market share.

In the same market, Microsoft holds a 15 percent share and VMware has 8 percent.

That doesn’t mean, however, that Microsoft will have the whole pie.

Full report is here.

DataCore Software Adds Support for Fibre Channel over Ethernet

August 28, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

DataCore Software, a provider of storage virtualization, business continuity and disaster recovery software solutions, today announced support for native Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) connectivity for its SANmelody and SANsymphony storage virtualization solutions.

The company has added the Emulex and Brocade FCoE converged network adapters (CNAs) and Cisco Nexus 5000 Series switches to its FCoE-qualified support list. Additional FCoE CNAs will be announced over the next year. FCoE software drivers are currently available for Microsoft Windows and VMware ESX / vSphere.

FCoE is changing the way customers can use Ethernet in their data centers. DataCore customers can transition to an FCoE infrastructure while still supporting existing Fibre Channel investments – meaning greater choice and flexibility while building out their storage networks. Customers can run both FCoE and IP traffic through the same port and on the same wire, eliminating the need and expense for separate SAN and LAN adapters and cables. The ability to run FC protocol over existing Ethernet cabling is significant for network administration. It means that administrators do not need to have a separate network for running Fibre Channel protocol.

FCoE is primarily used to consolidate back-end cables in a data center – enabling network administrators to use the Ethernet infrastructure for FC and IP protocols. What is needed to make it work is a converged network adapter (CNA), which serves as an FCoE card, along with a network switch. For storage, this connects to DataCore-powered SANs using Ethernet networks – thereby connecting application servers to the virtual storage pool as easily as you would connect your desktop to a printer.