Search Results for: virtualization security

ClearCube Spins Off Software Activities Into A New Company, VDIworks

May 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

ClearCube today announced that its software business is being spun-off and launched as an independent new company called VDIworks. ClearCube will continue to provide solutions for centralized desktop computing, including end-to-end desktop virtualization, while VDIworks will focus on software management platforms for creating, deploying and managing virtual desktop infrastructure. As independent companies, ClearCube and VDIworks intend to maximize their business potential and gain the flexibility to meet the demands of their respective target markets.

VDIworks and ClearCube have signed an OEM agreement whereby ClearCube will continue to market and promote the VDIworks software under the current Sentral VDI Management Software brand. The Sentral management software will continue to be an integrated component of ClearCube’s complete centralized desktop computing solutions. ClearCube customers will continue to be supported in their current license agreements with ClearCube. VDIworks will establish additional OEM relationships with third-party solutions vendors so they can deploy virtual desktop solutions to their customers.

VDIworks will target the emerging market of desktop virtualization. The new company has received seed funding from current ClearCube investors and will be seeking additional funding to support its “rapid growth and high market demand”.

“ClearCube and VDIworks provide solutions within growth markets, and ClearCube’s investors recognized this and decided separating the technologies would allow each entity to fully capitalize on the market opportunities,” said Rick Hoffman, former president of ClearCube and now president of VDIworks. “Both companies immediately offer mature products and can point to successful customer installations. Both companies benefit from established internal development and sales teams. As a result, both companies present superior solutions that can provide rapid return on investment while improving enterprise security and IT management capabilities.”

ClearCube also announced today that former COO Randy Printz has been promoted to president and chief executive officer. His team includes Doug Layne, worldwide vice president of sales and marketing, and Jeana Thomas, senior director of alliances and channels.

In other news, ClearCube has issued a second press release touting its “record growth in 2007 and exceptional financial performance in Q1 of 2008”. ClearCube achieved 38 percent business growth in the second half over the first half of 2007, and 34 percent increase in net revenue in Q1 of 2008 over Q1 of 2007.

nSolutions Releases NOVA Into The Wild At Interop

May 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

San-Jose based nSolutions today launched its change and configuration management offering, Network Ontology and Virtualization Appliance (aka NOVA) at Interop 2008. NOVA is a highly scalable, change and configuration management appliance that “auto-discovers infrastructure resource configurations, builds a real-time repository of physical, logical and virtual resources, correlates the interdependencies and controls the changes to ensure continuous operational and security compliance”.

NOVA is essentially a product line of plug-and-play appliances that manages change in global heterogeneous infrastructures through automation and control. The real-time NOVA Repository maintains a virtual construct of the auto-discovered configurations and the interdependencies among the components of the core and the applications infrastructures.

From the press release:

NOVA plug and play appliances have several unique advantages that make them highly cost effective for enterprise customers:

Unprecedented visibility into infrastructure resources through auto configuration discovery, based on industry standards.

NOVA’s repository is an operational Configuration Management Data Base (CMDB) that maintains real-time information and exchanges configuration data with a federation of CMDBs.

An innovative approach to Change Impact Analytics enables operational decisions for managing change from a services perspective.

NOVA is currently shipping with pricing starting at U.S. $20,000.

KVM Sponsor Qumranet Ships Solid ICE

May 1, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

KVM sponsor Qumranet launched (PDF) its long awaited desktop virtualization solution yesterday, just weeks before Citrix launches XenDesktop. Solid ICE (Independent Computing Environment) is a hosted desktop virtualization product that promises desktop-like performance with support for multiple monitors, bi-directional audio and video, streaming video and USB support.

From the press release:

By centrally hosting desktops in KVM on servers in the corporate data center, Solid ICE (Independent Computing Environment) gives IT administrators greater control over desktop image management, provisioning management, policy enforcement and security. Solid ICE also offers IT managers easier access to remote desktops to provide maintenance and support, as well as instant, inherent disaster recovery. In addition, businesses deploying a green IT strategy can achieve a savings of up to two thirds on electric power with Solid ICE.

The company said it prices the product by concurrent virtual machines, $200 per concurrent virtual machine which includes one monitor support and one SPICE display. Qumranet also offers a 30-day trial on its web site, although it seems to have messed up the spelling for the product name a bit 🙂

[Source: ZDNet Blogs]

Xen 3.2.1 Released

April 27, 2008 by Kris Buytaert Leave a Comment

Keir Fraser has announced the availability of Xen 3.2.1 and 3.1.4, both bugfix releases in the Xen 3.1 and 3.2 series.

The 3.2.1 release contains architectural improvements and new user-visible features including:

Xen Security Modules (XSM)
ACPI S3 suspend-to-RAM support for the host system
Preliminary PCI pass-through support (using appropriate Intel or AMD I/O-virtualization hardware)
Preliminary support for a wider range of bootloaders in fully virtualized (HVM)guests, using full emulation of x86 real mode
Faster emulation of standard (non-super) VGA modes for HVM guests
Configurable timer modes for HVM guests, depending on how the guest OS manages time-keeping
Many other changes and enhancements across all supported machine architectures

As usual downloads are available at Xen.org

NetWrix Aims To Simplify Management of Virtual Machine Environments

April 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

NetWrix Corporation, a provider of identity management, compliance and change management solutions for Active Directory and virtual machine environments, announced that it has broadened its scope in the IT change management solutions by offering two new products that simplify the ability to manage virtual machine environments while supporting both the VMware Infrastructure 3 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager platforms. Titled Change Reporter for VMware Infrastructure 3 and Change Reporter for Virtual Machine Manager, the new software products are designed to expand the capacity to audit, manage, monitor, analyze and report any changes made to virtual machine environments. The new products will become a part of the integrated NetWrix Change Management Suite.

“The decision to enter into the virtualization software market allows NetWrix to best meet the needs of its ever-expanding customer base,” said NetWrix President and CEO Michael Fimin. “We understand that change auditing is an important process for controlling the management of growing virtual machine environments and introducing the unified change auditing and change management processes will help to enhance the effectiveness of IT departments. Hundreds of customers already leverage our change management platform for Active Directory and we just applied the same proven technology to VI3 and VMM-based environments.”

Both products are available for free. In addition to the free version, NetWrix also offers a commercial version of these products that further expand the reporting capabilities. The upgraded version allows IT managers to monitor the activities of all personnel within the department and provides them with a detailed summary of all changes on a daily basis. This version records all administrative activity and e-mails daily reports to IT managers, detailing every change in virtual environment configuration, including containers, resource pools, and all other objects. Collected audit data is archived and can be stored for years. The archiving function allows organizations to analyze any policy violations, adhere to security best practices and ensure regulatory compliance.

[Source: press release]

VirtualLogix’ VLX for Network Infrastructure Now Available for Power Architectures

April 16, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VirtualLogix today announced that its VLX for Network Infrastructure is now available for Power Architecture based processors. Using VLX virtualization software, multiple operating systems may run simultaneously on shared hardware, “enabling networking and telecommunication equipment manufacturers to inject new functionalities into existing product lines and extend product lifecycles – while slicing costs by consolidating existing products into a multifunction system”.

According to the company, VLX for Network Infrastructure, supporting Power Architecture, speeds the adoption of rich open source software by combining Linux with real-time operating systems on shared hardware without compromising the system’s deterministic realtime behavior.

“This seamless integration is due to the advanced capabilities of VLX that allow multiple guest operating systems to run simultaneously in a number of different configurations based on performance and security criteria. As a result, users can extend the lifetime of existing designs by adding extra partitions to run upgraded or new features and consolidate functionality. By simplifying the hardware design, organizations reduce bill-of-materials and development costs, and reduce power consumption.”

New VLX for Network Infrastructure, supporting Power Architecture, features include:

Real-Time Virtualization – allows developers to run a combination of guest operating systems including Linux and a customer’s choice of real-time OS while keeping the real-time performance characteristics of their overall system.
Consolidation of hardware platforms – developers can consolidate Linux and mission-critical environments onto a single hardware platform, reducing system complexity and product bill-of-material costs.
Introduces support for Freescale’s popular PowerQUICC processors – includes support for the Integrated Communications and Host Processors from Freescale as well as the 32-bit PowerPC microprocessors from IBM.

[Source: VMblog]