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IntervalZero Acquires Ardence Embedded Software Business From Citrix Systems

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IntervalZero, a new embedded software company led by a group of senior Ardence executives, today announced that it has acquired Ardence’s Embedded software business from Citrix.

The company, which is based in Waltham, MA, is headed by CEO Jeffrey D. Hibbard, an Ardence/Citrix executive with more than 20 years of software engineering, sales, marketing and management experience.

IntervalZero officially completed the acquisition on July 15 and will continue to market and sell the Embedded products under their existing names – RTX, ETS and Select. IntervalZero said worldwide Embedded Distribution/Reseller channels and Embedded Partner affiliations – notably the Partner relationships with Microsoft and Intel – remain in place.

Citrix, the global leader in application delivery infrastructure, acquired Ardence’s Enterprise and Embedded software businesses in January 2007. Although Citrix determined that the Ardence Embedded products were not a good fit for its Enterprise product portfolio, Citrix made an equity investment in IntervalZero.

“We believe there are significant opportunities in Embedded technology, but it is not a core business for Citrix. To continue to grow and succeed, the Embedded business needed both the focus and the investment that Jeff and the IntervalZero team are fully committed to delivering. Their approach to the market and their business model are sound, which is why we have maintained a stake in the IntervalZero,” said Lou Shipley, VP and General Manager of Citrix’s Xen Products Group.

Xsigo Partners With Carahsoft to Bring I/O Virtualization to Government Agencies

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Carahsoft, a government IT solutions provider, today announced that it has expanded its VMware Complementary Solutions team to include Xsigo Systems, which specializes in I/O virtualization.

Xsigo Systems is the latest vendor to be added to Carahsoft’s VMware Complementary Solutions Team, which provides public-sector buyers with one-stop shopping for related technologies that address agencies’ virtualization needs across servers, desktops, applications, networks, and storage.

“As VMware’s master government aggregator, Carahsoft offers proven expertise in virtualization technologies and in marketing and selling to the public sector marketplace,” said Jon Toor, vice president of marketing at Xsigo. “We look forward to working with the Carahsoft team to bring our innovative I/O technology to bear on the challenges facing IT managers interested in deploying VMware software faster, on more servers, and across more applications.”

3PAR Introduces New Incentive Program V-TIP

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3PAR announced today its Virtual Technology Incentive Program (V-TIP) which is designed to combine the benefits of 3PAR Utility Storage with financial incentives offered by Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) for datacenter storage virtualization and thin provisioning projects.

The financial incentives offered to 3PAR customers by PG&E reward 3PAR customers for deploying “energy-smart storage”. PG&E rebates are based on the amount of energy savings achieved by datacenters through storage virtualization and the use of 3PAR Thin Provisioning and other thin technologies from 3PAR. To qualify for these financial incentives, Northern and Central California PG&E customers must apply for and be accepted into the rebate program prior to deploying a new 3PAR-based storage implementation.

Financial incentives from PG&E are just a part of the energy and environmental benefits from 3PAR Utility Storage. According to a Wikibon Energy Lab case study, customers replacing older storage technologies with next-generation 3PAR InServ arrays have saved as much as 90%* on annual energy costs related to powering and cooling their storage systems.

[Source: MarketWatch]

VMware Planning Massive New Data Center In Washington

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According to Data Center Knowledge, VMware is planning to locate a new data center in East Wenatchee (North Central Washington), leasing no less than 100,000 square feet of space in a new facility being built by Sabey Corporation on its Intergate.Columbia campus. VMware will be the biggest leaser by far; their data center will take up about two-thirds of the 189,000 square foot second building.

Company spokeswoman Melinda Marks said that VMware will use its new data center to expand research and development.

Quest Software Releases Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite 5.10

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Patrick Rouse, Sales Engineer at Quest Software, wrote up a blog post to announce that their Provision Networks division has shipped the new version of the company’s cross-platform VDI connection broker, Virtual Access Suite (VAS) 5.10. The 5.9 version was released to the public in December of 2007, and had one service pack, so all the following features are new to version 5.10:

Web Portal – Web-IT:

  • Web-IT migrated to ASP.Net 1.1 to ASP.Net 2.0
  • Web-IT config files migrated from text to XML files to support future automation
  • Web-IT Integration With Juniper Secure Access
  • Smart Card login support

Clients:

  • Ticketing – Secure tickets will be issued per connection request, obviating the need to embed hashed user credentials inside .pit connection files
  • Enhanced Multi-monitor support
  • Updated Linux and Java Clients
  • PXE Boot Linux Client
  • LiveCD Linux Client
  • All AppPortal Client settings can be stored in a single configuration file
  • Java Client fully supported via Secure Gateway

Connection Broker & Management Console:

  • Support for Microsoft Hyper-V
  • Support for Virtual Iron 4.3.x
  • Dynamic Computer Group Auto-expansion – Auto Provisioning of new computers
  • Server Provisioning
  • Delete computers that have not been used in a specified number of days
  • Realtime enumeration of running processes on Managed Computers
  • Termination of running processes on Managed Computers.
  • Power Management of ACPI and WoL (Wake on LAN) capable computers and servers
  • MSI Package Deployment to Computer Groups or Managed Computers and servers
  • Disable/Enable Computer Groups or Managed Computers during maintenance cycles
  • Unique Computer names enforced across Desktop Groups and Data Centers
  • Display Realtime License Usage
  • Retrieval and display of VM Template Sizes
  • Wizard Driven Managed Desktop creation
  • Streamlined Softgrid Integration
  • Option to bypass proxy settings for Console to Broker communication
  • Verification of sufficient disk space on target storage when provisioning servers or desktops.

Task Automation for Power Management (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Power Off
  • Power On
  • Reset
  • Resume – for VMware and Hyper-V
  • Standby – for ACPI & WoL Devices
  • Suspend -for VMware and Hyper-V
  • Wakeup – for ACPI & WoL Devices

Task Automation for Operating System operations (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Log off user
  • Reset Session
  • Restart O/S
  • Shutdown O/S

Task Automation for Virtual machines (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Delete VM
  • Delete VM not accessed in a specified number of days

Task Automation for Miscellaneous Tasks (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Copy file to computer
  • Enable/Disable Computer
  • Initialize Computer
  • Run Program/Script on Computer

Task Automation for MSI Packages (multiple recurrence options or single instance):

  • Install MSI Package
  • Update MSI Package
  • Uninstall MSI Package

Setup Program:

  • Wizard-based setup program to automate database creation, upgrade, and management of VMware trust store and Virtual Iron jar libraries
  • Terminal Servers and Connection Brokers are automatically added to the Provision Farm in the Provision Management Console.

Experience Optimization Pack:

  • Bi-directional Audio – Microphone Redirection
  • Local Text Echo – Latency Masking for typing over latent networks
  • Multi-media Redirection – seamlessly redirects multi-media content to the client CODEC for local playback. – This will be released as a separate 5.10 update, as it has not been released from QA yet.

VMware Releases Infrastructure 3.5 Update 2, ESX and VirtualCenter Get Upgrades, ESXi Now 100% Free

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VMware has released Update 2 for Infrastructure 3.5, listing a whole set of updates and features. At the same time, the company has made the license for ESXi completely free, as announced last week during the earnings call.

These are the highlights of some of the enhancements available in this release of VMware Infrastructure 3 (free evaluation here):

  • Windows Server 2008 support – Windows Server 2008 (Standard, Enterprise, and Datacenter editions) is supported as a guest operating system. With VMware’s memory overcommit technology and the reliability of ESX, virtual machine density can be maximized with this new guest operating system to achieve the highest degree of ROI. Guest operating system customizations and Microsoft Cluster Server (MSCS) are not supported with Windows Server 2008.
  • Enhanced VMotion Compatibility – Enhanced VMotion compatibility (EVC) simplifies VMotion compatibility issues across CPU generations by automatically configuring server CPUs with Intel FlexMigration or AMD-V Extended Migration technologies to be compatible with older servers. Once EVC is enabled for a cluster in the VirtualCenter inventory, all hosts in that cluster are configured to ensure CPU compatibility for VMotion. VirtualCenter will not permit the addition of hosts which cannot be automatically configured to be compatible with those already in the EVC cluster.
  • Storage VMotion – Storage VMotion from a FC/iSCSI datastore to another FC/iSCSI datastore is supported. This support is extended on ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 1 as well.
  • VSS quiescing support – When creating quiesced snapshot of Windows Server 2003 guests, both filesystem and application quiescing are supported. With Windows Server 2008 guests, only filesystem quiescing is supported. For more information, see the Virtual Machine Backup Guide and the VMware Consolidated Backup 1.5 Release Notes.
  • Hot Virtual Extend Support – The ability to extend a virtual disk while virtual machines are running is provided. Hot extend is supported for vmfs flat virtual disks without snapshots opened in persistent mode.
  • 192 vCPUs per host – VMware now supports increasing the maximum number of vCPUs per host 192 given that the maximum number of Virtual Machines per host is 170 and that no more than 3 virtual floppy devices or virtual CDROM devices are configured on the host at any given time. This support is extended on ESX 3.5 Update 1 as well.

As for the hardware enablement and management:

  • 8Gb Fiber Channel HBAs – Support is available for 8Gb fiber channel HBAs. See the I/O Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
  • SAS arrays – more configurations are supported. See the Storage/SAN Compatibility Guide for ESX Server 3.5 and ESX Server 3i for details.
  • 10 GbE iSCSI initiator – iSCSI over a 10GbE interface is supported. This support is extended on ESX Server 3.5 Update 1, ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Embedded and ESX Server version 3.5 Update 1 Installable as well.
  • 10 GbE NFS support – NFS over a 10GbE interface is supported.
  • IBM System x3950 M2 – x3950 M2 in a 4-chassis configuration is supported, complete with hardware management capabilities through multi-node Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) driver and provider. Systems with up to 32 cores are fully supported. Systems with more than 32 cores are supported experimentally.
  • PMI OEM extension support – Execution of IPMI OEM extension commands is supported.
  • System health monitoring through CIM providers – More Common Information Model (CIM) providers are added for enhanced hardware monitoring, including storage management providers provided by QLogic and Emulex. LSI MegaRAID providers are also included and are supported experimentally.
  • CIM SMASH/Server Management API – The VMware CIM SMASH/Server Management API provides an interface for developers building CIM-compliant applications to monitor and manage the health of systems. CIM SMASH is now a fully supported interface on ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
  • Display of system health information – More system health information is displayed in VI Client for both ESX Server 3.5 and VMware ESX Server 3i.
  • Remote CLI – Remote Command Line Interface (CLI) is now supported on ESX Server 3.5 as well as ESX Server 3i. See the Remote Command-Line Interface Installation and Reference Guide for more information.

VirtualCenter 2.5 update 2 adds full support for monitoring individual virtual machine failures based on VMware tools heartbeats. This release also extends support for clusters containing mixed combinations of ESX and ESXi hosts, and minimizes previous configuration dependencies on DNS. It also extends support for alarms on the overall health of the server by considering the health of each of the individual system components such as memory and power supplies. Alarms can now be configured to trigger when host health degrades.

VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 2 provides the ability of creating a clone of a powered-on virtual machine without any downtime to the running virtual machine. Therefore, administrators are no longer required to power off a virtual machine in order to create a clone of it. Also, you can now automatically authenticate to VirtualCenter using your current Windows domain login credentials on the local workstation, as long as the credentials are valid on the VirtualCenter server.

This capability also supports logging in to Windows using Certificates and Smartcards. It can be used with the VI Client or the VI Remote CLI to ensure that scripts written using the VI Toolkits can take advantage of the Windows credentials of your current session to automatically connect to VirtualCenter.

VMware