Egenera

Fujitsu Siemens Now Shipping PRIMERGY BladeFrame With VMware Infrastructure 3

May 26, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Fujitsu Siemens Computers recently announced it will be shipping PRIMERGY BladeFrame (powered by Egenera) combined with VMware Infrastructure 3.

Here’s how the company explains the move:

“The virtualization boom has revolutionized data centers, accelerating the shift from fixed, unresponsive, locked-down server resources to dynamic data centers of the future, where server resources are allocated according to demand and are reconfigured on-the-fly to guarantee that they always provide the best-possible levels of availability.

Introducing the market leading data center software virtualization platform to the highly-versatile PRIMERGY BladeFrame line means that Fujitsu Siemens Computers and VMware are delivering the industry’s ultimate platform for data center virtualization, bar none.”

[Source: MySolutionInfo]

Dell Gets Down & Busy With Virtualization

May 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

As expected, Dell today announced its broadest lineup of dedicated virtualization solutions ever. More than a dozen new servers, tools, and services aim to simplify the deployment and management of virtualization in enterprises of any size.

“Virtualization is quickly moving beyond hypervisors and hardware consolidation,” said Rick Becker, vice president of software and solutions, Dell Product Group. “Enterprises are looking for a broad array of servers, storage and services designed specifically for virtualized environments. Having been a leader in the first wave of virtualization, today we are signaling our intent to lead the second.”

Dell comes out with updated on-line tools, new e-commerce capability and expanded factory integration. With the updated Virtualization Advisor tool, customers have more options for building validated configurations online for virtualization deployments before purchase.

Through Dell.com/VMwareNow, customers can now upgrade PowerEdge servers purchased with VMware ESXi 3.5 to full VMware Infrastructure 3 enterprise licensing in a single click. Dell will also offer in coming weeks factory integrated VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition across a broad range of PowerEdge servers, including the PowerEdge 2950, R900, 1950, 2900, M600 blade and M605 blade.

The PowerEdge R805 offers 2X the memory and I/O capacity of Dell’s previous generation 2 socket servers. With a choice of VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition integrated hypervisors, the PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers can deliver the optimal platform for virtualized environments.

Dell EqualLogic storage arrays offer new advanced SAN-aware integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager for data protection and disaster recovery for virtualized environments at no additional cost in management tools.

Dell and Egenera are making virtualization and data center automation a reality beyond the blade chassis. The Dell PAN system is built on PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers and Dell/EMC storage, with Citrix XenServer and factory integrated as a complete, turn-key solution that consolidates and virtualizes server compute-resources into an entire Processor Area Network to be managed like hard drives in a SAN. The Dell PAN system can deliver rapid provisioning and re-deployment “in minutes”.

Dell today announced the expansion of its virtualization services to include:

Virtualization Simplification Workshop – for customers looking to determine which options are the most suitable for their specific business needs today, their technical environment and to meet future growth.
New Virtualization Operational Assessment and Process Automation accelerates selection of the right virtualization technology for their needs and define processes and tools to automate the management of virtualized environments.
New Virtualization Healthcheck – reviews existing virtualized production environments to identify technology, process and people issues impeding virtualization scale out and provides an actionable, results oriented plan.
Expanded Virtualization Assessment – taking into account multi-vendor virtualization considerations, advanced storage options, as well as green IT data center energy efficiency improvements.
Dell PAN Accelerator Service – integrating a full Processing Area Network within the customer environment to help ensure production readiness.
Expanded Design and Implementation Services – which features the latest Virtualization technologies, in addition to best-of-breed disaster recovery tools and techniques.
ProSupport Remote Advisory Services – fast access to technical experts for consulting on virtualization implementations.

These offerings are available today from Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services.

Egenera BladeFrame Systems Now Come With VMware Virtualization

April 14, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Egenera today announced the general availability of VMware virtualization on Egenera systems with full support from Egenera and its resellers. Under the companies’ original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement announced in 2007, customers can purchase VMware Infrastructure 3 with the Egenera BladeFrame system, a platform designed to support large-scale virtualized deployments of critical applications with high levels of availability and scalability.

The Egenera BladeFrame system combines diskless server blades with PAN Manager software, an infrastructure virtualization product that virtualizes data center infrastructure and delivers a highly available, flexible computing platform. Using VMware virtualization, customers can create and run virtual machines on the BladeFrame system to partition Egenera Processing Blade modules and run multiple OS’s and applications on a single blade.

“VMware and Egenera offer complementary technologies. We’re pleased that customers can now deploy VMware virtualization on the BladeFrame platform with the peace of mind that their investments are fully supported by Egenera,” said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions, VMware, Inc. “As our relationship grows, we see additional areas for collaboration in managing both physical and virtual assets. We hope to further extend the business value of VMware virtualization and continue providing joint solutions that enable customers to reduce operating expenses, improve business continuity, strengthen security and go green.”

Egenera recently inked an OEM deal with Dell. Dell has agreed to resell and ship Egenera’s Processing Area Network (PAN) Manager I/O virtualization software on its PowerEdge servers by June of this year.

[Source: Marketwire]

Egenera Inks OEM Deal With Dell

March 25, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Dell has agreed to resell and ship Egenera‘s Processing Area Network (PAN) Manager I/O virtualization software on its PowerEdge servers by June of this year. Egenera claims PAN is the epitome of what IDC calls “Virtualization 2.0,” the next step beyond simple VMware-style single server virtualization replete with scalability, faster provisioning, high availability, disaster recovery and resource balancing. Pricing for the software has yet to be released.

Egenera’s PAN Manager supports Citrix Systems Inc.’s Citrix XenServer and VMware Inc.’s virtual machines and the company plans to support Microsoft’s virtualization technology, Hyper-V, when it becomes available later this year, CTO Peter Manca said.

The OEM deal with Dell is obviously not exclusive, meaning PAN could still wind up on IBM and HP gear, although that path seems much harder to follow than sticking with Dell. The computer giant intends to sell the widgetry on PowerEdge servers initially through its Advanced Solutions unit along with infrastructure consulting services.

From the press release:

“Dell is listening to customers and providing solutions that make the virtual data center easier to deploy and manage, regardless of platform,” said Rick Becker, vice president, Dell Software & Solutions. “Dell and Egenera will help customers focus on company growth by delivering excellence in virtualized infrastructure from server performance, storage interoperability to dynamic data center management.”

“The Dell-Egenera relationship was driven by customer need for simple, agile and cost-effective solutions that virtualize and unify data center assets beyond a single server,” said Mike Thompson, president and CEO, Egenera. “We’re driving to provide customers with a powerful, integrated way to manage server, network and storage assets, with lower operational costs, increased resource utilization and uptime.”

[Source: SearchServerVirtualization]