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

Release: LiveTime’s 64 bit ITIL Service Management Virtual Appliance

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LiveTime Software, a leading provider of ITIL based Web 2.0 Service Management and Help Desk Software, today released version 5.5 of its highly integrated virtual appliance. The latest version of LiveTime’s JeOS (Just Enough Operating System) provides 64 bit native performance, Java 6, Apache Tomcat 6, Apache Web Server 2.2 and LiveTime 5.5. LiveTime’s virtual machine is available for all major virtualized environments such as VMWare, Sun Virtual Box and Citrix XenServer 5.0 and is also available in the Open Virtualization Format.

LiveTime’s JeOS is now production grade and recommended for all environments wishing to virtualize their service management solution. With 64 bit native performance and the ability to address more than 2GB of RAM, LiveTime can scale to any size organization. This version has been specifically optimized for SaaS provider networks and outsourced service providers using LiveTime in a muti-tenant environment. The appliance also includes support for symmetric multiprocessing for optimal performance across virtualized CPU’s.

LiveTime’s virtual appliance includes built-in debugging, configuration and management utilities. Simple guided menus provide easy access to networking, monitoring and general system utilities. The menu driven environment also supports automatic upgrades and SSL out of the box.

Organizations can now leverage LiveTime’s highly scalable ITIL Service Management software with the ease of installation of traditional software. The virtual appliance provides the necessary scalability and security that is difficult to achieve when deployed on existing hardware and operating systems. Since the system has been hardened at the operating system layer, LiveTime provides Just Enough Operating System for its needs. This makes the system easy to update and maintain and provides a very small footprint and a 170MB download.

Following Move To Acquire Sun, Oracle Buys Virtual Iron

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As had been rumored for quite a while, Oracle has now agreed to acquire Virtual Iron Software, a provider of server virtualization management software that enables dynamic resource and capacity management in virtualized data centers (we’ve covered the company quite a bit in the past).
This comes right off the heels of Oracle’s move to swallow Sun Microsystems.
The combination of Virtual Iron’s technology and Oracle VM’s server virtualization product is expected to provide more comprehensive and dynamic resource management across the full software stack. Customers are expected to benefit from better capacity utilization, streamlined virtual server configuration, and improved visibility and control of their enterprise software.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and is expected to close this summer. Until the deal closes, each company will continue to operate independently. Financial details of the transaction were not disclosed.
“Industry trends are driving demand for virtualization as a way to reduce operating expenses and support green IT strategies without sacrificing quality of service,” said Wim Coekaerts, Oracle Vice President of Linux and Virtualization Engineering. “With the addition of Virtual Iron, Oracle expects to enable customers to more dynamically manage their server capacity and optimize their power consumption. The acquisition is consistent with Oracle’s strategy to provide comprehensive enterprise software management and will facilitate more efficient management of application service levels.”
(Source: ZDnet)

Michael Torto Appointed New CEO Of rPath

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rPath today announced that Michael Torto has been appointed CEO, positioning the company for growth in solutions for automating deployment and maintenance of complex applications across traditional, virtual and cloud-based environments.

“Enterprises have demonstrated strong interest in rPath technology for addressing the growing cost and complexity of application delivery,” said Tim Buckley, executive chairman of the board for rPath. “Mike has the ideal skill set and personal attributes to accelerate rPath’s growth as we harvest our deep R&D and market development investments to build a scalable business to serve enterprise markets. We’re very pleased to have Mike leading the next phase of our growth.”

Torto takes the CEO position as rPath continues its campaign to reform application delivery and system management, which typically remain time- and cost-intensive manual processes. rPath dramatically reduces the time, cost and risk of enterprise application delivery by automating the packaging, deployment, and maintenance of applications as complete and self-contained systems that are ready to run and manage in any traditional, virtual or cloud-based environment.

Prior to joining rPath, Torto served as president and CEO of Centive, a leader in incentive management software, where he led the company’s growth and expansion into global markets and through its acquisition by Xactly Corp. earlier this year. Before joining Centive, Torto was president and CEO of InCert Software, successfully transitioning the company from a start-up to a leading software provider. Before InCert, Torto served as president and CEO at Swan International, Inc., a provider of application delivery and self-healing software, which he led to a successful IPO on the European EASDAQ in April of 1999.

Mike Torto’s complete bio can be found at http://www.rpath.com/corp/about-us/management#torto.

Likewise Open Finds It Way Into Citrix XenServer

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The integration of Likewise Open with Citrix XenServer now enables IT administrators to protect information and data from unauthorized access — and ensures that virtual servers have the same levels of security as physical servers.

Likewise, the leader in open source audit and authentication for mixed networks — provides identity management solutions that improve security and operational efficiencies by integrating Linux, Unix and Mac systems with Microsoft Active Directory.

Citrix XenServer provides customers with a robust, scalable, feature-rich virtualization platform that is exceptionally powerful, yet incredibly easy to learn and use — creating a flexible, aggregated pool of computing resources by virtualizing application workloads across any number of servers in the datacenter.

XenServer software with Likewise Open is scheduled to be available in June 2009.

Release: Unitrends 4.1 (Data Recovery Software)

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Further expanding its OS, virtualization and application support, Unitrends today announced the latest version of its data recovery software with new support for the Windows Server 2008 family and the Novell OES family of products, including Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen virtualization platforms. Unitrends Release 4.1 also includes expanded multi-appliance management and monitoring capabilities as well as enhanced support for Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems.

The new Unitrends Release 4.1 backup and recovery software offers support for more than 40 operating systems and applications. This support now includes:

·         Windows Server 2008 (including Hyper-V)

·         Exchange 2007 support on Windows Server 2008

·         SQL 2008

·         Novell OES1 and OES2 (including Xen and Groupwise 8.0)

·         MacOS X 10.5

·         Linux 64-bit

·         pSeries 6.1

The latest Unitrends release also delivers extensive context-sensitive help, increased appliance management and monitoring functionality, and new reporting flexibility. In addition, Unitrends Release 4.1 adds new appliance scalability features and supports NAS protection via CIFS and NFS protocols without a high-priced NDMP agent.

The new Unitrends Release 4.1, with enhanced operating system support, is available now for all Unitrends rapid-recovery appliances including the recently announced, 1U Recovery-610.  There is no charge for the new version for existing Unitrends customers.

VKernel Scores $7 Million Series B Round

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VKernel Corporation, a provider of easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy virtual server management and optimization solutions, today announced it has closed a $7 million Series B round of funding. The latest round was led by Longworth Venture Partners and joined by prior investors Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners. The new funding will be used to accelerate sales, marketing, and product development efforts to capitalize on the rapidly growing server virtualization management market.

The VKernel suite of next-generation virtual server management and optimization solutions is designed to solve real world data center challenges that are impacting IT departments. VKernel leverages the virtual appliance format to instantly deploy its products for enhancing performance, lowering operational and capital costs, optimizing virtual environments of all sizes, and delivering instant ROI. Currently, VKernel supports VMware ESX and plans to support Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN, and others. The company’s current products include:

  • Capacity Analyzer — proactively and predicatively monitor shared capacity resources to prevent current and future problems and optimize the environment
  • Chargeback — provide instant cost visibility and implement a chargeback processes
  • Modeler — quickly test and validate additions and changes to see the performance impact on the environment before going live
  • SearchMyVM — free “Google-like” search utility quickly finds information in virtual environments
  • CompareMyVM — a free community website tool allows visitors to exchange and compare virtual machine (VM) resource allocations with that of the community at large
  • SnapshotMyVM — free tool that completely automates the time-consuming process of documenting the virtual data center

Nilanjana Bhowmik, Partner at Longworth Venture Partners, and Doug McNary, the former CEO of Onaro (acquired by NetApp in 2008) and past executive vice president at Motive and Tivoli, have joined the VKernel Board of Directors.