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

BitLeap LeapServ Backup Software Goes Virtual

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Offsite backup provider BitLeap today announced it has extended its LeapServ software platform to customer provided VMware environments.

The new LeapServVM product will consist of a custom built VM system file supplied to the customer, which can be loaded into existing VMware environments to perform all of the services typically provided by a dedicated LeapServ network appliance.

The LeapServVM will be a licensed copy of BitLeap’s LeapServ technology when bundled with data backup or e-mail archiving services. While active, the software and its performance will be fully managed by BitLeap just like any traditional physical LeapServ appliance.

BitLeap’s CEO Guy Suter:

“The ability to setup a LeapServ on virtual machines will greatly expand the implementation and deployment options available to our customers. We have created a system to custom build LeapServ software to specific customer needs, which will enable us to support a wide range of VMware environments. We are excited to offer this new option and to see the innovative ways it will be put to use.”

One of the major benefits to the LeapServVM is that its core backup methodology is agent-less, allowing users to backup data from virtually all systems through standard network protocols. The LeapServVM product can also be beneficial when customers would like to phase in or evaluate offsite data backup technology from BitLeap.

The LeapServVM software license and file creation fee for up to 500 gigabytes of backup storage is $500 and for up to 1 terabyte of backup storage is $750.

[Source: MarketWatch]

Cisco’s John McCool Talks Virtualization

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NetworkWorld published a great interview yesterday with John McCool, senior VP of data center, switching and security at Cisco. McCool sees a great future for virtualization around the company’s most successful product in its entire history, the Catalyst 6500 (and its successor, the Nexus 7000 Series, which was recently unveiled), combined with its own forray into virtualizing the data center with its Data Center 3.0 initiative.

A small excerpt:

What other areas are investment priorities?

Virtualizing services in the branch by centralizing those services in the data center. That’s a trend that’s here to stay. [Application Control Engine] and applications embedded into the network infrastructure would be another area that we’ll continue to drive very heavily.

Do you plan to take virtualization above the network to the server or application level?

You see a component of that already in Unified I/O. So the I/O component, really virtualizing that over a single connection to the network, is very fundamental. And then being able to split that out further in the networking device. That’s getting ingrained in the architecture of the data center, very much touching the connection to the server itself.

Do you plan to invest in another hypervisor vendor, similar to your relationship with VMware?

No announcements to date. We’re continuing to work with all the hypervisor vendors. We are interested in virtualized data centers and to the extent that hypervisor and virtualized servers exist in the data center we think that’s a very powerful construct for customers and one that’s going to take network support.

Read the rest of the interview here.

[Source: Cisco Blogs]

Cisco Systems

Clusterscale Releases ClusterLoad ESX, Virtual Appliance for Traffic Management and Load Balancing

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ClusterScale, provider of load balancing, open source, traffic management and database clustering appliances, today announced (PDF) the launch of its new virtual appliance, ClusterLoad ESX Virtual Appliance.

ClusterLoad ESX VA offers all the functionality of its hardware counterparts, while lowering demands on the data center, with the added environmental benefits that come with this. The virtual appliance manages application traffic, inspecting, transforming and routing requests as it load balances them across the application infrastructure. The product has passed VMware’s VA Certification program. The product has additional management tools to make installation and configuration quick and easy.

ClusterLoad ESX VA allows you to package a fully configured and optimised software stack in a virtual server format that can be quickly deployed on top of VMware ESX. The software is simple to install on Windows, Mac and Linux and does not have any adverse effects on the host operating system, providing greater flexibility and maximum system utilisation by consolidating multiple environments into a single server, workstation, or PC.

With fewer systems required for the same tasks, ClusterLoad ESX VA claims it delivers:

  • Simplified resource management increasing IT efficiency.
  • Decreased disaster recovery time.
  • Greater systems reliability and availability reducing corporate risk and real-time losses from downtime.
  • Lower hardware acquisition costs with increased utilisation of the machines you already have.

ClusterLoad ESX VA runs on true 64 bit processors with a VT (Virtualisation Technology) extension and is fully optimised for VMware ESX and VMware Server.

Prices for the product start from £3,995 for a single virtual appliance and £5,595 for the pair.

[Source: VMblog]

Clusterscale

Goldman Sachs Predicts IT Spending Downturn, Virtualization Uprise

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Goldman Sachs predicts IT spending will slip from 7 % growth to 5 % growth in 2008. Not a downturn of catastrophic proportions, but still bad news for the industry. On the upside, server virtualization and server consolidation were ranked No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in terms of spending priorities for this and next year. No. 3 was cost-cutting in general, followed by grid computing and on-demand computing finishing the priorities list.

Expectations of budget growth remain down significantly on a year-over-year basis, with many CIOs limiting their purchases to projects with a high and fast ROI. We continue to believe that 2008 IT spending will decelerate to 5 percent from 7 percent in 2007….Demand for discretionary IT projects dropped to its lowest point in the history of our survey, with caution beginning to spread to the offshore providers. CIOs have emphasized to us that they are buying on a need versus want basis, are often downsizing deals to fit with current budget constraints…. In fact, contrary to general tightening in spending, purchases with an especially compelling ROI are being accelerated in the current environment.

[For more on the report, including graphics: The Open Road]

VDIworks Brings Desktop Virtualization Management to Hyper-V

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VDIworks, the young company recently spun out of ClearCube, announced it has tied its solution with Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, which provides management of physical and virtual deployments throughout the data center, desktops and devices.

VDIworks released a new plug-in, VDIvision for System Center, allowing its customers to use MSCOM to manage a variety of VDIworks-driven features. The management plug-in includes a highly configurable and scalable connection broker, leveraging the power of desktop virtualization. VDIworks utilized APIs from Microsoft to ensure seamless functionality among both products.

On the heels of Microsoft’s release of Hyper-V, VDIworks is the first virtual desktop management vendor to integrate with Hyper-V and the System Center management offerings. The plugin is integrated with Active Directory so IT managers can control users’ access rights and permissions. It runs a SQL Server database at the back end in which enterprise IT can store all the components of the VDI environment so it can run reports against them and manage the environment.

VDIvision for System Center is platform-agnostic, so it can also run with the VMware and Xen hypervisors.

[Source: InternetNews]

VDIworks

Xenocode Pushes Major Update of Virtual Application Studio 2008

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Xenocode released its flagship application virtualization solution Virtual Application Studio 2008 last May, and has now pushed its first major update, dubbed Service Pack 1. Virtual Application Studio allows Windows, .NET and Java-based desktop applications to be deployed in standalone executables that run instantly, anywhere.

Virtual Application Studio 2008 with SP1 includes a bunch of feature enhancements and engine upgrades, including:

  • Auto-configuration of Microsoft Office 2007 and other popular applications: An industry first, Virtual Application Studio completely eliminates the need for any snapshotting or sequencing to configure Microsoft Office 2007 and other popular applications.  Studio automatically configures itself for popular applications given appropriate source media and license keys.
  • Ability to import external application configurations, including VMware ThinApp configurations: Customers who have already packaged applications using other technologies, including VMware ThinApp/Thinstall, can now import these configurations into Studio with a single click, without the need for any recapture.
  • Communication between virtualized applications: Virtual environment process controls and jukeboxing allow multiple applications to share virtual resources and “talk” with one another. For instance, users can embed live Excel spreadsheets into Word documents or run multiple applications within a shared virtual environment.
  • New site licensing programs: Educational institutions, government agencies, and ISVs can now license Xenocode technology with no per-device or per-application fees.

A detailed list of updates and patches is available on the Xenocode RSS feed.

[Source: MarketWatch]

Xenocode