Virtualization.com

The folks over at Gluster dropped in the news that they are releasing their Gluster Storage platform:

“By integrating the GlusterFS file system with an operating system layer and improved management user interface, Gluster provides a complete storage software platform that simplifies the task of deploying petabyte-scale storage to two installation steps and a few mouse clicks. The new platform addresses the complexity of managing ‘big data,’ the demanding scalability requirements of modern applications”

Now what has this got to do with Virtualization you might ask,
the accelerating growth of Virtual Machine deployments requires people to rething their storage strategy, the demand for a unified storage space that contains high available copies of the running virtual machines is growing.

The Gluster Storage platform comes as a Clustered Storage on s stick version, the complete platform image fits on a USB memory stick that can configure a bare server to a clustered storage node in 15 minutes or less

As mentionned it provides the user with a Unified global namespace, according to them you can add hundreds of petabytes in a single volume across multiple commodity storage nodes.

It has Web-based installation and management providing you with rapid installation of first storage node with disk formatting performed post-install; integrated management of volumes, data resources and servers plus centralized logging and reporting.

And off course it is High availability – data can be replicated (mirrored) for high availability; real time self-healing performs error detection and correction within files while they are running and during recovery from hardware failures

“Gluster Storage Platform is the natural evolution of GlusterFS, combining the power and scalability of clustered storage with unparalleled simplicity,” said Anand Babu (AB) Periasamy, co-founder and CTO of Gluster. “Gluster is the only commercial scale-out storage platform that eliminates metadata server issues and allows non-experts to deploy petabyte-scale storage with the ease of an install wizard.”
With regard to virtualization ,
Gluster Storage Platform ensures continuous operation of virtual machines (VMs). Replicated virtual machines can continuously operate in the event of hardware failure and recovery is performed in the background without requiring a restart or blocking I/O to the live VM. Gluster Storage Platform uses checksum based healing which detects and corrects errors within the VM rather than for the entire VM image.

Gluster argues that as the Gluster Storage Platform aggregates disk and memory resources into a single pool of capacity under a global namespace it provides a true virtual storage environment to complement server virtualization. VM images and application data can be stored in the same system in a single volume, eliminating silos of data and centralizing management. Multiple storage building blocks are clustered together in parallel, eliminating I/O bottlenecks and hotspots that often negatively impact VM performance. With Gluster, storage administrators no longer need to manually manage multiple volumes and individual storage connections.

According to them it is now common for mission critical applications to be deployed on VMs. The VM images not only need to be stored, they also need to continue operating in the event of hardware failures and not allow faults to interrupt applications and services. Gluster Storage Platform employs file replication to ensure multiple copies of a VM are available in the event of hardware failure and provides both high availability and sophisticated real time self-healing to ensure continuous VM operation.

We quickly looked into the GlusterFS platform and set it up on different nodes,
the setup speed and ease of confiugration was a welcome suprise as opposed to different other clustering setups.

Chelsio Communications, provider of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) networking and storage solutions, today announced Virtual Multi-port Software, a new driver that gives users of VMware ESX 4.0 the flexibility for virtual consolidation of existing Gigabit links over Chelsio 10Gb Unified Wire adapters.

Virtual Multi-port Software allows for consolidation of switch ports and cabling by using 10Gb infrastructure while maintaining the existing Gigabit-based ESX setup. The software enables the consolidation by keeping the infrastructure update completely transparent to the ESX hypervisor, enabling a 10Gb adapter to appear to the hypervisor as eight virtual Gigabit adapters. By offloading the tasks performed by the hypervisor, the Chelsio adapters can deliver the best I/O performance for virtualized applications.

An ESX server typically generates four categories of traffic (Virtual Machine I/O, SAN/NAS, VMotion Network, and Console Management). Chelsio’s software segregates all these traffic types across virtual NICs while guaranteeing programmable sustained bandwidth in both transmit and receive directions.

The Chelsio Virtual Multi-port Software runs on all of the N and S class adapters, and is available as a free download from Chelsio and its distributors.

Sourcefire has announced the general availability of the Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 release. The company has also released its first VMware-based virtual appliances to extend IPS protection to virtualized systems and remote office locations.

Sourcefire’s innovative Adaptive IPS automates key intrusion prevention functions, such as IPS tuning, impact assessment, user correlation and network discovery.

With the 4.9 release, Sourcefire has raised the bar by offering the industry’s first Policy Layering capability, enabling organizations with multiple detection policies to construct them in “building blocks,” making it easy to create and modify policies by geography, site, department, or even by user. Sourcefire has also added a Custom Analysis Widget to its portal-like dashboard affording even greater flexibility, and it has expanded its application detection capabilities by adding new detectors for Oracle, Firefox, Gnutella, Timbuktu, and more.

Along with the 3D System 4.9 release, Sourcefire is now shipping its first VMware-based virtual appliances, including the Sourcefire Virtual 3D Sensor and Sourcefire Virtual Defense Center. Compatible with VMware’s ESX and ESXi platforms, the Virtual 3D Sensor offers IPS protection from 5 to 500Mbps and can be monitored and managed by physical or virtual Defense Center management consoles. These new virtual appliances afford enterprises, managed security service providers (MSSPs), and cloud computing providers with the same Snort-based IPS protection as their physical 3D Sensor counterparts.

Sourcefire’s Virtual 3D Sensor and Virtual Defense Center enable users to secure their virtual environments and to “virtualize” their security implementations for increased operational efficiencies.

Organizations can leverage Sourcefire’s virtual appliances to:

• Monitor traffic between two or more virtual machines (VMs)
• Monitor traffic between physical hosts and VMs
• Monitor traffic between multiple physical hosts
• Help contain the growing problem of VM Sprawl

The Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 release and new VMware-based virtual appliances are available now.

Zmanda today announced Zmanda Backup Appliance (ZBA), a pre-configured virtual backup server powered by SUSE Linux Enterprise Server which runs on any VMWare infrastructure such as VMWare Server, vSphere4, ESX, and ESXi.

ZBA enables IT organizations to quickly and easily install a backup and recovery solution for heterogeneous desktops and servers. ZBA can backup information to local disk, tape, and is the first virtual appliance that can backup to a public or private cloud. Zmanda developed the ZBA solution as part of the SUSE Appliance Program, a comprehensive business and technology program that enables Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) to rapidly build, update, configure and go to market with fully-supported software and virtual appliances.

ZBA simplifies the installation and configuration process of backup and recovery software. It is ideal for IT professionals at businesses and government organizations who are tasked with managing the backup and recovery process. Instead of spending days downloading packages, patches and configuring systems, IT professionals can download the ZBA backup appliance and be up-and-running within minutes.

ZBA runs a minimal set of services to provide one function, making it a highly available and highly secure backup solution. It is simple to use, easy to install and does not require users to figure out package dependencies prior to installing the software. ZBA can backup data to a local disk, tape drive or a public or private storage cloud. ZBA is powered by SUSE, and is fully compatible with all other Zmanda backup clients, agents and options. It is managed through the Zmanda Management Console running on a browser.

Pricing for ZBA starts at $600 per year, which includes a one-year subscription of Amanda Enterprise Server. ZBA places no limitation on the amount of data that can be backed up to disk, tape or storage clouds. ZBA is shipped in Open Virtualization Format (OVF) and VMX format.

Elastra has announced expanded virtualization platform support for VMware vSphere 4 in Elastra Cloud Server 2.0 (ECS) Enterprise Edition.

In this release, ECS lets customers compose, orchestrate and deploy application infrastructure to virtualization environments managed with vSphere 4. ECS already supports private clouds based on VCenter from VMware or XEN from Citrix as well as the public cloud available from Amazon. Systems created for one virtualization environment are portable to another.

Elastra offers a free edition of ECS running on Amazon Web Services and an Enterprise Edition for private data centers.

icomasoft, the Swiss provider of software applications for automated support and management of virtual IT infrastructures, and Fujitsu today announce  the global availability of simplified virtual server management with integration of automated functions.

The new release of the VI PowerScripter Professional FT v1.6 plug-in for the Fujitsu PRIMERGY ServerView Suite provides unprecedented ease-of-use and simplification by automating many administrative tasks around managing virtual servers in VMware vCenter, ESX and ESXi environments. In doing so, time and effort spent on routine tasks is freed up to focus on more important priorities.

As virtualization moves into the mainstream, more enterprises are taking advantage of transforming their IT into dynamic infrastructures that can adjust to varying workload demands. Through server virtualization, enterprises benefit from price-performance gains and enjoy added application flexibility. However, virtualization also adds complexity to server administration and management.

This challenge is addressed by the icomasoft VI PowerScripter Professional FT plug-in, which collects and packages server information from Fujitsu’s PRIMERGY ServerView management suite, allowing the scripting of secure, automated administrative procedures for managing multiple Virtual Machine images on a server network.

Icomasoft estimates VI PowerScripter Professional FT v1.6 can save busy virtual infrastructure administrators up to two hours per day due to scheduling and automation of administrative tasks.

The VI PowerScripter Professional FT v1.6 plug-in for Fujitsu PRIMERGY ServerView is available immediately, priced at €1750, plus tax, for an Administrators Pack including five administrator licenses. Additional licenses are available for €350 per license. Volume discounts and site licenses are available upon request. The plug-in is available direct from icomasoft, from Fujitsu, and will shortly also be available from authorized Fujitsu resellers.