Virtualization.com

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

Kirk Dunn Joins Cloudera As COO

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Cloudera, provider of Apache Hadoop-based data management software and services, has named industry veteran Kirk Dunn as the company’s Chief Operating Officer.

Prior to joining Cloudera as COO, Kirk served as Chief Executive Officer at PowerFile, a venture-backed company building hybrid storage systems, and at Bang Networks, makers of an intelligent messaging platform for enterprise users. Before joining Bang Networks, Kirk led North American sales at Inktomi Corporation.

“Cloudera’s growth over the past six quarters has been remarkable,” said Mike Olson, CEO of Cloudera. “We’re poised for a great 2011, but we have a great deal to do. Kirk’s broad experience — at large and small companies and in a variety of roles — is a tremendous addition to our leadership team. I am very pleased to welcome such a seasoned executive to Cloudera.”

Dell Invests $1 Billion In Cloud Data Centers, Service Enhancements

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Dell today announced it is increasing its investments in new technology solutions and services.

In its current fiscal year, Dell will invest $1 billion to deliver solutions, services and cloud-based delivery options to help customers capture the benefits from new compute and information delivery advancements.

Over the next 24 months, Dell will build multiple data centers around the world to provide its customers access to public and private cloud technologies and its IT outsourcing capabilities. These new data centers will allow customers to take advantage of Infrastructure-, Platform- and Virtual Desktop-as-a-Service offerings as well as IT outsourcing.

Dell will open 12 Global Solution Centers this year and is planning 10 more over the next 18 months, to better bring open, capable and affordable solutions to organizations around the world. This global network of solution centers will provide a backdrop for customers to learn about Dell’s industry-focused solutions and domain expertise.

Announced today, Dell vStart accelerates and simplifies virtualization adoption by providing an easy way to purchase a complete virtual infrastructure solution delivered ready to run physical and virtual workloads. With vStart, an entire functioning virtual infrastructure solution is delivered ready to run up to 100 or 200 virtual machines from a single management environment – including Intel Xeon-based Dell PowerEdge servers, Dell EqualLogic storage, Dell PowerConnect switches, deployment services, hypervisors, and essential virtualization management extensions.

Dell vStart currently supports VMWare and support for other hypervisors is planned in the coming quarters.

Also today, Dell and Microsoft announced a three-year strategic initiative to help customers quickly deploy and manage virtualization and private cloud technologies. Management solutions will be based on Dell’s Virtual Integrated System, Dell Advanced Infrastructure Manager and Microsoft System Center and will deliver improved integration across the physical, virtual and application layers. Virtualization solutions will be based on Microsoft Windows Server Hyper-V.

Future jointly-engineered solutions based on Dell’s hardware and virtualization management technologies and Microsoft’s hypervisor and systems management technologies will simplify virtualization management, reduce costs and remove barriers to cloud adoption.

Release: Egenera PAN Manager Software on HP BladeSystem

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Egenera today announced the general availability of Egenera PAN Manager Software on HP BladeSystem c-class server blades based on Intel processor technology.

Capitalizing on the advantages of the HP Virtual Connect FlexFabric module, the latest release of PAN Manager Software will offer a ten-fold increase in throughput for PAN Manager Software environments.

PAN Manager now supports HP, Fujitsu and Dell blade server platforms, as well as Egenera’s own BladeFrame offering.

Egenera PAN Manager Software for HP BladeSystem with the Virtual Connect FlexFabric module is immediately available for purchase.

45 Organizations Team Up For Cloud Standards Customer Council for Open Cloud Computing

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OMG, an international, open membership, not-for-profit computer industry consortium, today announced the formation of the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC).

OMG is also announcing that CA, IBM, Kaavo, Rackspace and Software AG have joined the CSCC as Founding Sponsors.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council is an end user advocacy group dedicated to accelerating cloud’s successful adoption, and drilling down into the standards, security and interoperability issues surrounding the transition to the cloud.

More than 45 organizations including Lockheed Martin, Citigroup and North Carolina State University have already joined the Cloud Standards Customer Council. The Council will provide cloud users with the opportunity to drive client requirements into standards development organizations and deliver materials such as best practices and use cases to assist other enterprises.

Membership is free for qualified end-user organizations. Vendors may join as sponsors.

Virsto Debuts Storage Virtualization Software for Virtual Desktop Deployments

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Virsto Software has introduced Virsto VDI, a hypervisor-based storage virtualization solution designed to significantly decrease the costs of virtual desktop deployments while improving end users’ desktop experience.

Initially supporting Citrix XenDesktop and Microsoft VDI running on Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V, Virsto VDI is architected to be storage- and hypervisor-agnostic and enables users to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops, maximize consolidation of server and storage hardware, and reduce overall storage costs for VDI deployments by more than 70 percent.

Virtual desktop environments differ in significant ways from virtual server environments that are often deployed to meet consolidation objectives and support private cloud initiatives.

Virsto VDI is now generally available. Pricing for Virsto VDI is $2,800 per host, with 1 TB of logical storage per license.

VMware Takes Over EMC’s Mozy Assets, Team

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In a blog post, VMware this week announced that the company has hired the team and acquired assets behind EMC’s Mozy cloud-based data protection service.

VMware will operate the Mozy service on behalf of EMC without interruption.

Mozy today boasts more than 1 million users, 70,000 business customers, and a worldwide network of datacenters storing more than 70 petabytes of data.

The Mozy team will help VMware continue to serve the burgeoning SMB community as they move forward on their own path to cloud computing.