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VMware and Novell today announced an expansion to their strategic partnership with an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement through which VMware will distribute and support the SUSE Linux Enterprise Server operating system.

Under the agreement, VMware also intends to standardize its virtual appliance-based product offerings on SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

Customers who want to deploy SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for VMware in VMware vSphere virtual machines will be entitled to receive a subscription to SUSE Linux Enterprise Server that includes patches and updates as part of their newly purchased qualifying VMware vSphere license and Support and Subscription. Under this agreement, VMware and its extensive network of solution provider partners will also be able to offer customers the option to purchase technical support for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server delivered directly by VMware for a seamless support experience.

This expanded relationship between VMware and Novell benefits customers by reducing the cost and complexity of deploying and maintaining an enterprise operating system with VMware solutions.

As a result of this expanded collaboration, both companies intend to provide customers the ability to port their SUSE Linux-based workloads across clouds.  Such portability will deliver choice and flexibility for VMware vSphere customers and is a significant step forward in delivering the benefits of seamless cloud computing.

VMware vSphere is the industry’s most complete and widely deployed virtualization platform, providing the foundation to transform datacenters into dynamic, simplified infrastructures for private, public and hybrid cloud environments. With the most comprehensive set of capabilities for availability, security, resource optimization and business continuity, VMware vSphere enables the next generation of IT services while preserving customers’ flexibility to choose between any type of OS, application and hardware.

Quest Software has released its first Windows Management SaaS offering, Quest OnDemand, with solutions for Active Directory recovery and Windows log management, designed for small and midsize businesses.

Quest OnDemand Recovery for Active Directory provides backup and object-level recovery of Active Directory data. It is designed to enable flexible, scheduled backups without manual intervention, facilitating quick and scalable recovery of Active Directory data.

Quest OnDemand Log Management securely collects, stores and conducts forensic analysis on event data from Windows systems, helping organizations comply with external regulations, internal policies and security best practices.

Quest OnDemand leverages Microsoft Windows Azure for hosting, and Windows Identity Foundation (WIF) and Active Directory Federation Services (ADFS) 2.0 for security and federation.

Benefits of Quest OnDemand include:

• Rapid implementation that enables use in minutes
• Secure offsite data storage for enhanced reliability and protection against natural disasters
• Frequent innovation cycles that benefit users immediately on next login, without having to install a new version like an on-premises upgrade
• Subscription pricing that eliminates a large upfront investment
• Elimination of on-premises deployment and maintenance
• Streamlined Web design that provides an efficient user experience

The Xen 3.4 release contains a number of important new features and updates compared to the 3.3 release including:

• Device passthrough improvements, with particular emphasis on support for client devices (further support is available as part of the XCI project).
• RAS features: cpu and memory offlining
• Power management: improved frequency/voltage controls and deep-sleep support. Scheduler and timers optimised for peak power savings.
• Support for the Viridian (Hyper-V) enlightenment interface
• Many other changes in both x86 and IA64 ports

Download Xen 3.4.3 (hypervisor and tools) official source distribution

Download Linux 2.6.18 with Xen 3.4.x support source tarball

Leostream Corporation, a developer of virtual hosted desktop software, today announced the release of Leostream Connection Broker 6.5, which further eases management of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and continues to improve the quality of the end-user experience.

Leostream Connection Broker 6.5 improves the end-user experience with an enhanced Web client that now recognizes registry plans, printer plans, and user role settings.

The enhanced Web client provides a more user-friendly and customizable interface for end-users accessing their desktops and applications.The most widely deployed, vendor-independent technology of its kind, the Leostream Connection Broker enables IT managers to maximize the value of existing IT investments by easily integrating an array of clients, back-end systems and viewers to create a hosted VDI.

Additionally, the Connection Broker integrates easily with existing network infrastructure with no changes to essential data center systems, such as authentication services and SSL VPNs. Once integrated, the Connection Broker provides a flexible set of policies for exact implementation of business rules for system administrators, users and machines.

The Connection Broker 6.5 also offers dynamic client display matching. With this feature, Connection Broker administrators can create display plans that automatically match the layout and resolution of the client displays for viewer protocols that support it, such as RDP and HP RGS. With this capability, end users’ virtual desktops will automatically span and orient themselves correctly in multi-monitor setups.

In another improvement to the end-user experience, Leostream Connection Broker 6.5 now provides streamlined access to XenApp applications and desktops. This Web client uses the Citrix Client for Java to launch an ICA session, which removes the need for an installed XenApp plug-in to be launched from the Web client.

Finally, the Connection Broker can now log a user into a machine as a local user while still being authenticated by OpenLDAP. In this way, the Connection Broker supports scenarios in which users log into desktops that are not part of the Active Directory domain, but still need authentication by OpenLDAP.

On the management side, Leostream Connection Broker 6.5 includes a number of enhancements that simplify administration of the VDI:

• Search: Administrators can now search at a global or a table level to locate desktops, users and clients more quickly, simplifying the management of large deployments;
• Connection Broker Updates: The Connection Broker automatically indicates when an update is available and provides a one-click update process;
• Logging: Log-ins and assignments are now captured in the Connection Broker log files. Administrators can search for these events and create filters to make the logs more usable and extensible in large VDI envirionments;
• Client Locations: Client locations can now be defined using subnet maps that specify a network mask length and a target range for the source and destination; and
• Cisco VPN Client Support: Leostream can now automatically establish a VPN tunnel for Cisco VPN clients.

Altor Networks, a leading innovator and provider of security for virtualized data centers and clouds, today introduced the latest version of its flagship product, Altor 4.0.

This release is packed with breakthrough security innovations that leverage virtual machine introspection to bring X-Ray like visibility to internal virtual machine (VM) states, delivering accurate compliance assessment and automated security enforcement.

In addition to a comprehensive platform for protecting their virtual data center and cloud deployments, Altor customers derive immediate value from v4.0 in the form of a detailed virtual infrastructure audit and assessment of virtual machine risk states, according to common industry best-practices and leading compliance regulations.

Leveraging its unique hypervisor-based footprint, Altor 4.0 automatically detects unauthorized changes to VMs in virtual and cloud environments, and can selectively quarantine the offending VMs while alerting IT administrators about the exceptions to corporate policy.

Altor’s 4.0 also inspects all traffic to and from each VM to eliminate blind spots, and enforces policies at the global, group, and per-VM level. With the Altor 4.0, enterprises can granularly define security policies within zones of trust and precisely control how VMs within these zones can communicate with one another, ensuring isolation between and within trust levels and allowing for precise micro-segmentation.

Altor 4.0 brings forward powerful new features that automate security and compliance enforcement within virtualized datacenters and clouds. By leveraging Introspection to collect VM attributes, such as installed applications, and coupling it with Altor’s deep knowledge of the virtual network, Altor 4.0 creates a powerful database of control points by which security policies and compliance rules can be defined. Altor makes this rich data available in intuitive user interfaces (UIs) that let administrators build the entire range of policies from corporate rules on global protocol handling to discrete regulation and compliance driven policies for how VMs should be configured. Built-in templates help jumpstart the process of building policies while intuitive tools make quick work of customizing the rulesets.

Features available in the release of Altor 4.0 include:

• Visibility: full view of all inter-VM network communication. Deep knowledge of internal VM state including installed applications and services through VM Introspection.
• Compliance: enforcement of corporate and regulatory policies for required applications, services and VM settings. Segregation of duties via policy automation to ensure VMs are assigned to the right trust zones inside the virtual environment.
• Control: access control over all inter-VM network traffic via firewall policies and enforcement. Deep inspection of allowed traffic for malware suppression and intrusion detection.

For more details on this information, please visit their blog.

The Altor 4.0 is currently in beta and will be available in early Q3’10. Pricing starts at $1,500.00 per CPU socket. Evaluation copies are available at Altor’s website: