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

DiscCloud Launches Virtual Appliance for Mac OS X

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DiscCloud today announced the release of the DiscCloud Virtual Appliance, the world’s first desktop virtualization platform designed for Mac OS X clients.

With DiscCloud, Mac desktops can be centrally administered, supported, and maintained using trusted and well known practices used by VMware professionals. The DiscCloud Virtual Appliance runs as a Virtual Machine on VMware Server and ESX class products, and hence on vast assortment of standard x86 platforms.

DiscCloud extends existing capabilities of the Mac desktop, via advanced VMware features such as automated backup, continuous availability, storage scalability, mobility, and desktop disaster recovery.

DiscCloud’s approach to desktop virtualization is 100% Apple license compliant, and supports Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard) clients.

Silex and Parallels Team Up, Bring Certified USB Connectivity to VDI Customers

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Parallels today announced it is partnering with Silex Technology America, a leader in the device connectivity industry. Silex USB Device Servers have been tested and certified for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, the leading OS-level server virtualization solution. Parallels Containers provides the highest density of virtual desktops by partitioning the underlying operating system into many isolated containers that share the common OS and application components, rather than replicating them for each virtual desktop, as is necessary with other approaches. Far fewer resources are needed by each virtual desktop, so a greater number can run on the same hardware, without affecting isolation or security. Now with Silex USB Device Servers being certified compatible with Parallels Virtuozzo Containers, remote or thin client users can connect USB devices, such as multi-function printers, scanners, or nearly any other USB device.

The Silex SX-Virtual Link software is certified to work in a Parallels Virtuozzo Container environment. Parallels customers can now use their USB device as if it were plugged into a local computer’s USB port even though it is being used over the network running in a virtualized desktop container. The SX-Virtual Link software and USB Device Servers allows users to easily discover, connect and disconnect to USB devices across the network.

Silex offers wired and wireless USB device servers including the SX-2000U2 with 10/100 Ethernet and a USB 2.0 High Speed interface, the SX-2000WG with 802.11g wireless as well as 10/100 Ethernet and a USB 2.0 High Speed Interface.

rPath Takes rBuilder Technology to Amazon EC2

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rPath today announced the beta launch of its rBuilder Appliance Creator and rBuilder Catalog features for the Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2). When coupled with rPath’s industry leading technology for release management, lifecycle management, and its comprehensive support capability for Linux technology, these new features offer one of the most comprehensive solutions for managing cloud application deployments in the industry.  This solution is being offered to developers for Amazon EC2 deployments at no cost via rBuilder Online. 

The rBuilder Appliance Creator takes developers through the steps to package a Linux-based application as an Amazon Machine Image.  With rBuilder, the on-going maintenance and release management of the application image becomes efficient and elegant.  The rBuilder Catalog for Amazon EC2 provides a simple management interface for launching, managing, and retiring application images for Amazon EC2.  The dynamic search and catalog capabilities will be familiar to anyone that uses Apple’s iTunes, and this “dynamic playlist” metaphor provides a basis for future management activities directed at large scale catalogs of machine images.

3Tera Goes Global With Cloud Services Based on AppLogic Grid OS

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3Tera announces the availability of global cloud services, based on its AppLogic grid operating system. Driven by demand from multi-national customers and customers outside the United States, 3Tera has selected partners to offer cloud solutions on four continents and provide redundant online resources worldwide. 3Tera currently has partners and is running in datacenters in seven countries (United States, Japan, Singapore, Argentina, United Kingdom, Netherlands and Serbia) on four continents (North America, South American, Asia, and Europe), with additional resources in South America and Australia soon to be available as well.

The global offering allows customers to choose their location and expand or move to different regions as their business demands, without having to change a single line of code in their applications. Applications close to the customer’s base provides optimal performance by avoiding latency.  Also, the ability to duplicate and migrate applications globally eliminates many cross border regulatory issues and replaces lengthy, costly legal processes with simple drag-and-drop operations that can be completed in minutes.

RingCube Joins VMware Technology Alliance Partner

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RingCube Technologies, provider of managed virtual workspaces, today announced (PDF) it has joined the VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program. The VMware TAP program helps technology vendors integrate their products with VMware virtualization software and deliver timely, joint solutions to mutual customers. As a member of the program, RingCube will utilize VMware resources and expertise to deliver desktop virtualization solutions that complement the VMware VDI architecture.

RingCube’s virtualization technology separates the user’s desktop environment, including applications, data, settings and system resources from the operating system and encapsulates it into a secure container. Users can run their virtual desktop at the office or on unmanaged PCs — at home, at a client site or in a hotel business center. When users start their RingCube workspace, it transforms any PC into their own familiar, personalized workspace that facilitates access to their files, applications, settings and entire desktop, as if they were on their own PC. RingCube virtual workspaces can be implemented via a variety of deployment options.

With more than 700 members worldwide, the VMware TAP program works with best-of-breed technology partners to provide them a comprehensive set of VMware technical and marketing services, support, tools and expertise to deliver enhanced value to joint customers.

Microsoft Releases Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool

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Microsoft Corporation India Pvt. Ltd. today announced the availability of a set of tools designed to facilitate the adoption of virtualization technology for its customers and partners. As a part of this initiative, the company launched the (free) Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool that is designed to help customers quantify the cost advantage from deploying Microsoft’s virtualization offerings versus competitive solutions. It also announced the availability of a solution accelerator – the Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool to help customers automate the process of updating virtual machines, thereby allowing them to manage the updation of a large numbers of offline virtual machines according to individual needs.

The Microsoft Integrated Virtualization ROI Tool gives customers direct access to a software solution that produces a detailed representation of the total cost advantage that Microsoft’s virtualization solutions deliver in comparison with other options in the market. This tool was developed independently by ex-Gartner TCO/ROI experts at Alinean, Inc. The tool allows partners and customers to examine current production server, development/QA lab, desktop and application virtualization opportunities – thereby enumerating the potential savings, service level, agility benefits and overall Return on Investment (ROI) from implementing Microsoft’s integrated virtualization solutions. The Virtualization ROI Tool collects specific information about current infrastructure costs and opportunities for improvement, then uses research by Alinean to project potential costs and benefits for various optimization strategies using the Microsoft Integrated Virtualization solutions. All research was collected from the Alinean ValueBase™ of IT spending metrics, and Microsoft product and pricing experts to reflect typical costs and savings for similar company type and size.

The Offline Virtual Machine Servicing Tool is built on Windows Workflow Foundation and the Windows PowerShell interface to manage the workflow of updating large numbers of offline virtual machines according to their individual needs. To do this, the tool works with Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2007 and with software update management systems (at present, either Microsoft Windows Server® Update Services 3.0 or Microsoft System Center Configuration Manager 2007. The tool uses “servicing jobs” to manage the update operations based on lists of existing virtual machines stored in VMM. Using Windows Workflow Foundation technology, a servicing job runs snippets of PowerShell scripts to work with virtual machines.