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VMware Debuts Open-Source Java and Python SDKs for VMware vCloud API

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VMware has announced availability of both Java and Python open-source software development kits (SDKs) for the  VMware vCloud API, making it easier for developers and independent software vendors (ISVs) to jumpstart their projects by flexibly leveraging private and public cloud services.  The new Python and Java SDKs for the VMware vCloud API will further simplify and accelerate developers’ ability to leverage VMware vCloud services.

VMware partners Cloudera and WebAppVM also announced new solutions for VMware vCloud Express developed with the VMware vCloud API and the SDKs.

Key open-source client libraries and tools for the VMware vCloud API are now available from standard cloud software resources including Dasein, jclouds and libcloud, underscoring the strong interest from the open-source community in supporting the VMware vCloud Initiative. These new libraries and tools will help make the VMware vCloud API more accessible to a large and diverse set of developers, ISVs and solution partners. For ISVs, these libraries combined with the VMware vCloud API are standardizing and simplifying the integration path to public clouds offered through VMware vCloud Express providers.

Cloudera is an active libcloud contributor and uses libcloud in its Hadoop offering for VMware vCloud Express, and WebAppVM leverages jclouds for its VMware vCloud Express solution. The Cloudera Distribution for Hadoop allows users to store, integrate and analyze data inexpensively and easily by leveraging VMware vCloud Express and the VMware vCloud API to dynamically provision resources, process jobs and deprovision resources. The WebAppVM solution enables users to configure and scale a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offering on VMware vCloud Express so they can rapidly on-board and monitor cloud-based applications.

Other open-source tools are also VMware vCloud-enabled through the jclouds plugin. Ant, an open-source Java build tool, leverages this plugin to enable open-source tools and the developer ecosystem to gain access to the VMware vCloud API. Developers using Apache Maven, a software project management and comprehension tool, can also use the jclouds plugin to extend their existing projects to VMware vCloud Express.  All these tools are ready for developers to use in their standard workflows and leverage VMware vCloud Express. VMware has also made a number of open-source contributions to the Cloud Tools project, which powers the SpringSource Cloud Foundry service, enabling Java developers to deploy, test, and manage applications for VMware environments via VMware vSphere and the VMware vCloud API.

Release: Symantec NetBackup 7

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Symantec has announced NetBackup 7 to help enterprise-level organizations protect, store and recover information with greater efficiency and reliability through a single, unified platform.

The latest release of NetBackup enables organizations to simplify information management while reducing data stores and network traffic by integrating deduplication everywhere — at the client, media server and on third party hardware appliances — thus reducing overall costs. NetBackup also delivers complete virtual machine protection to increase backup and recovery speeds of data within virtual environments and adds new backup replication for fast, cost-effective disaster recovery.

With NetBackup 7, Symantec delivers on its data deduplication everywhere strategy to help organizations reduce overall storage consumption in physical and virtual environments by adding data deduplication technology into the backup client and at the media server. By integrating deduplication closer to the data source at the client, NetBackup increases the speed and efficiency of backups in remote offices, data centers and virtual environments and reduces network traffic by up to 90 percent. Deduplication built into the backup client eliminates the need for additional specialized hardware and configuration since customers just need to upgrade to the latest version to realize dramatic storage savings.

NetBackup also helps enterprises to better leverage third party storage appliances from hardware partners through the Symantec OpenStorage Technology (OST) program. According to the 2010 State Of The Data Center report, 62 percent of survey respondents said deduplication should be both built-in to backup software and implemented in deduplication appliances. Integration with NetBackup through OST allows organizations to also leverage deduplication hardware from a wide range of partners, including Quantum, ExaGrid Systems, FalconStor and more.

As the adoption of virtual technologies increases, so do backup challenges and complexities. NetBackup simplifies virtual server data protection by standardizing backup of Hyper-V and VMware, increasing the backup speed of virtual environments through both deduplication and block-level incremental backup technology, and delivering efficient single file restore capabilities.

In the 2010 State Of The Data Center survey, organizations cited granular recovery within virtual machine images as the biggest challenge in virtual machine data protection. NetBackup 7 delivers instant file recovery from a block-level incremental backup for VMware vSphere environments and easy recovery of an individual file or folder from an image-level backup of a Hyper-V virtual machine. By leveraging NetBackup’s deduplication and incremental backup technology within virtual environments, organizations can dramatically increase the speed of backups while reducing storage for virtual machine backups up to 95 percent. NetBackup also enables IT administrators to reduce the impact of backup operations on virtual machines by using off-host for Hyper-V and block-level backup technologies for VMware.

Newly integrated replication technology within the NetBackup platform allows organizations to transfer up to 95 percent less data between various locations. This helps ensure quick and easy recovery of applications and backup data anywhere and at any time, reducing costs and management cycles associated with tape-based disaster recovery. NetBackup also adds backup catalog replication as a standard feature within the main console, which further simplifies and streamlines disaster recovery.

To help customers centrally manage their data protection environments and provide a single view of their backup and recovery operation, NetBackup 7 introduces a built-in reporting and management console called OpsCenter. This new console standardizes monitoring and reporting of both backup and archive information for key Symantec products including NetBackup, NetBackup PureDisk, Backup Exec and Enterprise Vault. Organizations can also leverage advanced analytical features and report on third party backup products using OpsCenter Analytics. This combined functionality allows organizations to reduce disaster recovery risks across locations and standardize how they view both backup and archive information.

Symantec offers a broad array of services to help organizations deploy, integrate and operate highly effective NetBackup environments. NetBackup Services help organizations get the most from their NetBackup investments by improving storage efficiency, infrastructure use and recovery times.

Symantec NetBackup 7 is scheduled to be available worldwide on Feb. 1, 2010 with a suggested price of $7,995 USD for an Enterprise Server and five client licenses.

Unidesk Scores $12 Million In Series B Round

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Unidesk, provider of virtual desktop management software, today announced it has secured $12 million in Series B venture capital funding. The round was led by Series A investors Matrix Partners and North Bridge Venture Partners, and underscores the potential both see in Unidesk to become the dominant, hypervisor-independent provisioning and management platform for desktop virtualization.

Unidesk offers all the complementary capabilities needed to make a VMware, Citrix, Microsoft, or heterogeneous Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) environment usable for end users, manageable for IT and affordable for the enterprise, including operating system provisioning and patching; application packaging and delivery; user profile and personalization management; and, storage reduction.

Unidesk will use the new investment to continue its disciplined growth, in which spending will accelerate in parallel with sales success, leading toward a profitable, long term business model.

CORAID Announces $10 Million Series A Funding, New Executives

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CORAID, a developer of scale-out storage with more than 1,100 customers worldwide, today announced that it has closed a $10 million Series-A financing round with Allegis Capital and Azure Capital Partners to accelerate the development and adoption of the CORAID EtherDrive storage platform.

With this funding, the company has named multiple Silicon Valley veterans to its executive team, including: Kevin Brown as CEO, Audrey MacLean as chairman of the board, Carl Wright as executive vice president of worldwide sales, and Josh Leslie as vice president of channels and business development. Lara Druyan of Allegis Capital and Paul Weinstein of Azure Capital Partners have joined CORAID’s board of directors; Mark Leslie and Charles Giancarlo have joined the advisory board and invested in the company.

CORAID is redefining the fundamental economics of storage with its Ethernet-based solutions that provide enterprises of all sizes with a flexible tier of high performance, scale-out storage. CORAID’s breakthrough EtherDrive storage platform has organically amassed over 1,100 customers, including large enterprise and government organizations, since its 2005 launch into the Linux market.

Using innovative software with 100-percent commodity hardware and raw Ethernet, EtherDrive storage arrays enable a scale-out SAN architecture that is ideally suited to dynamic virtualization and cloud environments. Starting at under $500 per terabyte and scaling to multiple petabytes, EtherDrive delivers a 5-8x price performance advantage over legacy Fibre Channel and iSCSI solutions, while eliminating layers of complex SAN management.

This announcement coincides with the completion of the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) deployment of CORAID’s EtherDrive solution in its storage network to support high-performance computing for the National Human Genome Research project. Located in Rockville, Maryland, the National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is leading a nationwide effort to coordinate and accelerate human genome research. NHGRI has deployed more than 400 terabytes of CORAID EtherDrive storage in multiple environments, including high-performance computing, primary storage, and backup. The EtherDrive installation supports applications including DNA sequencing, bio-informatics, and data reduction.

Veeam Appoints VMware’s Daniel Fried To Managing Director for EMEA

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Veeam Software, provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today announced the promotion of Daniel Fried to managing director for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA). Fried joined Veeam from VMware, where he was Director, Partner Sales, Southern EMEA.

“Daniel has spent the past 20 years creating and nurturing international high-tech companies, such as VMware, Alcatel and Philips,” explained George Sidoris, Veeam Software Vice President of Worldwide Sales. “His promotion follows on the heels of his excellent work and Veeam’s extraordinary growth in Europe. Despite the economic crisis, Veeam grew by 130 percent in Europe between 2008 and 2009.”Fried began his career with Veeam Software in 2008 when he launched the company’s French subsidiary in Paris and assumed leadership of the Southern EMEA region. In 2009 he expanded his responsibilities to build and supervise the Central Europe region for Veeam.

In little more than a year, Fried and his team have created a network of more than 1,000 partners in Europe, enabling Veeam to make a substantial impact on the small and medium business market and win a significant number of large enterprise accounts.

Cavalier Acquires NET Telcos

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Cavalier, a provider of telecommunications services throughout the eastern United States, has acquired the assets of NET Telcos, a Richmond, Virginia-based provider of colocation and managed services.

NET Telcos’ SAS 70-certified data center provides more than 4,000 square feet of colocation space and managed services which include server virtualization, data backups, firewalls and e-mail hosting.

The NET Telcos acquisition provides a solid platform for Cavalier to expand colocation and managed services offerings to its current customer base in the Mid-Atlantic region. Cavalier’s current customers will have the ability to access the managed services provided in the data center using a variety of cost-effective access solutions which provide the required bandwidth for server colocation, remote backup, disaster recovery and server replication.

For existing NET Telcos customers, Cavalier’s extensive voice, data, IP and fiber network infrastructure will provide enhanced connectivity and service options throughout the region. With the ability to leverage a single carrier network, customers will be able to consolidate their services and budgets and allow Cavalier to manage more of their IT network.