Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

citrix

Symantec Sets Up Virtualization Lab in Japan

by Leave a Comment

Symantec today announced that Symantec Japan has opened its new “Virtualisation Solutions Lab” for customers and partners, as the company continues to deliver on its virtualization strategy.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab will enable Symantec Japan to test and optimize Symantec’s products for specific virtual environments quickly, and provide customers and partners with the opportunity to gain hands-on experience and see demonstrations of solution deployments for their environments. With this new facility, Symantec Japan claims it can better support its customers and partners who decide to implement virtualization solutions, as market needs for virtualization continue to grow rapidly.

The Virtualisation Solutions Lab is located within the Japan Engineering Center at Symantec Japan’s headquarters (Minato-ku, Tokyo), which is responsible for all technological verification required for Symantec’s products before their release into the Japanese market. With the launch of this new facility, the Virtualisation Solutions Lab will introduce comprehensive virtualisation solutions for data centres in VMware environments.

The line-up of solutions to be provided by the Virtualisation Solutions Lab is as follows:

  • Comprehensive backup solutions using Veritas NetBackup for VMware environments
  • Failover solutions with high availability of guest OS and VMware applications using Veritas Cluster Server
  • Backup and restore solutions for P2V (physical to virtual) system images using Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery
  • Deployment solutions for virtual servers using the Symantec Altiris platform

Symantec Japan plans to work closely with Citrix Systems and Microsoft to test virtualization solutions for Citrix XenServer and Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V environments at the Virtualisation Solutions Lab in addition to VMware Infrastructure 3. In addition, Symantec Japan plans to organize regular product familiarization seminars as it continues to expand its range of solutions for its customers and partners.

[Source: ITWeb]

Symantec

SteelEye Ships Protection Suite for Citrix XenServer

by Leave a Comment

SteelEye Technology, a California-based provider of business continuity solutions that focus on data protection, data replication and disaster recovery, has started shipping its Protection Suite for Citrix XenServer in addition to an existing product for VMware Infrastructure.

SteelEye Protection Suite delivers real-time LAN and WAN replication of XenServer virtual machines. It integrates with XenMotion and XenCenter to fully support manual movement of replicated VMs within a server pool. SteelEye Protection Suite is a host-based, storage repository replication solution that provides continuous data protection (CDP), change-only replication, integrated compression and a highly optimized replication engine.

SteelEye Protection Suite for XenServer is available immediately through SteelEye’s global network of value-added resellers and OEM partners. Customers that want to use the Protection Suite for a single migration of virtual machines can purchase a time-limited license for either 15 days ($495) or 90 days ($1,495).

Customers that wish to use SteelEye for continuous replication of their VMs, can make use of a permanent license that supports an unlimited number of VMs per XenServer host. SteelEye pricing is set at $2,495 for XenServer Standard Edition and at $3,995 for XenServer Enterprise or Platinum Edition.

SteelEye also announced it has joined the Citrix Ready Program, an initiative designed for organizations that have demonstrated product and solution compatibility with one or more Citrix products.

[Source: Marketwire]

Citrix Aims To Make Creation of Hypervisor-Independent Application Workloads Easier with Project Kensho

by 2 Comments

Citrix today announced “Project Kensho,” which will deliver Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) tools that allow independent software vendors (ISVs) and enterprise IT managers to easily create hypervisor-independent, portable enterprise application workloads. These tools will allow application workloads to be imported and run across Citrix XenServer, Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V and VMware ESX environments.

Citrix boasts this implementation will solve a multitude of interoperability issues between virtualization platforms while allowing automated provisioning and management of applications, rather than just virtual machines. Users will be able to easily install and use any OVF packaged application workload regardless of which virtualization platform they use – whether it be XenServer, Hyper-V, or ESX.

“XenServer delivers the benefits of fast, free, ubiquitous and compatible virtualization, whether from Citrix, Microsoft or VMware,” said Simon Crosby, CTO of the Virtualization and Management Division, Citrix Systems. “Project Kensho highlights the Citrix commitment to interoperability for virtualization, while maximizing price/performance and richness of features at the virtual infrastructure level.”

The OVF specification was originally co-authored by Citrix and VMware, with contributions from Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft. The companies then jointly submitted the draft to the DMTF standardization process.

Project Kensho will support the vision of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, helping customers transform static datacenters into dynamic “delivery centers” for the best performance, security, cost savings and business agility. The tools developed through Project Kensho will be integrated into Citrix Workflow Studio based orchestrations, for example, to provide an automated, environment for managing the import and export of applications from any major virtualization platform.

A technical preview of Project Kensho tools is expected to be available for free download in September 2008.

Citrix Pushes Embedding XenServer With Extended OEM Incentive Program

by Leave a Comment

Citrix has extended its Citrix Advisor Rewards program today to pay channel partners on sales of Citrix XenServer software that ships as an embedded feature in servers from original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) like HP.

The program, originally introduced in 2004, pays Citrix Solution Advisors for designing and delivering solutions based on Citrix application delivery products, even if a different channel partner ultimately fulfills the order. Extending the program to include embedded versions of XenServer eliminates any potential channel conflict with OEM partners and ensures strong incentives across the board by compensating partners that influence embedded XenServer deals as well as those who fulfill them.

Citrix has announced several OEM agreements in recent months to embed XenServer in servers from systems vendors such as HP. As a result of today’s announcement, the Citrix Advisor Rewards program now pays channel partners on sales of these products, effectively eliminating potential channel conflict and focusing the extensive expertise of Citrix Solution Advisors on delivering the best possible solutions to customers.

“Customers want to implement virtualization with reduced risk, and HP understands that the channel is essential to meeting those requirements,” said Scott Farrand, vice president, Industry Standard Server Software, HP. “Citrix’s new channel program enables partners to offer a comprehensive virtualization solution that integrates the power of HP ProLiant servers with the rich functionality of the Citrix XenServer HP Select Edition from a single, reliable source.”

INetU Powers Virtualized Dedicated Hosting With Citrix XenServer

by Leave a Comment

Managed web hosting company INetU recently announced it has selected, after extensive research and testing, Citrix Systems’ XenServer for the launch of its new virtualization offering. INetU will be managing virtual servers for clients running Microsoft Windows and Red Hat Linux.

INetU

Dev Chanchani, President and CEO of INetU noted,

”We selected Citrix XenServer for a variety of factors. Some of those factors included strong Industry support from Microsoft and HP, along with impressive benchmarks and appealing management features. We feel strongly about the benefits virtualization brings within a managed hosting environment. Our support of virtualized environments allows our clients and prospects to start taking advantages of virtualization. For example, clients can quickly deploy additional servers to increase scalability or quickly migrate their virtualized servers to newer hardware without the hassle of reconfiguring a new server setting by setting.”

[Source: TheHostingNews]

“Benchmarking” The Citrix / XenServer Combo with Ian Pratt (Video Interview – Part 4)

by Leave a Comment

During the Fosdem 2008 conference, we had a chance to sit down (on a bench) with Xen Guru Ian Pratt. Below is the fourth and last part (see part 1, part 2 and part 3) of our exclusive interview, where Ian shines his light on Citrix Xenserver, relocating virtual machines (VM), VM-mirroring, OVF, page tables algorithms, open source community involvement, management frameworks, the Citrix take-over, Virtualization marketing with OS-enlightment, FUD-tactics by VMWare, self-healing servers, Xen embedded in firmware, why Amazon goes with Xen, the Xen GPL license, OracleVM, xVM (Sun), Parallels and the future of virtualization…

We cut the interview into 4 digestable pieces, which we publish one at a time (see part 1, part 2 and part 3). As said, this is the final part (soon, you’ll also find a written transcript below for your convenience):

The video is also up on YouTube and Steamocracy.