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VirtualLogix’ VLX for Network Infrastructure Now Available for Power Architectures

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VirtualLogix today announced that its VLX for Network Infrastructure is now available for Power Architecture based processors. Using VLX virtualization software, multiple operating systems may run simultaneously on shared hardware, “enabling networking and telecommunication equipment manufacturers to inject new functionalities into existing product lines and extend product lifecycles – while slicing costs by consolidating existing products into a multifunction system”.

VirtualLogix

According to the company, VLX for Network Infrastructure, supporting Power Architecture, speeds the adoption of rich open source software by combining Linux with real-time operating systems on shared hardware without compromising the system’s deterministic realtime behavior.

“This seamless integration is due to the advanced capabilities of VLX that allow multiple guest operating systems to run simultaneously in a number of different configurations based on performance and security criteria. As a result, users can extend the lifetime of existing designs by adding extra partitions to run upgraded or new features and consolidate functionality. By simplifying the hardware design, organizations reduce bill-of-materials and development costs, and reduce power consumption.”

New VLX for Network Infrastructure, supporting Power Architecture, features include:

  • Real-Time Virtualization – allows developers to run a combination of guest operating systems including Linux and a customer’s choice of real-time OS while keeping the real-time performance characteristics of their overall system.
  • Consolidation of hardware platforms – developers can consolidate Linux and mission-critical environments onto a single hardware platform, reducing system complexity and product bill-of-material costs.
  • Introduces support for Freescale’s popular PowerQUICC processors – includes support for the Integrated Communications and Host Processors from Freescale as well as the 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors from IBM.

[Source: VMblog]

xkoto Presents New Management Team

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Xkoto, a provider of data virtualization solutions that ensure availability and scalability for mission-critical data and applications, today announced it has strengthened its executive management team.

xkoto

Joining xkoto are John Hamilton (Senior Vice President of Sales and Services), Dermot O’Grady (Chief Financial Officer) and Charlie Ungashick (Vice President of Marketing).

“The management team we have assembled puts us in excellent position to take a major share of the data virtualization market,” said David Patrick, President and Chief Executive Officer. “We are now geared up to build on the vision of our co-founders, Albert Lee, Ariff Kassam and Jeff Heisz, who identified the need for a product that would dramatically improve application availability by virtualizing the database infrastructure.”

Prior to joining xkoto, John Hamilton was Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer at Trigence, an application virtualization software company. Dermot O’Grady joins xkoto from Convoq, where as CFO he was instrumental in raising $23 million in venture capital, according to the press release.

Finally, Charlie Ungashick joined xkoto from Deltek, where he was Vice President of Field and Product Marketing and a “key contributor to its successful IPO”.

CEO David Patrick said the team is ramping sales of xkoto’s GRIDSCALE software platform.

Remus: High Availability via Asynchronous Virtual Machine Replication

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The 5th Usenix Symposium on Networked Systems Design and Implementation (NSDI’08) starts today in San Francisco, CA. The NSDI symposium focuses on the design principles of large-scale networks and distributed systems.

XenMaster Ian Pratt (Senior Lecturer, University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory/XenSource (Citrix)) will be presenting the Keynote.
Apart from this Keynote a very interesting paper about Virtualization and High Availability will be presented by the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia.

In a paper titled Remus: High Availability via Asynchronous Virtual Machine Replication Brendan Cully, Geoffrey Lefebvre, Dutch Meyer, Mike Feeley, Norm Hutchinson and Andrew Warfield describe how with minor modifications to Xen 3.1.2
they achieve fast (frequencies as high as forty times per second) replication of Xen virtual machines.

Their tool Remus allows systems to transparently move to another physical machine in the event of a failure on the primary machine , with only seconds of downtime, while preserving the original host state such as active network connections , memory and disk state.

Today most Virtualization vendors claim they achieve High Availability while actually they only implement an easier way to recover from failure or a method to migrate away from a machine that is showing early problems. Most of the current Virtualization based solutions still require you to restart a new virtual machine, or implement High Availability on application level.
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Mind , this is a research paper don’t expect these kind of features to show up at your local IT shop within the next couple of weeks.

Thanks to Usenix opening up their conference proceedings for everybod,y you can get the full paper here.

VKernel Announces Availability For ESX Virtualization Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer

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VKernel Corporation, a provider of virtual appliances for managing virtual server environments, today announced general availability of its Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer Virtual Appliance. Other than being a mouthful, the Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer immediately identifies current and future capacity bottleneck issues in VMware ESX environments, which can lower the cost of each virtual machine while ensuring
higher performance.

VKernel

From the press release (PDF):

“VKernel’s patent-pending technology continuously monitors CPU, memory, and storage utilization trends in VMware ESX environments across hosts, clusters, and resource pools. VKernel’s quick-to-install virtual appliance model gives users a simple, single-screen management dashboard that displays detailed capacity information to effectively plan for the addition of new hosts, clusters, and resource pools. By customizing capacity thresholds, users can receive alerts via email and SNMP.”

“When properly detecting capacity bottlenecks, organizations can increase performance and reduce downtime problems that lead to escalating business and IT costs and negative perceptions of virtualization within business units,” said Alex Bakman, founder and CEO of VKernel. “The real challenge for IT staffs is finding a solution that helps them identify capacity bottlenecks without wasting countless man-hours sifting through hundreds of management reports. Within minutes, our Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer can show exactly where capacity bottlenecks are today and where problems are likely to occur to maximize virtual machine utilization.”

The VKernel Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer Virtual Appliance is currently available with pricing starting at $199 per CPU socket. You can download a full production 14-day trial version of the VKernel virtual appliance here.

[Source: Server Virtualization Blog]

Transitive Welcomes IBM Platform Unification

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Transitive Corporation, a US-based provider of cross-platform virtualization software that enables the execution of applications across diverse computing platforms, today welcomed IBM‘s unification of its former System i and System p enterprise server families into a common Power Systems product line.

Transitive

The company claims this unification represents a significant market expansion for the PowerVM Lx86 solution that was developed for IBM by Transitive. PowerVM Lx86 is available for all of IBM’s new Power Systems models, which offer POWER6 processors, simplified pricing, increased application choice and reduced energy and administration costs.

The IBM platform unification means that customers using previous System i servers can boost performance and energy efficiency by moving their mission-critical workloads to the new systems (including cost-effective blade options) while continuing to use the same applications and operating systems they have depended on for two decades. These customers can also take advantage of IBM’s PowerVM virtualization — which allows them to create up to 80 virtual partitions per server — as well as using the PowerVM Lx86 cross-platform virtualization solution to run thousands of additional mainstream Linux/x86 applications on the very same Power Systems servers.

“IBM continues to work very closely with Transitive to address the needs of customers interested in reducing server sprawl and saving money by consolidating multiple diverse workloads onto Power Systems servers,” said Scott Handy, vice president of marketing and strategy, IBM Power Systems. “By making PowerVM Lx86 available to the unified Power Systems customer base, the universe of applications that can easily be consolidated by these customers increases beyond AIX, i and Linux on Power native applications to include virtually all Linux/x86 applications as well.”

[Source: Marketwire]

Wyse Launches New Class of Desktop Appliance Solutions Designed for Citrix XenDesktop

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Wyse Technology today announced that it will bring to market a new class of appliances, specifically designed for the new Citrix XenDesktop product line (due to be unveiled soon at Citrix Synergy 2008). By combining Wyse’s new appliances with the desktop delivery capabilities found in Citrix XenDesktop, enterprises will “have a comprehensive solution for delivering desktops to office workers with the best user experience, simplest administration and lowest cost of ownership”, according to the press release.

Wyse

“The Wyse Viance family of devices provide unique features beyond what’s currently available that deliver easy set-up time and management, fast performance, rich multimedia experience, broad USB peripheral compatibility, multi-display support, and quick access to online end-user support. In addition, these appliances only use 13 to 19 watts of power making them a very “green” solution.”

“Wyse has partnered with Citrix in the past to sell thin clients for Terminal Services and Presentation Server, but now a new, bigger opportunity has emerged” said John Abbott, chief analyst of the 451 Group. “Desktop virtualization all but forces an appliance model onto the desktop — users typically aren’t keen to control a virtual PC image with a physical PC. Citrix and Wyse are in a good position to capitalize on the fast-growing VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) sector and push thin clients into the broader marketplace for the first time.”

Entry-level pricing of the new Wyse Viance appliances starts at $399.00 with volume shipments beginning this quarter. Existing Wyse thin clients that support XenDesktop are available today with prices starting at $299.00.

[Source: EarthTimes]