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Cisco announced new technology that supports its Data Center 3.0 strategy to help customers increase the flexibility of their data centers as they become more virtualized and cloud-based.

The new technology advances Cisco’s underlying unified fabric capabilities that help customers enhance the efficiency of information delivery in physical and virtualized data center environments, and manage public and private cloud resources more effectively.

Announced today is Cisco FabricPath, networking technology that dramatically increases network scalability, resource agility, asset efficiency, and performance in the data center.  Cisco also announced new enhancements for Cisco Nexus and Catalyst data center switching platforms, Cisco Wide Area Application Services (WAAS) extensions, and new Cisco services.

Key Highlights

Data Center Scalability, Resource Allocation and Performance

• Cisco FabricPath: A feature of Cisco’s data center operating system, NX-OS, Cisco FabricPath addresses emerging data center and cloud computing challenges posed by sophisticated virtualization requirements, dynamic workload mobility needs, and clustered application environments found in high-performance computing.  Based on Cisco’s efforts in support of the emerging Transparent Interconnection of Lots of Links (TRILL) standard, FabricPath provides ground-breaking data center-wide scalability, resiliency and performance.
• Cisco Nexus 7000 F-series I/O module: A new module for the Cisco Nexus 7000 data center switch provides next-generation performance with 32 ports of 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity with low latency, reduced power, and improved return on investment.  Designed for access and aggregation layer applications, the I/O module delivers up to 320 gigabits per second of switching capacity and supports both Gigabit Ethernet and 10 Gigabit Ethernet connectivity, providing an easy migration path while protecting existing technology investments.  It supports the Data Center Bridging and TRILL standards with Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE) to be enabled in the near future through a software upgrade.
• Cisco FabricPath Switching System (FSS): The FabricPath Switching System is an integrated, validated, hardware and software system that delivers the FabricPath functionality to build massively scalable domains. It is based on the FabricPath feature of NX-OS and FabricPath-capable hardware, such as the Nexus 7000 with F-Series I/O modules.

Application Performance Optimization

Cisco WAAS accelerates application traffic over the wide area network, enabling enterprises to consolidate applications into data centers and utilize cloud computing, while ensuring performance and productivity for users in remote sites or on the go.

• WAAS as an on-demand service for the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) G2: Cisco WAAS can now be deployed in the branch office as an on-demand service direct from select models of the Cisco Integrated Services Router (ISR) G2, providing increased business agility and greater operational simplicity.
• Web and software-as-a-service (SaaS): A new version of Cisco WAAS, version 4.2, offers performance optimization for Web applications deployed in the data center, or hosted in the cloud and delivered as a service (SaaS).
• Windows-server-on-WAAS (WoW): Cisco WAAS 4.2 provides better support for Windows-server-on-WAAS (WoW), with fast access to data center and cloud applications, and locally hosted Windows services, on a single platform.
• WAAS Mobile for the Cloud: WAAS Mobile 3.5 for the cloud can now be easily deployed in a public cloud infrastructure for faster application performance for mobile users.

Higher Performance Data Center Switching

• Cisco Catalyst 4948E Switch: Building upon the success of the Cisco Catalyst 4900 Series Switches with more than 10 million ports sold, Cisco introduces the 4948E Switch with increased capacity, superior performance, microburst protection for predictable latency, plus automation and visibility. The switch also supports wire-speed IPv6, in addition to auto-provisioning and smart call-home features.

New Cisco Services for Data Center Deployment

• New Cisco Cloud Enablement services: Backed by a broad ecosystem of industry-leading partners, Cisco today launched a set of services to help customers transform the data center. Cloud Enablement Services, including strategy, planning, design, and implementation, help customers successfully transition the data center to a cloud infrastructure to quickly realize the benefits of a cloud operational model.
• Cisco Intelligent Automation Solutions: Cisco is also introducing Cisco Intelligent Automation for IT Services, including new versions of the Tidal Enterprise Scheduler and Tidal Enterprise Orchestrator products that provide real-time IT process orchestration and batch automation to simplify data center management and increase operational efficiency and performance.
• Cisco Validated Design guides: Cisco validated design guides serve as blueprints for ready-to-deploy IT across a variety of domains, including Cisco Virtualized Multi-Tenant Data Center (VMDC) solutions for private cloud design.

Price and Availability

• The Cisco Nexus 7000 F-Series I/O module entry-level pricing is $35,000.  Cisco’s Enhanced Layer 2 License for FabricPath is priced at $25,000.  Both products are scheduled to be available in the third quarter of 2010.  Cisco WAAS Release 4.2 software for the ISR G2 starts at $2,500 and is available now.   The Cisco Catalyst 4948E is available now and is priced from $10,995.

VMware has announced new features of VMware Go, a web-based service that provides small and medium businesses (SMBs) with an easy on-ramp to virtualizing their applications by automating the installation and configuration of the industry-leading hypervisor, VMware ESXi.

With VMware Go, SMBs can not only easily virtualize servers and create new virtual machines (VM), but customers that have created VMs on VMware Server can now move to the more scalable ESXi platform without losing the investment they’ve made in creating and fine tuning VMs.
Another new feature of VMware Go is Collective Intelligence, which helps guide a customer’s virtualization experience by aggregating user data to show virtualization best practices. With Collective Intelligence, users can view what other users have done in each stage of the virtualization process so they can be more confident they are making the right virtualization decisions.

Additionally, users can view reports and dashboards with such information as the average number of VMs users are creating per ESXi server, the top five hardware types on which the community is running ESXi, or the top five virtual appliances that have been downloaded from VMware Go.

VMware Go Simplifies and Accelerates Virtualization in Three Simple Steps:

1. Initial ESXi server setup

— Unique web-browser interface, intuitive wizard set-up, and collective intelligence guides accelerate installation and setup process.
— Built in hardware compatibility check automates the process of selecting physical server environments.
— Migrate VMware Server virtual machines to ESXi in an automated fashion.

2. Virtual machine creation

— Leverage existing physical server configuration, install a prebuilt virtual appliance, or start with a new, clean virtual machine.

3. Manage ESXi servers and virtual machines

— Basic management interface simplifies changes to a virtual environment.
— Monitor virtual machines for basic performance and resource utilization.
— Patch scan and remediation for ESXi.
— Scan and update virtual machines from a central console.

VMware Go was developed in partnership with Shavlik Technologies, a member of VMware’s Technology Alliance Partner Program.

Ulteo, the Open Source Enterprise Virtual Desktop and Application Delivery Solution company co-founded by veteran open source entrepreneurs Gaël Duval (founder of Mandrake Linux, a popular Linux distribution) and Thierry Koehrlen (co-founder of Intalio, the leading Open Source BPMS and Cloud solution), aims to build and deliver an open source virtual desktop solution for small and large organizations to deliver their end users applications in a more efficient, cost effective and centralized fashion.

“After our OVD v2.0 release that provides a nice web portal access to applications delivered with Ulteo we have received extremely good feedback from all sizes of organizations. But we did not anticipate that the large organizations would consider rolling out Ulteo OVD to 10,000 and even 30,000 users fairly so quickly”, says Thierry Koehrlen, CEO and co-Founder.

“This makes sense because we provide a nice, modular and cost effective solution, so it’s completely normal that large organizations, telecom and cloud computing companies or outsourcing firms are planning to roll out a virtual desktop solution to many more users than in the past. And since we are a customer-driven vendor, we adapted our roadmap and have built this OVD v2.5 scalability version. It will be useful for smaller organizations as well”.

“In this v2.5 version, we really unlocked the OVD to accommodate much larger projects”, comments Gaël Duval CTO and co-Founder. “First of all, on the directory side, we can now work with fairly large directories up to 55,000 users without any trouble. But we also wanted to make sure that on server side the OVD could scale up easily to run more active users. On the Windows side, we leverage the scalability delivered by a typical Windows TS server. And on the Linux side, we are getting close to the full potential of the server capabilities when it is correctly setup with a good CPU/RAM ratio. By intensively sharing resources between all active users, we can fully optimize the CPU and RAM usage, again making the OVD more cost-effective.”

Ultimately, this allows IT department to design their Ulteo infrastructure with more flexibility and choices. Ulteo OVD v2.5 also offers some new features like more usage reporting capabilities and auto detection of web browser language for example. It is also available in more languages thanks to the coordinated effort of the Ulteo community of users and partners.

HP has announced new high-performance security solutions designed to prevent network breaches in a Converged Infrastructure by delivering comprehensive data protection across both physical and virtual environments.

The new offerings bring enhanced security to HP FlexFabric, the company’s high-performance, flexible and secure data center networking fabric for a Converged Infrastructure.

As organizations move to more virtualized and converged infrastructures, the importance of security is increased. Virtualized environments and their applications are subject to the same threats that impact traditional data centers. While many virtual machines (VM) are hosted on a single server, one security breach can have a disastrous impact.

As a result, when organizations accelerate the migration of production workloads and mission-critical assets to a virtualized environment, security requirements must become a strategic element of these plans.

The HP TippingPoint Secure Virtualization Framework (SVF) is a suite of products designed to help prevent network threats from impacting virtualized environments. The TippingPoint Virtual Controller (vController), the first product introduced under the SVF, extends TippingPoint security protection from physical to virtual networks by routing it through an HP TippingPoint N-Platform Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) appliance. The vController prevents security attacks by inspecting all VM traffic as it moves through the network – either between VMs or from VMs to traditional servers. Additional vController benefits include:

• Increased network security by extending HP’s automated threat-prevention capabilities to virtual environments.
• Reduced deployment complexity by enabling customers to extend the same processes, tools and expertise used in securing their physical environments to their virtual infrastructures.
• Simplified management of network security by providing single-pane-of-glass management, visibility and control across both physical and virtual networks.

The vController builds on the high-availability functionality and market leadership of the recently announced HP ProLiant G7 scale-up servers, which are able to isolate a damaged VM or associated memory problem without bringing down the physical server or its resident VMs. vController provides an added layer of security by preventing malicious traffic from damaging VMs, which also could cause problems. Combined, vController and HP ProLiant G7 servers provide clients with increased security and availability to help ensure business continuity.

HP also has expanded its security product line with the introduction of the new HP TippingPoint Reputation Digital Vaccine service (Rep DV). Rep DV ensures that customer-deployed IPS solutions have the most current and accurate list of malicious or suspicious websites and blocks traffic to or from these sites automatically. The list of sites is updated every two hours and powered by HP’s DVLabs, the industry-leading security research and development organization that, through its community of researchers, partners and customers, has been credited with discovering more security vulnerabilities than any other lab in the industry.

Businesses continue to be bombarded with security attacks that use every possible method for stealing data and compromising a network. To maximize protection and reduce business risk for its clients, HP also is introducing two new HP TippingPoint S-series solutions that further extend network security from local area networks to the core of the data center for both physical and virtual domains. Benefits include:

• Flexible deployment of network protection with the HP TippingPoint S1200N IPS A7500 Module, which delivers advanced HP Tipping Point IPS security inspection in a blade. The module provides another way for inspections to work with existing HP A7500 switches and integrates security directly into the network device.
• Enhanced security across the network with the HP TippingPoint S1500 SSL Appliance, a dedicated solution for decrypting and re-encrypting Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) website traffic. This allows encrypted network traffic to be inspected for malicious content, helping ensure that suspicious activity can be immediately addressed.

HP provides a complete portfolio of life cycle offerings that span edge-to-core services to help ensure high network performance and availability as well as cost-effective operations. This is achieved with HP’s experienced professionals who evaluate clients’ network infrastructures, identify risks and point the way toward performance and security improvements. HP services enable clients to speed their evolution to an efficient shared-service management model based on the HP Converged Infrastructure architecture.

The HP TippingPoint S-series solutions are now shipping worldwide. Pricing for the new S-series hardware solutions starts at $24,995, based on configuration.

Pricing for the new S-series software solutions is variable based on deployment.

The Virtual Machine Company has begun offering Check Point Software Technologies VPN-1 VE security as an option on its pre-configured Virtualization Appliances.

This is a new development that, the company believes, overcomes the last remaining barrier to widespread adoption of virtualization of enterprise-wide, tier-one computing.

The Virtual Machine Companys high performance virtualization appliances can now be pre-secured as well as being pre-configured and fully-supported.

Until now, virtualization security has tended to flounder in muddy waters between product delivery and security specialisms.

Security value added resellers (VARs) have been healthily skeptical of virtualization, avoiding mainstream involvement. Virtualization VARs, meanwhile, have been ambivalent about security, either not fully addressing it or inappropriately patching it into existing security infrastructure.