News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing
Fujitsu Siemens, which manufactures hardware from laptop PCs to servers, will this week merge with a former Siemens IT services company to enable the company to battle head on with players like IBM, Dell and HP. Two years ago, Fujitsu Siemens had already acquired a former Siemens engineering division called Siemens IT Products Services.
To this date, the division has been trading as a separate company from Fujitsu Siemens but from 1 April the two entities will merge.
[Source: SiliconRepublic]
3Leaf Systems today announced it has obtained a license for Intel’s QuickPath Interconnect, which will allow it to build virtualization support for Intel servers. Previously, the company only had a HyperTransport license and only supported AMD servers.
3Leaf uses a direct communication network between server CPUs so data does not have to go over an Ethernet or Fibre Channel connection. The company fabricates special virtualization processors for the motherboard to virtualize the CPUs, memory and I/O of the entire datacenter.
The 3Leaf technology breaks down the physical walls of x86 servers and makes their resources available, as needed, across the datacenter. One of the problems in data centers is one group of servers dedicated to a task might be running at 5 % utilization, while another group is maxed out and needs more CPU cycles and more memory.
“We are enabling the next generation of the datacenter, which are going to be dynamic data centers, where resources, compute, memory or I/O could be made available to the applications on an on demand basis rather than in a static way the way it exists today,” said B.V. Jagadeesh, president and CEO of 3Leaf.
“At the end of the day we’re almost reinventing the mainframe here,” said George Crump, founder and president of Storage Switzerland, an analyst firm focused on the storage and virtualization marketplaces. “I spoke to someone at American Express who said ‘VMware is great but I can’t scale outside the box.’ I think we’re going to see that, where flexibility will require the ability to virtualize outside of the sheet metal.”
The solution is an unusual one: a chip to handle the load balancing that goes into the processor socket. So instead of an Opteron or Xeon on the motherboard socket, a 3Leaf processor goes in its place. A PCI Express card isn’t an option, as the bus is not fast enough.
The AMD-based 3Leaf processor is planned for the first half of 2009 while the Intel one is planned for the first half of 2010.
[Source: InternetNews]
San Jose-based Xsigo announced that it has formally partnered with European IT services and solutions provider Computacenter. The partnership, which was announced about a month ago, encompasses technical, marketing and professional services relationships and confirms Xsigo as an integral component of Computacenter’s virtualization offering.
Computacenter claims to have chosen to partner with Xsigo due to its differentiated I/O virtualization product family (watch a short interview and live demo from their VMWorld Europe 2008 booth). Computacenter is a European provider of VMware server virtualization solutions, and is headquartered in Hatfield, UK.
“Virtualization offers organizations new opportunities to increase the efficiency and agility of their IT operations, but it can also place different demands on their data center infrastructure,” said Terry Walby, director of data center solutions at Computacenter. “We are continually looking for innovation and enhancement in the technology optimization solutions we deliver to our customers. By adding Xsigo virtual I/O products to our comprehensive portfolio of virtualization solutions, we can help customers further simplify and accelerate their transformation journey towards an optimized data center equipped to cope with the demands of the future.”
Xsigo sought to extend its I/O virtualization outside the US by developing a partnership in Europe which matched its vision for virtualization and simplification of the data center. Xsigo claims its I/O virtualization solutions allow large data centers to lower their server-related operational expenses by up to 80 %, cut capital costs by 50 %, and use 70 % less cabling.
“Computacenter’s services and solutions deliver the breadth and technical expertise to help customers optimize their operations, and Xsigo is the virtual I/O part of that equation,” stated Charlie Will, vice president of international sales at Xsigo. “Computacenter selects best-in-class products, such as VMware and Xsigo, and enriches these offerings with its own expertise in sales, support, and professional services. Computacenter puts it all together so that customers can rapidly deploy tightly integrated virtualization solutions that effectively address their business requirements.”
[Source: SYS-CON]
St. Louis, Missouri-based Netelligent has announced it is now an Enterprise level partner within VMware’s VIP Partner Program.
Over the past year, Netelligent has made substantial investments in people, training, software and hardware in order to add virtualization expertise and know-how to it’s services offering. “Our goal is to maintain our standards of excellence and credibility”, says Aaron Stone, President of Netelligent. “Adding to our Services Offering is not something we take lightly. We are very aware that what sets us apart from our competitors is the strength of our Engineering team and how we listen, design and execute”, continues Stone.
[Source: press release]
Leading IT products distributor Tech Data and Parallels today announced an exclusive distribution agreement for the Parallels Virtuozzo Containers server virtualization solution. Available to value-added resellers through distribution for the first time, Parallels Virtuozzo Containers will further strengthen Tech Data’s AIS Division’s virtualization solutions offering.
“Parallels Virtuozzo Containers takes a different approach to server virtualization than many of the other solutions available in the channel, and by doing, so offers enterprises large and small a unique set of advantages, such as better per-server density and superior performance,” said Bill Portin, vice president of North American sales and operations, Parallels. “This makes Parallels Virtuozzo Containers an ideal solution for VARs deploying data center-scale virtualization or for those deploying virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions. Working with Tech Data’s AIS Division, Parallels will ensure our VAR partners have access to the support, expertise and information they need to profitably deploy Parallels Virtuozzo Containers.”
VARs can leverage Parallels Virtuozzo Containers to enhance and deploy a wide range of IT solutions, including:
“Server virtualization is clearly an emerging technology that offers VARs tremendous opportunities to grow their revenue and deliver more robust data center solutions,” said Amy Belcher, Tech Data‘s director, Product Marketing, Advanced Infrastructure Solutions. “But as quickly as virtualization is reshaping the IT strategies of large enterprises and small businesses, the server virtualization landscape is rapidly evolving with new and creative solutions like Parallels Virtuozzo Containers. The AIS Division and its team of virtualization experts are on hand to help VARs understand the latest offerings and to choose the solutions that best meet the needs of their customers.“
[Source: FOXBusiness]
VMware is (finally) set to release beta 2 of VMware Server 2.0, which is reportedly to be announced at 6pm PST today.
Could be true, since the discussion forum at VMware is filled with people who are seeing an expiration deadline for their usage of the 4-month old beta 1, due next Sunday. The first post on the forum dates back to 24 March, but other members are not convinced a new build is actually coming, nor are they happy with the short-term note and the lack of communication from VMware.
More when there’s anything official to announce.
Update from that same discussion forum:
“We were all set to post Beta 2 today but encountered a last minute cosmetic issue on Windows installer (we saw it mostly on desktop Windows OS), so we are spinning up a new build tonight and will have everything posted mid afternoon (Pacific time) Friday March 28th. Sorry for the delay but it was a deliberate decision to take the hit now. Hang in there.”
Final update:
Beta 2 is available.
More info here, registration for download over here.
New features and enhancements in the VMware Server 2.0 Beta 2 release: