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NetApp Enhances Storage Management Efficiencies for VMware Environments

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In support of the new VMware vSphere 4.1 release, NetApp today announced new storage management integration for greater performance and scalability of VMware vSphere environments. NetApp Virtual Storage Console enables customers to centrally manage all NetApp storage for VMware environments directly from the VMware vCenter Server console and fully leverage the benefits of virtualized infrastructures.

Virtualized infrastructures are expanding the role of administrators and causing them to spend more time on storage monitoring and management. Although VMware vCenter Server provides a powerful tool for managing and monitoring VMware vSphere environments, administrators also need a way to easily and efficiently manage associated storage.

NetApp Virtual Storage Console combines several best-of-breed storage technologies to deliver end-to-end management in both SAN- and NAS-based VMware infrastructures. Tightly integrated with VMware vCenter Server, the single storage console enables VMware administrators to centrally monitor, provision, clone, back up, recover, and replicate storage operations for virtual server and desktop environments without requiring storage administrator assistance.

Virtual Storage Console also helps optimize utilization and improve responsiveness with real-time discovery, health monitoring, and capacity management. This combination of unique capabilities provides VMware administrators with the necessary tools to improve server and storage visibility and efficiencies while still enabling storage administrators to own and control storage policies.

NetApp Virtual Storage Console employs both NetApp and VMware APIs to deliver a robust, fully supported solution for multiple virtual desktop environments, and enables fast updates to thousands of desktops or virtual machines.

In addition, Virtual Storage Console supports NetApp MultiStore, allowing customers, service providers, and cloud providers to secure multi-tenant cloud environments from within VMware vCenter Server, maintaining desired service levels and security for each tenant.

Additionally, NetApp is supporting the new VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI) capabilities that offload data management tasks from the host server to the storage system. This can free up host CPU cycles for better performance and increased virtual machine density.

Release: VMware vSphere 4.1

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VMware today announced VMware vSphere 4.1, the latest version of the VMware virtualization platform, as well as an expanded portfolio of virtualization management solutions.

VMware vSphere 4.1 and the VMware vCenter product family are cornerstone solutions for customers and service providers building private and public cloud environments. As such, these technologies have attracted a broad partner ecosystem of industry leaders that support and extend this foundation.

With groundbreaking new memory management and expanded resource pooling capabilities, VMware vSphere 4.1 promises to accelerate the evolution of datacenters and service providers into cloud computing environments, setting the standard for key tenets of cloud computing:

  • 2X larger resource pools with 3X the management power. Already the most powerful virtualization platform on the market, VMware vSphere 4.1 includes dramatic scalability enhancements, enabling customers to aggregate twice the computing resources within a single pool. VMware vCenter Server can now manage up to 10,000 concurrently powered on VMs — three times as many as before.
  • Up to 25% better performance and reduced cost per application. With the addition of new memory compression technology, VMware vSphere 4.1 preserves the performance of systems under heavy load, resulting in up to 25% better performance over previous approaches. Memory compression also contributes to further increased consolidation ratios in VMware vSphere. Already the highest consolidation levels in the market, this increase reduces customers’ cost-per-application, a critical measure of value delivered through virtualization.
  • 5X faster virtual machine migrations for increased agility. Speed and scale enhancements to VMware vMotion™ deliver superior platform response and availability by migrating virtual machines up to five times faster and enabling up to eight concurrent vMotion events per server pair.
  • New network and storage I/O controls deliver Quality of Service guarantees.VMware vSphere 4.1 introduces new controls that allow better alignment of storage and network I/O resources to business priority. VMware vSphere network and storage I/O controls provide granular control over how applications access shared storage and network resources. Administrators can set quality of service priorities per virtual machine and VMware vSphere 4.1 automatically manages resource allocation accordingly.
  • Increased performance through open integration with storage environments.VMware vSphere 4.1 already supports more operating systems, devices, applications, and service providers than any other virtualization solution. With the introduction of new VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI), VMware vSphere 4.1 enables tighter integration with solutions from VMware’s storage partners to increase the efficiency and performance of the platform in cloud environments.

VMware vCenter helps customers further reduce complexity of their IT environment while increasing operational efficiency through policy-based management of provisioning, deployment, and performance optimization. VMware has broadened its management portfolio to deliver a complete set of solutions to automate the management of dynamic virtualized systems.

Today VMware is introducing:

  • VMware vCenter Configuration Manager (formerly EMC Ionix Application Stack Manager and EMC Ionix Server Configuration Manager) ensures policy based compliance and avoids configuration drift by automating manual configuration tasks across virtual and physical servers and workstations.
  • VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager (formerly EMC Ionix Application Discovery Manager) quickly and accurately maps application dependencies to accelerate datacenter moves, precisely plan infrastructure consolidations, and confidently virtualize business-critical applications.

VMware is also introducing a new per VM licensing model for the VMware vCenter management solutions. This new model aligns licensing costs to the number of virtual machines being managed, rather than to the physical hardware. As virtualization and cloud computing become more prevalent models of IT infrastructure, the virtual machine is rapidly becoming the standard measure of infrastructure deployments.

In a virtualized environment, the hardware configuration is abstracted and changes frequently due to virtual machine migrations across the datacenter, making hardware-based licensing complex. The new virtual machine-based licensing model for VMware vCenter offers customers better alignment between software costs and benefits delivered.

This new model will also better support customers’ needs to port computing environments across diverse hardware configurations, including multiple CPU scenarios, without incurring additional costs.

This new licensing model will be in effect on September 1, 2010 for VMware vCenter products only.

VMware vSphere 4.1 is currently available in packages and prices that address the widest range of customer requirements, from Small and Mid-size Business solutions starting at $83 per processor to full enterprise editions for the most demanding environments at $3,495 per processor.

VMware vCenter AppSpeed, VMware vCenter Chargeback, and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager will be sold in VM packs on a per VM basis starting on September 1, 2010. VMware vCenter Application Discovery Manager and VMware vCenter Configuration Manager are already licensed on both a per VM and physical server model. Per VM licensing for VMware vCenter CapacityIQ will take effect in the fourth quarter of 2010.

VMware Releases Enhanced Virtualization Offerings for Small and Midsize Businesses

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VMware introduced new VMware vSphere 4.1 solutions for small and midsize businesses (SMBs) with prices starting at $83 per processor.

VMware also announced today the availability of VMware vSphere 4.1, with key performance and efficiency enhancements for virtualization and cloud computing environments.

According to an independent survey of North American and European SMB x86 server virtualization decision-makers conducted by Forrester Research, 74% of the virtualized environments in those SMBs surveyed utilize VMware technologies. In the same survey, “60% of SMBs rated standardizing on virtualization for server deployment, disaster recovery, business continuity capabilities, and infrastructure consolidation as a high or critical priority.”

Small and midsize businesses represent the fastest growing segment of VMware’s customer base.

In the last two years alone, VMware has tripled the number of customers in the SMB segment by introducing solutions and services aimed specifically at this market. VMware vSphere delivers the most complete virtualization offering for businesses of all sizes. Today’s announcement expands VMware’s portfolio of SMB solutions, bringing the most advanced virtualization capabilities to the broadest range of customers.

With the release of VMware vSphere 4.1, VMware has enhanced its virtualization portfolio for SMBs, bringing advanced capabilities to this market segment and introducing new price points:

  • VMware vMotion now included in VMware vSphere 4.1 Essentials Plus and Standard editions. VMware vMotion delivers the most advanced live migration capability, enabling customers to rapidly migrate virtual machines across hardware environments without interrupting business operations. Live migration allows customers to effectively consolidate physical systems and utilize resource pools by moving workloads to the optimal environment. vMotion is in use in over 70% of VMware vSphere customers. For the first time, VMware is making this capability available in the VMware vSphere Essentials Plus and Standard editions, targeted for SMB customers. In vSphere 4.1, vMotion is enhanced to deliver a 5X increase in migration speed while supporting up to eight simultaneous migrations.

  • New, lower price for VMware vSphere 4.1 Essentials. The most popular VMware vSphere kit for businesses with fewer than 30 applications, VMware vSphere 4.1 Essentials provides an all-in-one solution for small businesses at $495 for six processors, approximately $83 per processor.

  • ESXi rebranded as VMware vSphere Hypervisor, still available at no cost. VMware vSphere Hypervisor (formerly ESXi single server edition) delivers the proven foundation of VMware’s virtualization technology to customers of all sizes at no cost. Composed of the same underlying hypervisor architecture as the entire VMware vSphere product portfolio, VMware vSphere Hypervisor enables customers to rapidly implement production virtualization environments to take advantage of server consolidation, cost savings and reduced power and cooling consumption. VMware vSphere Hypervisor has been rapidly adopted by the market and has been proven to run even the most resource-intensive applications with the highest performance. The free solution provides a rapidly deployed platform to begin adopting virtualization across the organization.

VMware vSphere 4.1 is currently available, with edition prices starting at $495 for six processors, approximately $83 per processor.

EMC Touts Improvements Of Storage Efficiency In VMware Environments

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EMC has announced three new storage integrations with the new VMware vSphere 4.1 enabling customers of all sizes to dramatically improve the efficiency of their VMware environments.

Now delivering more than 55 integration points with VMware solutions, the combined solutions are easy-to-use with the best overall performance. EMC has by far the most integrated solution support for VMware environments and continues to underscore its position as the number one choice in storage for VMware environments with customers choosing EMC two times as often as any other vendor.

Released today, VMware vSphere 4.1 includes new VMware vStorage APIs for Array Integration (VAAI).  Through VAAI, VMware vSphere can now offload specific storage operations to EMC’s industry leading enterprise and mid-range arrays increasing both overall system performance and efficiency.

EMC supports all three of VMware’s new vStorage API’s including:

  • Full Copy. EMC delivers hardware accelerated copying of data by performing all operations on the array. Customers can achieve up to 10 times faster virtual machine creation and data movement via VMware Storage vMotion.
  • Block Zero. EMC delivers hardware accelerated initialization reducing Input/Output by up to a factor of 10 for common tasks such as creating new virtual machines.  This feature is especially beneficial when creating fault-tolerant (FT) enabled or thinly provisioned virtual machines.
  • Hardware Assisted Locking. EMC delivers improved locking controls on VMFS storing up to 10 times as many virtual machines per datastore and booting virtual machines up to four times faster.  This improves performance of common tasks such as virtual machine migration, powering many virtual machines on or off and creating a virtual machine from a template.

VAAI is the newest set of APIs added to the VMware vStorage API family and EMC is one of the only multiprotocol storage vendors to support all four sets of VMware vStorage APIs which in addition to VAAI include:

  • VMware vStorage API for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager offers customers the ability to reduce the recovery time objectives of a site disaster from weeks or day to minute by automating the recovery process.  EMC has adapters for all replication products including EMC Symmetrix Remote Disaster Facility (SRDF), EMC RecoverPoint, EMC MirrorView, and EMC Celerra Replicator and furthers these integrations by offering the ability to automatically failback to the primary site once the outage has been mitigated.
  • VMware vStorage API for Data Protection (VADP) leverages the snapshot capabilities of VMware vSphere to enable virtual machine image backup without requiring downtime.  Fully supported on EMC Avamar, administrators have the ability to efficiently deduplicate backup data within and across virtual machines, significantly reducing backup time and backup storage.  In addition, they can recover a single file from an image backup to a virtual machine without installing any software agents.  Taking advantage of the Changed Block Tracking feature of VADP, combined with the Avamar architecture for deduplication, further reduces backup windows, and dramatically shortens recovery time.
  • VMware vStorage API for Multipathing provides mulitpathing integration with EMC PowerPath VE adding higher path availability, providing dynamic load balancing, and greatly increasing performance on VMware vSphere.

CommVault Announces VMware Ready Support for VMware vSphere 4.1

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CommVault Simpana software is now VMware Ready for VMware vSphere 4.1, the latest release of the company’s virtualization platform, to further reinforce the benefits of virtualized environments, including reduced costs, improved hardware utilization and increased operational efficiencies.

Additionally, CommVault announces seamless integration with the VMware vStorage APIs for Data Protection (VADP), which is VMware’s next-generation data protection framework, enabling centralized, off-host, LAN-free backups of VMware vSphere virtual machines.

CommVault customers now can leverage VADP to perform centralized virtual machine backups without the disruption and overhead of running backup tasks from inside each virtual machine.

CommVault can assist customers in taking advantage of new processes in VMware vSphere for backing up, recovering and archiving data while reducing the time, resources and overhead typically required to protect virtual environments.

CommVault’s commitment to providing simple and efficient virtual infrastructure protection, which includes VMware software interoperability with Simpana software’s Universal Virtual Server Agent to protect systems, applications and user data residing on virtual machines running VMware vSphere. Additionally, CommVault’s holistic approach to data management reduces administration while advanced capabilities further enhance virtualized environments with encryption, compression as well as embedded deduplication for optimized, efficient storage utilization.

Quest Announces Limited-Time Promotion to Increase Desktop Virtualization Adoption

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At the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference, Quest Software announced a limited time offer to drive desktop virtualization adoption.

Through December 31, 2010, Microsoft is providing a 70% discount on its Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) Standard Suite for up to 250 devices or 20% of a customer’s desktops covered by a Client Access License (CAL) or Enterprise Client Access License suite, whichever is less, through an Enterprise or Select, Open Value, or Campus and School family of agreements.

Quest is offering a 50% discount, through December 31, 2010, on Quest vWorkspace Enterprise licenses for up to 500 devices, providing virtual desktop management and delivery for VDI, Terminal Server/Session Host and App-V deployments.

The special offer from Quest makes Quest vWorkspace Enterprise available for the annual fee of $34.50 per device and includes 24×7 Business Critical Support and Software Maintenance. The vWorkspace promotion is good for up to 500 devices. Unlike other offers in the market that are only valid for the initial term of one year, the Quest offer can be renewed at the same price for two additional annual terms, making it good for a three year period for purchases completed before December 31, 2010.

Quest vWorkspace aggregates Microsoft Windows application and desktop delivery by supporting multiple VDI platforms (Hyper-V, Parallels, ESX), as well as Remote Desktop Session Host (Terminal Server), App-V and Physical/Blade PCs, enabling organizations to configure the most cost-effective mix to meet diverse user needs. Quest vWorkspace manages, provisions, and brokers connections to these desktop virtualization platforms, transforming the desktop infrastructure into an on-demand service with an optimized experience for LAN and WAN users.