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Cisco Talks Up Data Center 3.0 Initiative, Wants To “Demistify Virtualization”

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Cisco Systems today announced updates to several of its key products to accelerate applications in Data Center 3.0, Cisco’s vision for a virtualized data center tied together by a unified network fabric.

Cisco

Today’s announcements at Cisco Live also featured new tools and training to help networking professionals master the complexity of virtualized data centers. In essence, the company is rolling out a host of software and services designed to expand what data center administrators can do with virtualization.

“Real-time collaborative applications, energy concerns and the need to achieve greater efficiency from assets are driving IT managers to transform their data centers through new technologies,” said John McCool, senior vice president and general manager, Cisco Data Center, Switching and Services Group, and co-chair of the Cisco EcoBoard . “By providing virtualization technologies across the data center, Cisco aims to help businesses achieve the agility and resiliency they need to compete on a global scale.”

Where’s the beef, you ask?

The announcements coming out of Cisco include the release of the company’s WAAS (Wide Area Application Services) software version 4.1, which offers virtualized application hosting services, application acceleration and video deliver for branch offices, and Cisco’s VFrame Data Center release 1.2 for infrastructure provisioning with Cisco’s ACE (Application Control Engine) and VMware’s ESX Server software.

In addition, Cisco is releasing version 3.1 of ACE for the ACE 4710 application switch, which offers up to 4 gigabits-per-second of throughput. The company also is announcing the Cisco Data Center 3.0 professional programs and services for support customers and partners with data center deployments. Included in the services offerings is Cisco’s new Data Center Efficiency Program, part of the company’s Data Center Assurance Program 4.0, a Web-based tool that enables users to analyze power use in the data center and identify power and cooling technologies most useful in their facilities.

WAAS 4.1, VFrame 1.2 and the ACE Appliance will be available in the third quarter.

[Source: The Register]

rPath Raises $10 Million More

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rPath, which got on our radar thanks to some high-profile customers, today announced that the company has closed a $10M round of venture financing. The Series C round was led by rPath’s existing backers, General Catalyst, North Bridge Venture Partners and Wakefield Group. The company says it plans to use this new capital to increase its leadership in enabling cloud computing.

rPath

“As the demand for cloud computing continues to explode, rPath is in a unique position to drive adoption as the fastest and most scalable approach for delivering applications to cloud computing environments such as Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Citrix’s XenServer, and VMware’s Virtual Infrastructure,” said Billy Marshall, rPath founder and CEO.

Since the beginning of 2008, rPath has seen a surge of interest in its technology resulting in an increase of over 100% in new customers, including 3SP, Avinity Systems, CERN, Cynapse, Department of Energy, DigitalStakeout, Firescope, VIP Tone and Webalo.

[Source: Private Equity HUB]

Hyper9 Comes Out Of Stealth, Focuses On Letting You Find And Manage Virtual Machines

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Hyper9, formerly known as InovaWave, provider of search-based software for virtual environment management, today announced its first product, carrying the same name as its parent company. Hyper9 will be free to download in September.

Hyper9

Hyper9, a privately held company headquartered in Austin, Texas, leverages a “Google-like” search engine to access both real-time and historical data on everything from the guest operating system to the physical infrastructure, then presents that data via a “next-generation” user interface. As a result, Hyper9 claims this approach supports faster troubleshooting, comprehensive monitoring and detailed reporting on the performance, configuration and utilization of virtual environments.

“Just as virtualization is transforming traditional computing, Hyper9 is ready with a truly scalable, flexible and intuitive approach to managing these dynamic environments,” said Chris Ostertag, president and CEO of Hyper9, Inc. “Hyper9’s unique architecture ensures that it can adapt to and accommodate the continually changing nature of virtual environments even as they gravitate to more hybrid states.”

The initial Hyper9 virtual appliance is designed to work only with the VMware ESX environment. Later versions will work with additional hypervisors, the company announced.

Hyper9

iWave Software Debuts Automator, Will It Please IT Administrators?

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iWave Software, a 15-year old maker of IT integration software, today announced its entry into the IT process automation market with the introduction of iWave Automator.

iWave Software

iWave Automator is a platform designed to automate data center support processes (run book automation) and to integrate IT system management (ITSM) applications. iWave Automator aims to enable IT organizations to automate, standardize and enforce best practices, lowering their operating costs and improving application availability, while maintaining compliance in their virtualized and physical data centers.

iWave Automator says it provides IT administrators with two options for automating their virtual or physical data center environments. Administrators can use iWave’s graphical process design environment to create automations specific to their organization’s unique business needs or implement iWave Accelerators, pre-built IT automation workflows that automotive specific tasks using ITIL compliant processes.

iWave Automator

The platform consists of the following components:

  • iWave Adapters: iWave offers over 40 pre-built adapters for IT service management (ITSM) applications. iWave Adapters support all of the popular ITSM applications that span the ITIL Service Support disciplines including service desks, event, problem, change, configuration and release management.
  • iWave Accelerators: iWave Accelerators are pre-built workflows that administrators can download and import into their iWave Automator environments. iWave Accelerators help administrators automate common IT management tasks including virtual server management, configuration and compliance management.
  • iWave Designer: A graphical user interface that provides administrators the tools required to create IT process automation workflows and integrations quickly and easily.
  • iWave Management Console: A Web-based console that provides administrators the ability to monitor the health of the iWave Automator environment as well as their ITSM workflows and integrations.

Parallels + Quest = VDI Solution Bundle

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Quest Software and Parallels today announced a major deal by jointly launching a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) bundle that offers enterprises a centralized Windows desktop deployment and management platform.

Parallels

Quest - Provision Networks

The combination of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers server virtualization and Quest’s Provision Networks Virtual Access Suite (VAS) desktop brokering and management solution aims to simplify desktop and image management, improve security, address regulatory compliance and offer the most cost-efficient approach to terminal services.

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers enables users to run multiple workloads as isolated, simultaneously executing virtual environments. Since it is installed on top of the operating system (OS), the containers use the resources of the underlying host OS, rather than needing their own.

“By delivering up to three times the number of virtual desktops on each physical server, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers makes VDI a truly cost effective solution,” said Paul Ghostine, VP and General Manager of Quest Software’s Provision Networks division. “We see this partnership as an opportunity to further extend our leadership in the VDI space by giving customers a variety of platform choices for their desktop virtualization needs.”

The solution is priced $140 per concurrent desktop connection and it’s available now through sales channels of both companies.

Novell Upgrades PlateSpin PowerConvert To Version 7.0

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PlateSpin, since March 2008 a Novell company, today announced the launch of PlateSpin PowerConvert Version 7.0 with new backup and recovery features and expanded multi-platform support to help enterprises migrate and protect server workloads across heterogeneous physical and virtual IT environments.

PlateSpin

In addition to providing enhanced SUSE Linux Enterprise support, PlateSpin PowerConvert now provides broader support for Red Hat Enterprise Linux, as well as support for critical 64-Bit Microsoft Windows Server-based workloads and Citrix XenServer environments. PowerConvert provides the flexibility to optimize data centers by decoupling server workloads from the underlying hardware and streaming them over the network between physical servers, blade infrastructures, virtual hosts and image archives.

“Since Novell’s acquisition of PlateSpin in March, the two organizations have worked closely to put in place a data center strategy and product roadmap to help customers achieve an agile enterprise in which business services can span physical and virtual environments,” said Stephen Pollack, chief executive officer of PlateSpin, a Novell company. “To build the next-generation data center infrastructure, organizations need enterprise-caliber multi-platform workload portability, robust and scalable workload protection and reliable policy-based orchestration, PlateSpin PowerConvert 7.0 is designed to help customers achieve this flexibility and maximize their investment in virtualization.”

These are the new PowerConvert 7.0 features, according to the press release:

  • Linux “Anywhere-to-Physical” Migrations – Powerful physical-to-physical (P2P) and virtual-to-physical (V2P) capabilities enable migration of Linux workloads across physical or virtual boundaries for 32-bit SUSE Linux Enterprise Server from Novell and Red Hat Enterprise Linux, giving customers the ability to accelerate data center initiatives including server consolidation, hardware lease migration and data center relocation.
  • Windows 64-Bit Support – Windows 64-Bit physical-to-virtual (P2V) migration for critical Windows Server 2003 workloads with support for various transfer methods, including Take Control, Live File Transfer and Snapshot for VMware ESX 3.x, 3.5 and Citrix XEN Enterprise 4.1, offers customers an effective migration option in a single solution.
  • Enhanced Citrix XenServer Support – Support for anywhere-to-virtual (X2V) and virtual-to-image (V2I) workload migrations for Citrix XenServer Enterprise 4.1 including 32-bit Windows XP, 2000, 2003 and 64-Bit Windows Server 2003 allows customers to accelerate and simplify integration and maximize their IT investment.
  • Incremental Imaging Capabilities – Flexible imaging support brings greater workload protection while enabling significant savings in terms of staffing time, bandwidth and storage costs. Superior image import and export capabilities and automation enable organizations to more easily create and manage an image-based repository of server workloads for backup and disaster recovery and reduce imaging costs.
  • Enterprise-class Speed and Reliability – Dramatically improved transfer speeds for workload migrations over a wide range of network types from Gigabit Ethernet networks to high-latency WAN environments — all with reliable enterprise-class workload migration functionality including Server Sync(TM), job automation and post-migration testing capabilities that minimize downtime while maximizing the integrity of the workload migration. PowerConvert’s enterprise-caliber reliability reduces overall migration project times, lowers business risk and accelerates time to value for large- scale data center initiatives.

[Source: PR Newswire]