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VISI Launches Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) Product Based On VMware Infrastructure 3

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VISI, Minnesota’s largest cloud computing, data center services and managed hosting provider, is proud to announce the launch of its new Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) product based on VMware’s industry-leading virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3.

VISI’s VDS product was designed to provide a higher level of security, reliability and performance than you can get with traditional hosting products. VISI has leveraged VMware’s High Availability (HA) feature to maximize customer’s uptime by rebooting a virtual server on another physical host in the event of hardware failure.

VMware’s Infrastructure 3 allows VISI to offer customers greater control and flexibility by providing them their own operating system (OS) instance. Customers are able to select the amount of CPU, memory and storage they need. Data is stored on a SAN-based storage system for enterprise-class reliability.

As a member of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), VISI is well positioned to deliver knowledge and expertise to customers from initial pre-sales and consulting engagements to post sales support and implementation services. VISI has attained the following credentials as part of its VMware practice: VMware Sales Professional (VSP), VMware Technical Sales Professional (VTSP), and VMware Certified Professional (VCP).

VMware Debuts vCenter AppSpeed, vCenter Chargeback and vCenter Lab Manager 4

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VMware today announced advancements in virtualization management with the general availability of two new products: VMware vCenter AppSpeed and VMware vCenter Chargeback. VMware also announced today a major release of VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4. These new products simplify and automate key IT processes such as application performance monitoring, chargeback, and management of dev/test environments to increase IT productivity in the datacenter – delivering more value to customers as they scale out their virtual environments.

Generally available today, VMware vCenter AppSpeed provides service-level reporting and proactive performance management for multi-tier applications running in virtual machines. AppSpeed gives IT administrators visibility into how application performance depends on the different tiers of virtual and physical infrastructure. Easy to install and non-intrusive, VMware vCenter AppSpeed discovers, monitors, and reports within minutes of installation/download, helping customers:

  • Increase application performance and uptime
  • Troubleshoot and resolve performance issues more quickly, saving hours of administrative time
  • Virtualize more machines at a faster rate

VMware vCenter AppSpeed is available for $1250 per processor.

Also generally available today, VMware vCenter Chargeback ensures accountability across the business by allocating and reporting on costs associated with the use of virtual infrastructure. With VMware vCenter Chargeback, multiple factors such as cost-based models and fixed costs can be mapped to datacenter resources and then applied across cost centers to ensure proper business alignment. VMware vCenter Chargeback helps customers:

  • Provide business units with a clear view into resources consumed and their associated costs – enabling “showback” of valuable information, even for organizations not yet ready to chargeback to the business
  • Automatically create detailed billing reports that can be submitted to business units within an organization
  • Transition the IT environment from a cost center to a value center

VMware vCenter Chargeback is available for $750 per processor.

VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4, first introduced in 2006 and now in its fourth generation, provides IT with the ability to create and manage an internal cloud for dev/test, providing higher service levels to users through self-service access to resources needed for development, test, staging and deployment of complex, multi-tier applications. With VMware vCenter Lab Manager, IT can give users on-demand, role-based access to a shared library of pre-configured multi-VM environments, eliminating the need for repetitive system setup and teardown, while enabling IT to maintain security and full administrative control.

The new features in VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4 include:

  • Unification with VMware Stage Manager, creating a single solution to encompass multiple use cases including streamlined application delivery from development to production; simplified release management; and better training, support and online demo environments.
  • Next-generation network fencing capabilities to better support teams working on multiple instances of extremely large-scale application environments
  • Support for both ESX and ESXi form factors to give IT administrators more deployment choices for internal cloud resources.

VMware vCenter Lab Manager helps IT reduce dev/test infrastructure costs and administrative overhead, while providing users with improved team collaboration, accelerated workflows, and faster time to market for new or updated applications. VMware vCenter Lab Manager is available for $1,495 per processor.

VMware Makes It Easy For Virtual Iron Customers To Migrate To vSphere 4

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VMware yesterday announced that it is offering existing Virtual Iron customers an easy way to migrate their Virtual Iron deployments to VMware vSphere 4.  In light of news reports that Oracle will discontinue development of existing Virtual Iron products, the VMware offer gives companies a cost-effective way to upgrade to VMware vSphere 4, and provides customers a clear virtualization roadmap that will help meet their needs as their business grows.

The VMware offer gives Virtual Iron end customers who have a current license and support contract compelling savings on VMware vSphere 4 and VMware vCenter Server. More specifically, eligible Virtual Iron end customers receive aggressive discounts off the list price on the below products and services:

  • VMware vSphere 4 Advanced Edition, VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition, VMware vCenter Server Foundation and VMware vCenter Server Standard
  • Support and subscription (SnS) on VMware vSphere 4 Advanced Edition, VMware vSphere 4 Enterprise Plus Edition, VMware vCenter Server Foundation and VMware vCenter Server Standard

Proof of a current Virtual Iron license and support contract will be required to qualify for the VMware offer. Promotional pricing is limited to the number of Virtual Iron licenses supported by a current support agreement. The offer is valid through September 30, 2009.

VMware vSphere 4 delivers Virtual Iron customers the unparalleled efficiency and performance   required to run critical applications in large scale environments, uncompromised control over application security and service levels, and unmatched flexibility of hardware, OS, application architecture and on-premise vs. off-premise application hosting.

VMware vSphere 4 also delivers “Always On IT” for small and midsized businesses (SMBs) and remote and branch office (ROBO) IT environments. With VMware vSphere 4, smaller IT environments can achieve zero-downtime application availability, enterprise-class data protection, disaster recovery and simplified management at an affordable price point.

5nine Software Tells You How VMware and Hyper-V Stack Up

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5nine Software today announced the latest versions of its virtualization migration planning solution, 5nine P2V Planner 2.0 and 5nine P2V Planner Free Edition 2.0. The updated software adds P2V VMware planning to the existing P2V Hyper-V virtualization planning capabilities and now delivers side-by-side comparative analysis of Hyper-V and VMware migration plans from the technology, TCO and ROI perspectives.

5nine P2V Planner offers the following features:

— Automated P2V Hyper-V and P2V VMware Migration Planning — Performs sophisticated analysis of the current data center and provides multiple Hyper-V and VMware migration plans depending on particular customer requirements. Optimized placement of virtualized workloads is based on business requirements, technology (memory, storage and CPU utilization, security), and TCO and ROI.

— Side-by-Side comparison of Hyper-V and VMware Migration plans — Enables creation and side-by-side comparison of VMware and Hyper-V virtualization migration plans. It takes into consideration multiple factors including software licensing costs, memory and CPU utilization, clustering and average consolidation ratios for both virtualization technologies.

— Agentless Data Collection — Automatically discovers and collects hardware inventory, utilization data and application performance metrics in a non-intrusive manner without installing agents. It also allows importing this information from an Excel or XML file.

— Simple-to-Use — The product was designed to be used for projects of all sizes — from small virtualization pilots or SMB projects to large enterprise projects with hundreds of servers, hosts and virtual machines (VMs).

— Integrated TCO and ROI Reporting — 5nine P2V Planner creates a variety of technology assessment, workload, and TCO and ROI reports for each migration plan, for easy comparison of Hyper-V and VMware migration plans and decision making.

— Ongoing Value — Whether your P2V migration project is complete or ongoing, the Planner continues to provide value by optimizing the workloads and resource utilization in a virtualized data center.

5nine P2V Planner Free Edition 2.0 is available immediately and is free for any Microsoft Hyper-V or VMware ESX and vSphere environments 5nine P2V Planner is also available immediately, with North American pricing starting at $59.00 USD per physical server.

Wyse Debuts Virtual Desktop Accelerator (VDA)

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Wyse Technology has announced that it will launch a new software product, Wyse Virtual Desktop Accelerator (VDA). Wyse VDA addresses limitations of existing data centers, which are currently constrained by proximity. Today, an application or service, hosted and delivered from data centers is typically within 100-300 miles of the end-user recipient. Without this proximity, the user experience suffers from network latency, packet loss and other inefficiencies found in longer networks. Because of these issues, businesses are forced to maintain multiple data centers to handle all geographies. Wyse VDA virtually eliminates these geographic constraints by accelerating network protocols up to three times in order to greatly enhance remote end-user productivity and experience in virtualized settings.

Enterprises are able to consolidate data centers, eliminate redundancies, improve ease of management for the IT staff, and significantly reduce overall maintenance costs. The software-only solution is also easy to deploy, requires no hardware or appliances, and is optimized for virtual desktop deployments. The reduction in data center usage also has Green IT implications, as energy consumption and carbon emissions will also be significantly minimized.

Wyse Virtual Desktop Accelerator will accelerate popular virtualization architectures such as Citrix XenApp, Citrix XenDesktop, VMware View and Microsoft Terminal Services.

In general, data centers typically account for 25% of corporate IT budgets, according to McKinsey(1). In addition, the cost of operating data centers is increasing by as much as 20% per year. By reducing the geographic redundancies required to cover end users locally and globally, Wyse VDA will also contribute to significant reductions in greenhouse gases. Carbon emissions from data centers continue to rise, with data centers expected to quadruple their emissions by 2020 worldwide. Based on the same McKinsey research, the amount of energy used to store and handle data doubled between 2000 and 2006, with the average data facility using as much energy as 25,000 households. A single enterprise-class data center that reduces its number of severs by 50% would potentially save $1.5 million in energy costs and eliminate 14 tons of carbon dioxide emissions per year.

Results from early implementations of Wyse VDA have suggested significant potential cost savings to participating companies. A major global financial services provider engaged in retail and commercial banking, credit cards, investment banking, wealth management and investment management services, deployed early versions of Wyse VDA in an effort to better serve employees working in virtualized environments. The company, which has an extensive international presence in Europe, the Americas, Africa and Asia, wanted to streamline its data center operations in order to reduce costs and minimize the associated maintenance for its IT staff.

Wyse VDA addresses challenges faced by companies attempting to use cloud computing or virtual clients located around the globe but find the user experience unacceptable due to network distance. Working without specialized hardware, Wyse VDA complements existing remote desktop protocols, including Citrix(R) ICA(R), Microsoft RDP, and VMware View, accelerating the experience to LAN-delivered levels. By reducing the impact of network latency, Wyse VDA eliminates the sluggish performance often associated with virtual desktops connected to remote data centers or public clouds. Remote users will, for the first time, experience the same level of network quality as local users.

These benefits also extend to local geographies, whether end users are located only a few miles from a data center, are in the next state or the next country. Latency and packet loss inefficiencies are mitigated without any impact on end user experience.

Wyse VDA also can help enterprises with business continuity and in disaster recovery scenarios. In standard operation scenarios, end users are located close to the data center. With Wyse VDA, if those data centers are in a disaster situation, the enterprise can easily connect the effected end users into alternate data centers without compromising their experience.

Wyse VDA does not interfere with the security and encryption of the underlying remote display protocols. Wyse VDA works standalone or as a compliment to existing hardware WAN accelerator solutions adding value to customer deployments by providing acceleration specific to remote desktop protocols.

Wyse VDA adds to the impressive portfolio of virtualization software already offered by Wyse. Whether it is overcoming the obstacles of audio, video, multimedia, multi-display or USB support, Wyse’s virtualization software solutions are all designed to ensure the best possible end-user experience.

Available built-in to Wyse ThinOS 6.4 devices and select Wyse thin clients, and for PCs running the Microsoft Windows XP Pro operating system, Wyse Virtual Desktop Accelerator will be generally available July 8th.

SourceFire Presents New Virtual Appliances

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Open source innovator and Snort creator Sourcefire announced Sourcefire 3D System 4.9, with the new Sourcefire Virtual 3D Sensor and Sourcefire Virtual Defense Center. These new virtual appliances will enable users to deploy the company’s leading security solutions within their virtual environments, increasing protection for both physical and virtual assets. Available during the second half of 2009, the Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 also features the industry’s first Policy Layering capabilities that deliver increased customization for large or multi-organizational networks, including cloud or virtual implementations.

With the new Virtual 3D Sensor and Virtual Defense Center, Sourcefire is enabling customers to:

  • Secure virtualization – Protecting virtual infrastructure from internal and external attacks with virtual security appliances
  • Virtualize security – Leveraging cost- and energy-saving benefits of virtual security appliances to improve security efficiency

As part of the Sourcefire 3D System 4.9, the new virtual appliances allow organizations to inspect traffic between virtual machines, while also making it easier to deploy and manage sensors at remote sites where resources may be limited. They also enable Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) and cloud computing companies to easily implement Sourcefire’s leading security solutions for increased protection. MSSPs can configure multiple Virtual Defense Centers to support multiple customers from a single VMware server, increasing the efficiency of management efforts.

Users can deploy Virtual 3D Sensors on VMware ESX and ESXi platforms to inspect traffic between two or more virtual machines (VMs), while also using physical Sourcefire 3D Sensors to inspect traffic going into and out of a VMware virtual environment. Deployed as software running within VMs, the Virtual 3D Sensor also makes it easier for users to inspect traffic on remote segments of the network where local IT security resources may not exist (e.g., retail stores, remote offices) or where little rack space remains in the datacenter.

The Virtual 3D Sensor will provide simultaneous execution of Sourcefire IPS, RNA (Real-time Network Awareness) and RUA (Real-time User Awareness) functions. Customers can deploy the Virtual Defense Center to monitor any combination of up to 25 virtual or physical 3D Sensors. They can also opt to monitor their Virtual 3D Sensors from the same physical Defense Center they use to monitor their physical 3D Sensors.

In addition to the new virtual appliances, Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 delivers new policy management capabilities that allow organizations to easily customize security to support the varying user requirements of expansive multi-department/organization networks, as well as virtualization and cloud computing implementations. With the industry’s first Policy Layering capability, Sourcefire users can create policy “building blocks” to capture specific Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) requirements by organization, by site, by department, or even by user.

Sourcefire is enhancing its market-leading dashboard to include new custom query widgets, providing users with increased control over the way data is presented. With Sourcefire 3D System 4.9, Sourcefire is also improving the overall manageability and detection accuracy of RNA to include new application and service detectors, auto-configuration and simplified packet-level forensics.

The Sourcefire 3D System 4.9 release, including the Virtual 3D Sensors and Virtual Defense Center, will be available during the second half of 2009.