Partnerships

ScaleMP vSMP Foundation Standalone Now Supports Supermicro SuperBlade Server Platform

June 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

ScaleMP today announced the expansion of its vSMP Foundation Standalone software product line to support the Supermicro SuperBlade server platform. Using its virtualization technology, ScaleMP enables the aggregation of up to ten Intel dual-processor blades to build a shared memory symmetric multiprocessor (SMP). The company says customers will benefit from 80 Intel Xeon processing cores and up to 640 GB of memory, providing one of the densest high-end x86 system on the market today.

According to the press release, ScaleMP’s vSMP Foundation Standalone aggregation platform provides end customers with:

Large memory resource with up to 1TB of memory
Shared memory system coupled with up to 128 cores
Ease of use and lowest Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) for High Performance Computing (HPC) applications by aggregating multiple cluster nodes to a single system.

“Supermicro is pleased to see the ScaleMP leading-edge virtualization take advantage of the Supermicro SuperBlade,” said Alex Hsu, chief sales and marketing officer of Supermicro. “Our 10-blade SuperBlade system can scale from 2 to 20 processors (up to 80 cores), and up to 640 GB of RAM in a modular fashion, providing one of the densest high-end x86 systems on the market today in a space- and energy-efficient package, and making this solution very appealing to our customers.”

“ScaleMP teamed with Supermicro to deliver a high-end system that breaks new barriers in high-end computing,” said Shai Fultheim, Founder and CEO of ScaleMP. “This solution is very versatile and can address complex IT requirements from running commercial off-the-shelf HPC applications to homegrown applications that are compute- or memory-intensive, while providing reduced system management and operational complexity through a single image of the operating system.”

The SuperBlade from Supermicro touts enhanced system density in a 7U chassis, comes with an integrated InfiniBand switch, and can be housed in a 19” industry-standard rack, reducing the server footprint in the data center.

EMC Joins Daoli Trusted Infrastructure Research Project

June 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

EMC has joined the Daoli Trusted Infrastructure Project which conducts research into “trust and assurance” in cloud computing environments. EMC joins a growing global research team that today includes four of China’s leading technical universities including Fudan University, Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Tsinghua University, and Wuhan University. The team’s research will focus on cloud computing, trusted computing and virtualization.

The research will explore a variety of techniques that could be applied to secure the underlying physical location as well as broadly shared resources.

“The team is exploring the convergence of several key technologies including cloud computing, trusted computing and virtualisation,” said Burt Kaliski, director of EMC’s Innovation Network. “It will look at how they might be applied to provide high-assurance software environments inside and outside the enterprise. The Daoli Project will help us understand what our customers are likely to encounter in the future, and we look forward to sharing the knowledge this research will generate.”

Participants will share findings with researchers worldwide by way of a wiki hosted by Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Details of the research are expected to be discussed at the third annual Asia-Pacific Trusted Infrastructure Technologies Conference in China in October.

[Source: VNUnet]

Microsoft Officially Launches Server Virtualization Validation Program

June 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters 3 Comments

Microsoft‘s Server Virtualization Validation Program, which was first announced in November 2007, has become operational yesterday, with the patricipation of Citrix, Sun, Novell and Virtual Iron.

The Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP) is open to any vendor who delivers a virtualization machine solution that hosts Windows Server 2008, Windows 2000 Server Service Pack 4 and Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2 and subsequent service packs. The virtualization solution can either be hypervisor-based or a hosted solution.

The costs associated with joining the program include membership in TSAnet at Mission Critical level, so that the vendor and Microsoft can share support information, incremental costs, if any, to perform the validation tests, and a nominal expense (currently $250) to qualify each ‘configuration’ that is submitted for validation.

Stratus Technologies Releases Avance, Integrates With Citrix XenServer for Software-Based High-Availability Solution

June 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Stratus Technologies has announced (PDF) its Stratus Avance software, the company’s first software-based high availability (HA) product. Using embedded virtualization and running on ordinary x86 servers, Avance claims to provide levels of availability superior to, and without the complexity of, high-availability cluster solutions for Linux and Windows applications.

Stratus’ new software-based solution targets the SMB market as well as “edge” applications in large distributed networks where IT-staff support is minimal or non-existent. Prospective customers include medical practices, retail chains, small companies, branch banks, remote office or departmental computing, or distributed warehouses, distribution hubs or manufacturing facilities, for example.

Unlike other high-availability solutions, Avance HA positions itself as instant and automatic. Processing takes place on one server and data is simultaneously written to the mate, which can seamlessly assume
processing duties at any time should the primary server go out of service. If that happens, the affected server is removed from the network, alerts go out to user-defined recipients, a repair is made, and the server is brought back online to resynchronize with the active node with no downtime or data loss.

Avance is integrated with Citrix XenServer, and the U.S. list price for Avance software is $2,500 per server (including the license for Citrix XenServer). Avance software is available from Stratus channel partners and distributors, and in volume purchases directly from Stratus.

VMware Seals New Partnerships with Original Design Manufacturers

June 3, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

At Computex Taipei 2008, VMware announced new relationships with original design manufacturers (ODMs) ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan, adding to VMware’s current relationship with Supermicro announced in February 2008.

The relationships aim to enable channel partners and system builders to make virtualization available to a broader range of customers by certifying a wide range of one-, two- and four-socket server systems as well as blade servers for the VMware virtualization platform. The vendors are certifying their server systems for the VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisor, with certified systems expected to be available later this year.

“Working with the ODM community, we are helping our channel partner and system builder ecosystem bring new options for offering the transformative business advantages of VMware virtualization to a broader range of customers. Organizations of all sizes will benefit from these new relationships, particularly small and medium businesses looking for cost-effective ways to get more value from their investments, better protect their systems and data, and improve staff productivity,” said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions at VMware.

VMware ESX and ESXi are certified on server systems from Supermicro and available immediately. VMware ESX and ESXi are expected to be certified and available on server systems from ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan by the end of the third quarter of 2008.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

Virtual Iron And 2X Hook Up For Strategic Alliance

June 2, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

2X, provider of Thin Client and Server Based Computing Software, and Virtual Iron have announced a strategic alliance to provide a complete Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and Application Publishing Solution.

The 2X / Virtual Iron virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solution hosts individual Windows desktop PCs inside virtual machines running on servers in the data center. According to the join press release, this thin-client architecture is significantly easier to secure, maintain and support and it enables an organization’s complete Windows desktop environment to be securely accessed and serviced centrally.

The joint solution enables a fully isolated, customizable and secure environment where users are able to work with standard desktop operating systems and applications. Virtual desktops can be user-customized and provisioned on demand instantly, providing performance and user experience that are comparable to a desktop personal computer. This allows enterprises to replace physical desktops with virtual desktops for many usage scenarios such as call centers, offshore development, and secure, remote access.

[Source: Marketwire]