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News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Industry Moves: PHD Virtual Technologies Ramps Up Engineering Team

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PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, as announced that it has expanded its engineering team. To help lead this expanding team, which has doubled in overall R&D capacity in the past month, Vladimir Hrabrov has joined the company as vice president of engineering and Alex Mittell has been named director-senior virtualization architect.

Hrabrov joins PHD Virtual from Hewlett-Packard and has over 30 years of experience designing and developing enterprise-scale configuration management systems in entrepreneurial environments as well as established organizations. As a Certified Scrum Practitioner, he brings valuable experience in building strong, agile engineering teams, as well as a proven, disciplined approach to release, risk, and product quality management. At HP, Hrabrov was an R&D and program manager in charge of OS deployment for HP Client Automation. He joined HP as a part of the Novadigm acquisition where he was a senior architect and project manager. Before his work at Novadigm, Hrabrov worked at Legent Corp, Spectrum Concepts and the Ukrainian Ministry of Standards, where he held key management and development roles. He holds a master’s degree in Computer Science from National Technical University of Ukraine “Kyiv Polytechnic Institute.”

Mittell joined PHD Virtual in 2008 and is a widely known technical expert and thought leader in the virtualization community. He is a co-founder of Xtravirt, the UK provider of virtualization solutions throughout the technology lifecycle. While at Xtravirt, Alex authored many of the free virtualization tools that are available on the PHD Virtual web site. Prior to co-founding Xtravirt, he worked at Oxford University in the UK as a virtual architect, where he designed and configured the university’s virtual infrastructure.

Release: Red Hat Network Sattelite 5.3

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Red Hat has announced the availability of Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3, the latest version of Red Hat’s on-premises systems management solution that provides software updates, configuration management, provisioning and monitoring across both physical and virtual Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers.

Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3 is globally available today and is automatically delivered to customers with a Red Hat Network Satellite subscription. The availability of Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3 marks the first release based off of the open source project Spacewalk, announced in June 2008.

Virtualization is a key requirement in many IT environments today, and with Red Hat Network Satellite, a systems administrator only needs one console to update, provision and monitor both their physical and virtual Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems. Red Hat Network Satellite includes virtual platform management capabilities that allow customers to create and entitle Red Hat Enterprise Linux systems with the ability to install the same systems profiles physically and virtually in a repeatable, centrally managed way. Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3 supports both KVM and Xen virtualization technologies. Red Hat Network Satellite abstracts virtualization technology from administrators, freeing up their time to focus on higher value-add projects.

With Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3, customers are also offered bottom-line benefits through the enhancements included in the latest version of the systems management solution. These enhancements include increased flexibility and faster provisioning setups with the incorporation of more mature open source Cobbler technology in the product’s underlying provisioning architecture. In addition, with Satellite 5.3, customers receive powerful open source technologies backed by the Red Hat subscription, delivering the feature-richness of the community development model combined with the commercial support to run mission-critical applications in the enterprise.

Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3 also enables customers to manage large deployments more easily and with comparable performance to smaller deployments due to enhanced scalability improvements, such as code optimization, designed to enable faster execution when managing multiple systems. Customers also benefit from content sharing between Satellite servers that is now faster and provides greater consistency with the ability to share content between different organizations in the Satellite server given Satellite’s improved multi-tenancy capabilities and inter-Satellite synchronization improvements. Satellite can also now be more easily and smoothly integrated into customers’ existing automated processes given its improved open and extensible APIs. These enhancements in Red Hat Network Satellite 5.3 can ultimately save enterprises time and money while delivering a more consistent operating environment that helps to drive down long-term operational expenses.

Peak 10 Deploys VMware vSphere 4 Platform

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Peak 10 announced the deployment of VMware’s vSphere 4 platform as an enhancement to its virtualization services infrastructure.

vSphere 4 further enables Peak 10 customers to implement internal cloud computing environments with access to external cloud resources, while maintaining a high level of security and integrity.

The platform solidifies Peak 10’s end-to-end infrastructure, offering customers pools of virtualized resources that federate between on and off-premise environments on-demand and with ease. Both large and small organizations can achieve the primary benefits of cloud computing, as vSphere delivers high levels of application availability, lowered cost per application workload, and increased management tools.

Peak 10’s deployment of VMware’s vSphere 4 platform, provides its customers with enhanced physical features for operational efficiency including twice as many virtual processors per virtual machine (VM), four times the memory, three-times increase in network throughput, and additional SAN tiers available for high-end databases. In addition, Peak 10 private cloud customers will be able to utilize vSphere upgrade checks, virtualization health checks, capacity planning, dedicated resource pools, integrated VirtualDR services, dedicated and managed clusters, and hosted VMs.

Peak 10’s managed IT and data center services improve performance, reliability, lower costs and maximize internal resources for customers while keeping their valuable information technology assets close to the business. The company combines its secure, private network and enterprise-class data centers with world-class engineering and support to serve market-leading companies nationwide. As a managed services leader, Peak 10 offers a wide range of technology services including virtualization, full service hosting, and cloud-based services in a cost-efficient and reliable platform for its customers.

Terremark Debuts vCloud Express Service

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Terremark recently announced the addition of the vCloud Express service to its suite of VMware Virtualized offerings.

vCloud Express is a new class of service based on VMware’s powerful virtualization platform that allows software developers and other users to easily access computing resources in a pay-as-you-go model. vCloud Express will provide customers with flexible computing on demand, with the power and control to configure resources as needed. It uniquely offers users compatibility with their internal datacenters, as well as Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud offering, enabling users to move applications to the production environment of their choice.

Customers will be able to easily sign up for the service online with a credit card and immediately begin provisioning computing capacity using Terremark’s intuitive Web console. Integrated firewalls, load balancing and network management features allow users to easily customize their cloud environment to their specific needs. Users will also be able to access their cloud computing environments via the VMware vCloud™ API, enabling interoperability across internal and external clouds. A Terremark vCloud Express community website featuring expert blogs, support forums and product documentation will provide customers with an interactive platform to receive up-to-date information and insights from Terremark’s team of cloud computing experts.

With the addition of vCloud Express, Terremark is expanding its suite of industry-leading infrastructure-as-a-service solutions. These solutions will leverage VMware’s robust and advanced enterprise-class platform and Terremark’s top-tier, massively connected datacenter facilities to deliver high-performance cloud computing services to the developer market.

Terremark’s strategic move into the cloud computing market began with the June 2008 launch of the Enterprise Cloud, a highly reliable and secure platform with the power to dynamically provision computing resources for mission-critical applications. Designed to meet the high security and regulatory standards of large enterprises and Federal government agencies, the Enterprise Cloud leverages a full suite of managed security services and unique “burst” option to offer customers a highly secure and elastic platform to meet their IT infrastructure needs.

Terremark’s vCloud Express will initially be launched in a limited-availability beta program, with a full launch scheduled by the end of 2009.

Release: Neocleus NeoSphere 2.1

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Neocleus recently announced the next release of NeoSphere, its desktop and laptop management platform and another Neocleus product that uses the company’s second generation Type 1, bare metal client hypervisor.

NeoSphere 2.1 allows IT managers to centrally control multiple operating system (OS) instances that execute locally as virtual machines (VMs) on distributed laptops and desktops. Neocleus is demonstrating NeoSphere 2.1 at the VMworld Conference, August 31 – September 3, in Booth 1527 at the Moscone Center in San Franscico, CA. The product was first announced in April, 2009 and began shipping to customers and partners in May, 2009.

NeoSphere 2.1 enhancements include performance improvements, better support for popular disk encryption, and the introduction of a client GUI. NeoSphere 2.1 offers the broadest hardware support of any client virtualization product in the industry with the ability to support all Intel vPro and AMD VT-D enabled laptops and desktops.

The most prominent use cases customers are addressing with NeoSphere 2.1 include:

  • Side by side execution of two separate and isolated OS instances, running locally as virtual machines on a PC. One instance can be a 100 % secure locked-down operating environment containing all the corporate applications, data, network connections, and hardware configurations. The other OS instance can run an “open” image with applications that have a high intrusion threat such as music sharing software, games and social networking websites. With NeoSphere 2.1, IT can be assured that any intrusions or threats that come into the “open” OS instance cannot permeate the “locked-down” OS instance.
  • Operating two separate corporate images side by side on the same laptop or desktop; ideal for running two environments on separate, secure networks, managing application migration during mergers and acquisitions, and multi-project initiatives or environments with outsourced workers.
  • Running two versions of Microsoft Windows natively on the same machine to allow legacy applications that have not yet been updated to the upcoming Windows 7 to be used, while end users also leverage the benefits of the more current operating environment in a separate VM.
  • Creating new efficiencies in desktop and laptop management by delivering a single “golden” image to a variety of different hardware platforms; thus, dramatically reducing the amount of time necessary to prepare and test the corporate OS environment prior to delivering it to end users.
  • Granular control of the hardware components on the desktop or laptop, from a centralized, policy-based administration system allowing IT to centrally turn “on” and “off” devices on the target end user machine without ever touching the machine. For instance a doctor’s laptop can be centrally configured to allow a patient to read records from their PC but when trying to print the records out to a non hospital printer, those ports have been disabled. The doctor can then toggle to a “personal” environment where IT has allowed the use of a printer, USB ports, copy/paste, etc.

NeoSphere 2.1 leverages the company’s second generation Type 1 client hypervisor to address IT and user demands. The product allows two fully functional virtual machines, or “spheres” to run simultaneously and natively on a single desktop or laptop. Each sphere is centrally controlled by IT policies and requires no incremental hardware in the data center. Spheres are distributed to PCs where they execute locally in 100% secure isolated VMs. Users seamlessly move between environments without any degradation in performance. The spheres have full access to the power of the underlying hardware, including native access to the RAM, CPU, hard disks, network cards, USB devices, touch screens, and other devices attached to the local desktop or laptop.

Using NeoSphere 2.1, IT administrators centrally control each sphere as though they were sitting directly at the PC, including the manipulation of all aspects of the underlying hardware. For example, the Desktop Administrator can centrally turn off all USB devices for the corporate image on each of the desktops in the organization. With the flick of a switch, they can selectively turn these back on for select users as well. They can also transition hardware components from one environment to another. With NeoSphere 2.1, a DVD drive can easily be “moved” from the personal environment to the corporate one, or vice versa, or the Desktop Administrator can make it available to both environments.

NeoSphere 2.1 works with existing systems and tools familiar to desktop administrators, and there is tight integration with applications such as Microsoft Active Directory and SQL Server. The system is designed to work in conjunction with all OS patching and updating products as well including existing change and configuration management systems such as Microsoft SCCM, Symantec Altiris Client Management Suite, Tivoli, HP Radia, BigFix, Novell ZENworks, and others. In addition, NeoSphere works in conjunction with existing application virtualization solutions such as Microsoft App-V, VMware ThinApp, and InstallFree.

Teradici Introduces Multi-Protocol Hardware Zero Client Solution for Virtual Desktops

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Teradici today announced the first multi-protocol hardware zero client solution for virtual desktops. This flexible zero client solution enables IT managers to deploy PCoIP clients across their organizations and connect to a complete range of hosted compute resources including:

  • VMware View virtual desktops via VMware View 3 client mode
  • Blade, tower or rack 3D graphics workstations via PCoIP protocol mode.
  • Microsoft Terminal Server sessions via RDP client mode.

Desktop clients based on the Teradici TERA1100 portal processor are a true zero client solution that can support any user type from task workers, to mainstream office workers, to extreme workstation/visualization application users. These innovative clients have no x86 processors, no application O/S, and no drivers, which dramatically simplifies deployment and management. With additional features such as no local data storage and unique USB device authorization, PCoIP hardware zero client solutions are highly secure and resistant to viruses that can impact traditional remote desktop installations.

With the growing interest and deployment of virtual desktops and VMware View in enterprise computing environments, secure, multi-protocol hardware zero clients are an ideal solution for universal employee access. For example in the healthcare industry, facility wide access must be available to any hospital compute resource. In addition to enabling strict security for compliance, the PCoIP client can be used to access highly virtualized electronic medical records, or performance workstations for high-resolution diagnostic images, video or 3D models.