Virtualization.com

Microsoft yesterday announced new investments around desktop virtualization technologies and solutions, including virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), to help organizations of all sizes increase flexibility, employee productivity and IT cost savings.

Microsoft outlined improvements that make it easier to access desktop virtualization.

More information on today’s announcement and Microsoft’s virtualization strategy is available here.

• New VDI promotions available for qualified customers to choose from today. Microsoft and Citrix Systems are offering the “Rescue for VMware VDI” promotion, which allows VMware View customers to trade in up to 500 licenses at no additional cost, and the “VDI Kick Start” promotion, which offers new customers a more than 50 percent discount off the estimated retail price. Eligibility and other details on the two promotions can be found at http://www.citrixandmicrosoft.com.
• Improved licensing model for virtual Windows desktop. Beginning July 1, 2010, Windows Client Software Assurance customers will no longer have to buy a separate license to access their Windows operating system in a VDI environment, as virtual desktop access rights now will be a Software Assurance benefit.
• New roaming use rights improve flexibility. Beginning July 1, 2010, Windows Client Software Assurance and new Virtual Desktop Access license customers will have the right to access their virtual Windows desktop and their Microsoft Office applications hosted on VDI technology on secondary, non-corporate network devices, such as home PCs and kiosks.
• Windows XP Mode no longer requires hardware virtualization technology. This change simplifies the experience by making virtualization more accessible to many more PCs for small and midsize businesses wanting to migrate to Windows 7 Professional or higher editions, while still running Windows XP-based productivity applications.
• Two new features coming in Windows Server 2008 R2 service pack 1. Microsoft Dynamic Memory will allow customers to adjust memory of a guest virtual machine on demand to maximize server hardware use. Microsoft RemoteFX will enable users of virtual desktops and applications to receive a rich 3-D, multimedia experience while accessing information remotely.
• New technology agreement with Citrix Systems. The companies will work together to enable the high-definitionHDX technology in Citrix XenDesktop to enhance and extend the capabilities of the Microsoft RemoteFX platform.

Pivot3 announced two new core products and enhancements to its full suite of scalable storage solutions today.

Pivot3 also unveiled the HardBank server, a ruggedized version of the MiniBank that is ideal for military, air-constrained and mobile applications that experience harsh environments with extreme dust, vibration and heat.

The Pivot3 MiniBank server individually handles up to 70 cameras with 2 – 8TB of RAID storage supporting VMS applications from more than 30 open systems partners. MiniBanks are easily configured together to support larger camera counts with up to 48TB of shared SAN storage and embedded VMS failover protection. It is designed for distributed environments typically found in retail, financial, educational and corporate markets.

The HardBank and MiniBank are both powered by the latest Intel Nehalem CPUs, which double VMS performance through the use of hyper-threading and pipelining. Both products are backed by Pivot3 world-class service and support, configuration assistance, and a three-year warranty.

The company also announced that a new Surveillance Feature Pack would be included free of charge with all systems. The Feature Pack includes RAID 6x, which protects data in the case of five simultaneous drive failures; a Recording Interruption Alarm that alerts users if displayed video is not being recorded; and Predictive Drive Sparing, which pre-emptively identifies bad drives before they fail.

Pivot3 will be demonstrating its new solutions at booth #6034 at the 2010 ISC West conference in Las Vegas, March 24-26, 2010. The MiniBank and HardBank will be the company’s first products offered through distribution.

VMware has announced the availability of VMware’s ThinApp 4.5 application virtualization solution.

ThinApp 4.5 enables rapid adoption of Microsoft Windows 7 in the enterprise by providing compatibility for legacy and custom applications across multiple Windows operating system environments. With ThinApp 4.5, enterprises can quickly migrate existing applications to new Windows operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 7, eliminating conflicts between operating environments, and extending the life of application investments.

VMware data shows that leveraging ThinApp 4.5 for application virtualization can reduce the costs associated with migration by as much as 25% while migrating systems up to 40% faster by accelerating the application compatibility, testing and deployment processes required for application migration.

VMware ThinApp 4.5 new advanced enterprise features include:

• Simplified application migration to Windows 7 — Eliminates costly recoding, reduces regression testing to accelerate application deployment to a new OS while minimizing risks of downtime.
• Broad Windows 64-bit support — supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows from NT to Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.
• Easy Upgrade from older ThinApp Applications with Relink — convert existing ThinApps to the new ThinApp 4.5 format without the need of associated project files for the applications.
• Advanced Performance Accelerator — reduced page file usage for virtual applications allows for quicker application invocation and reduces network bandwidth by as much as 50%.
• Secure Registry Journaling Protection — ensure registry file integrity and eliminate potential data corruption due to crash or system failure.
• Enhanced Community Support — enables sharing of application packaging status and techniques in the ThinApp Community Portal.

VMware ThinApp Application virtualization software isolates applications from the operating environment, increasing compatibility and manageability across multiple operating systems common in the enterprise. By enabling enterprises to manage and deliver applications from a central source, VMware ThinApp streamlines application security, updates, patches and performance while delivering applications instantly to nearly any device.

The result is significantly reduced application management costs of up to 60%. Increased compatibility across operating systems ensures investment protection for legacy and custom applications even as the underlying operating system changes. Enterprises considering upgrading to Windows 7 can avoid the costly process of recoding, retesting and recertifying existing applications on the new operating systems through application virtualization on VMware ThinApp.

VMware ThinApp 4.5 will be generally available on March 17, 2010, through VMware sales and the company’s extensive network of OEM partners and channel partners. Pricing for VMware ThinApp Suite is $5000.00. VMware ThinApp is also bundled in View Premier for $250 per concurrent user.

Virtustream, a privately held infrastructure services firm, today announced xStream, the first truly hybrid enterprise cloud platform that delivers cost and resource savings through flexible internal (private) and external (off-premise) cloud environments.

xStream is available as a dedicated or multi-tenant platform, managed or unmanaged, on and off premise, and it has the flexibility and elasticity built-in to accommodate a wide range of enterprise IT environments at any stage of virtualization adoption.

xStream increases operational efficiency and ROI and offers greater financial flexibility through its consumption-based pricing. Clients purchase the amount of infrastructure resources they need as multi-tiered workload infrastructure units with integrated High Availability and Disaster Recovery. The hybrid cloud environments are managed through a single, centralized subscription-based deployment, and offer end-to-end service-level agreements for those deployments. xStream’s self service personalized portal provides role-based access for administering, monitoring, controlling and reporting on the virtual private data center solution.

xStream’s patent-pending “on-boarding” process leverages deep expertise in virtualization and cloud computing with proprietary data collection and analysis tools that profile the application workloads and translate them into cloud-based resource requirements to deliver an optimized and tailored resource model. In this way, Virtustream’s cloud solutions are able to deliver a minimized total cost of ownership and a short-term return on investment based on decisions made at the onset of a project.

xStream is based on Virtustream’s track record of nearly a decade of providing virtualization solutions, and it serves as the foundation for additional offerings including professional services and managed services.

Virtustream’s xStream platform offers a number of additional differentiating features that deliver benefits and efficiencies to enterprise IT, including:

– Better resource utilization due to aggregate workload focus
– transformation and on-boarding toolkit
– Vendor agnostic approach to leverage best of breed hardware and software

xStream is available immediately and is priced on a subscription basis by contacting Virtustream.

SpringSource, a division of VMware, today unveiled a new website, TomcatExpert.com, a professionally managed Apache Tomcat resource library and community.

Developers, system administrators and web operations professionals that develop and operate Apache Tomcat can now obtain information from both committers and recognized leaders of Apache Tomcat.

Apache Tomcat is the world’s most widely used Java application server. SpringSource employees are responsible for 95 percent of the bug fixes to Apache Tomcat in the past two years and many Tomcat problem incidents are often identified and resolved by SpringSource before they reach the community forums, resulting in a 97 percent renewal rate for Tomcat support.

TomcatExpert.com was created by SpringSource, the leading provider of support, training and services for Apache technologies, including Apache Tomcat. The website is operated by development operations experts inside SpringSource and includes content from various experts across multiple industries. TomcatExpert.com is expected to be the single best resource for developers and operators who are running Apache Tomcat in large scale production environments. In addition to a deep knowledgebase of articles, this site includes discussions surrounding best practices, troubleshooting and the technology applications of the Apache Tomcat application server.

In addition to announcing TomcatExpert.com, SpringSource also recently introduced SpringSource tc Server Spring Edition, the best place to build and run Spring applications. Based on the popular Apache Tomcat server, tc Server Spring Edition provides a lightweight platform for running modern applications and is ideally-suited for the modern virtualized datacenter as well as internal and external cloud environments. The tc Server Spring Edition bridges the divide between development teams and IT operations by equipping them with tools to manage the health, performance and quality of their Spring applications. SpringSource tc Server 2.0 is expected to be generally available in early April 2010.