Search Results for: virtualization security

Wind River, makers of embedded and mobile software, today announced support for Microsoft Windows XP as a guest operating system for Wind River Hypervisor on Intel-based platforms.

Device and systems manufacturers can now run Windows XP simultaneously with other operating systems such as VxWorks or Wind River Linux on a single piece of silicon, to reduce their bill of materials, energy consumption and maintenance costs.

Wind River Hypervisor was developed from the ground up to support real-time system requirements and virtualization on single and multi-core processors, and leverages Wind River’s deep expertise in advanced partitioning and safety and security critical systems from the aerospace and defense and industrial and medical sectors.

With the addition of Windows XP as a guest operating system, device and systems manufacturers serving the industrial and medical market segments can integrate Windows XP alongside real-time operating systems into their projects to deliver a broader set of capabilities and develop innovative solutions to differentiate them from the competition. Examples include using Windows XP to create a graphical user interface for patient monitoring consoles or industrial control platforms while also implementing an RTOS to manage sensors and control with real-time performance, determinism and high reliability, both on the same physical single- or multi-core chip.

Wind River’s solutions help customers reduce the risk and costs associated with developing the complex embedded systems of tomorrow. Wind River Hypervisor allows customers to adopt multi-core processors using embedded virtualization technology with reduced risk and time-to-market. To help customers manage the complexities that arise with multi-core software development, Wind River offers a comprehensive suite of tools designed to effectively develop, test and debug software and simulate systems in complex multi-core environments.

Separately, Wind River also announced the latest version of Wind River Tilcon Graphics Suite, now with OpenGL 3D graphic support, an additional offering that expands Wind River’s portfolio of vertical industry solutions.

Windows XP support for Wind River Hypervisor will be available in July 2010 for single and multi-core Intel platforms that support Intel’s virtualization technology, VT-x.

Virtual Computer, the market leader in distributed desktop virtualization, today announced that its groundbreaking NxTop desktop virtualization solution is now available as a free product download.

The free download bundle includes NxTop Engine, Virtual Computer’s innovative ‘bare-metal’ client hypervisor, as well as the NxTop Center, a feature-rich management console that enables a wide array of advanced virtual desktop creation and management functions.

This new pricing model enables corporate IT teams, VARs, and PC enthusiasts to use the complete NxTop product suite, managing up to five PCs without any licensing fees or time-based evaluation restrictions.

NxTop Engine boasts features such as:

• Hardware compatibility, including support for newer Intel vPro enabled systems as well as a wide array of corporate workhorse models dating back to early 2007.
• A one-of-a-kind symmetric graphics architecture, compatible with numerous Intel and NVIDIA graphics processor models, that delivers equivalent graphics performance across multiple virtual machines without the need to install hardware-specific drivers.
• A robust collection of platform control and convenience functions, including platform suspend and resume, dynamic or user-specified memory allocation, power management profiles, fully-configurable wired and wireless networking modes, and many other advanced functions.
• Integrated, full disk encryption.
• Broad USB support including the ability to leverage native Windows USB drivers.

NxTop  pairs a client hypervisor with a complete management suite capable of managing both the hypervisor itself and the virtual desktops running on it.

Free download users may take advantage of a rich set of NxTop Center management capabilities, including:

• Point-and-click virtual desktop creation and provisioning.
• Efficient, one-to-many system patching.
• Seamless backup and restore of user-specific personalization and data layers.
• Granular security and policy controls, including time-based expiration, policy-based lockout, USB filtering, and remote wipe.

GTSI recently announced key findings from a recently conducted survey on the state of virtualization in the federal government.

Developed by the Government Business Council (GBC) in partnership with GTSI and Oracle Corporation, the survey reveals the many hurdles faced by federal agencies in implementing virtualization and cloud computing.  The results are of particular importance given the raised levels of government IT activity driven by the recent Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Federal Data Center Initiative. The OMB mandate requires all agencies to take decisive steps toward reducing the costs of maintaining more than 1,100 disparate federal data centers.

Key findings from this in-depth virtualization study include:

• Many federal executives are unfamiliar with virtualization: one-third (33 percent) of survey respondents say they have no knowledge of the concept of virtualization.  A minority (13 percent) describe themselves as “very familiar,” while 54 percent have some intermediate level of understanding.
• Eighty-four percent of federal executives say that virtualization would benefit their agency. Respondents identify a number of incentives for their agency to virtualize their IT environments. Ranking high among these are COOP and disaster recovery and “greener” IT operations, which can reduce data sprawl and energy usage.
• Virtualization faces many roadblocks at agencies, with 65 percent of federal executives citing “implementation difficulties,” 63 percent indicating “operational/management difficulties,” and 62 percent noting “end users’ misconceptions about virtualization control and governance.”
• Federal executives cited the top two effective strategies for facilitating adoption of a virtualized environment as “education and/or training” (57 percent) and “government mandates and standards” (47 percent).

“Federal government agencies continue to be under pressure to control costs, increase energy efficiency, and maintain security,” said Mohamed Elrefai, GTSI VP Enterprise Solutions Group and Marketing. “To achieve those requirements, federal agencies are adopting virtualization as a key component of their consolidation and optimization strategies.  However, as the survey shows, respondents are challenged with how to effectively implement and operate virtualized environments, while addressing security and governance policies. At GTSI, we’ve seen this trend ourselves and help our federal customers on a regular basis migrate to and operate their virtualized IT environments.”

The survey findings will be explored in detail on Tuesday, April 27, at 2:00 PM ET, when GBC, GTSI, and Oracle present a complimentary webinar entitled, “Virtually There: The Federal View of Virtualization Present and Future.”

Extreme Networks has announced its network-based dynamic data center virtualization lifecycle management solution that delivers unprecedented visibility, control and automation of Virtual Machines (VM) to the network administrator.

Extreme Networks is continuing its mission to simplify, scale and control data center network infrastructure with the introduction of Extreme Networks XNV, a powerful set of loadable software modules addressing VM lifecycle management for the ExtremeXOS modular operating system and its EPICenter network management suite. XNV is the first data center management solution to deliver dynamic virtualization management across the network, logically bringing VM lifecycle management to the network while boosting operational efficiency and security.

Traditionally, network administrators have had limited, if any tools for troubleshooting and managing VMs in the network. VMs are typically created, activated, moved around and de-activated dynamically through tools controlled by server administrators. Additionally, due to the ability of virtual machines to move across the data center dynamically, provisioning the network for VM security, as well as for application performance, poses a networking challenge due to the static nature of network policy enforcement.

In response to this challenge, Extreme Networks XNV VM lifecycle management provides network-level functionality, automation and capabilities for applying QoS, ACLs, bandwidth rate limiting, and counters and statistics to virtual machines, all in a dynamic and highly virtualized environment.

Extreme Networks XNV delivers complete lifecycle management capabilities, keeping the network in control as VMs move from their creation point to their end-of-life. Visibility is enhanced with added functionality providing detailed history, tracking and reporting of VMs as they dynamically move throughout the data center.

Control and Security for Virtualized Data Centers Key to Extreme Networks XNV is the adoption of Virtual Port Profiles (VPPs) that dynamically couple network-level profiles to VMs as they are created and move throughout the network. XNV also extends mature network security capabilities to the individual virtual machine level.

In addition, XNV delivers a powerful, centralized network-level inventory of all VMs, displaying their current locations within the network, down to the individual switch and port level, along with their roaming history for security, audit and compliance purposes. Through XNV, functionality such as time of day and network usage triggers and reporting, enhances security and performance in virtualized environments.

Operational Efficiency Data center management teams are concerned with the costs and time associated with operating and maintaining their network and virtualization platforms. Extreme Networks XNV significantly improves operational efficiency and helps reduce costs for customers by reducing configuration errors, enabling automation, and providing faster troubleshooting through integration with server virtualization technologies. Additionally, these attributes, in turn, reduce application downtime and improve service response times.

Extreme XNV is a significant component of Extreme Networks Four Pillar strategy addressing the evolution of the data center, a strategy that enables networks to migrate from physical to virtual to cloud network environments. Extreme Networks integrates virtualization with the network by leveraging its single modular OS, ExtremeXOS, and comprehensive automation and customization capabilities, along with EPICenter, its network management platform.

Extreme Networks XNV software modules have a targeted release of the third quarter with a beginning list US price of $3,000 for 20 nodes.

VMware has announced the availability of VMware’s ThinApp 4.5 application virtualization solution.

ThinApp 4.5 enables rapid adoption of Microsoft Windows 7 in the enterprise by providing compatibility for legacy and custom applications across multiple Windows operating system environments. With ThinApp 4.5, enterprises can quickly migrate existing applications to new Windows operating systems such as Microsoft Windows 7, eliminating conflicts between operating environments, and extending the life of application investments.

VMware data shows that leveraging ThinApp 4.5 for application virtualization can reduce the costs associated with migration by as much as 25% while migrating systems up to 40% faster by accelerating the application compatibility, testing and deployment processes required for application migration.

VMware ThinApp 4.5 new advanced enterprise features include:

• Simplified application migration to Windows 7 — Eliminates costly recoding, reduces regression testing to accelerate application deployment to a new OS while minimizing risks of downtime.
• Broad Windows 64-bit support — supports 32-bit and 64-bit Windows from NT to Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2.
• Easy Upgrade from older ThinApp Applications with Relink — convert existing ThinApps to the new ThinApp 4.5 format without the need of associated project files for the applications.
• Advanced Performance Accelerator — reduced page file usage for virtual applications allows for quicker application invocation and reduces network bandwidth by as much as 50%.
• Secure Registry Journaling Protection — ensure registry file integrity and eliminate potential data corruption due to crash or system failure.
• Enhanced Community Support — enables sharing of application packaging status and techniques in the ThinApp Community Portal.

VMware ThinApp Application virtualization software isolates applications from the operating environment, increasing compatibility and manageability across multiple operating systems common in the enterprise. By enabling enterprises to manage and deliver applications from a central source, VMware ThinApp streamlines application security, updates, patches and performance while delivering applications instantly to nearly any device.

The result is significantly reduced application management costs of up to 60%. Increased compatibility across operating systems ensures investment protection for legacy and custom applications even as the underlying operating system changes. Enterprises considering upgrading to Windows 7 can avoid the costly process of recoding, retesting and recertifying existing applications on the new operating systems through application virtualization on VMware ThinApp.

VMware ThinApp 4.5 will be generally available on March 17, 2010, through VMware sales and the company’s extensive network of OEM partners and channel partners. Pricing for VMware ThinApp Suite is $5000.00. VMware ThinApp is also bundled in View Premier for $250 per concurrent user.