IBM

IBM launches the open-ovf project

August 14, 2008 by Kris Buytaert Leave a Comment

Scott Moser from IBM’s Systems Technology Group has released the first version of the open-ovf project. OVF is a standard packaging format for virtual machines and software appliances. The open-ovf project is seeking contributors and users to help establish OVF as a transparent and platform-neutral method for packaging virtual machine images.

The goal of open-ovf is to be able to deploy a single OVF package to either Xen or KVM.
Eventually expanding that list to include VMware, Hyper-V, and other platforms. For that goal they are looking at community contributions. A good start might be the qemu-img tool that already knows how to convert between different formats.

The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) has defined a vendor-neutral standard for packaging virtual appliances enabling automated installation, configuration and activation of any virtualization platform. The Open Virtual Machine Format (OVF) specification describes an open, secure, portable, efficient and extensible format for packaging

For a summary of OVF and the open source project, see the presentation from the recent Xen summit
The open-ovf project is hosted on sourceforge and the source code is available from it’s git repository

VMware Site Recovery Manager 1.0 Released

June 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware has announced its new tool for disaster recovery management and automation of a virtual infrastructure, VMware Site Recovery Manager (SRM) 1.0 (build 97878).

VMware SRM 1.0 is part of VMware’s suite of management and automation products for the datacenter, leverages virtualization to simplify business continuity planning and testing, and reduces the risk and complexity associated with executing disaster recovery.

“Effective disaster recovery has been a significant challenge for many organizations,” said Raghu Raghuram, vice president of products and solutions at VMware. “With the delivery of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware removes hurdles associated with disaster recovery planning and implementation. Through our innovative disaster recovery testing, management, and automation capabilities, we bring predictability back into the hands of IT and help eliminate risks associated with human error.”

Site Recovery Manager works seamlessly with VMware Infrastructure, VMware VirtualCenter, and replication software from storage partners to provide integrated disaster recovery management and automation. It provides:

Integrated management of disaster recovery plans. Create, update and document recovery plans directly from VMware VirtualCenter.
Non-disruptive testing of disaster recovery plans. Execute automated tests of recovery plans in an isolated testing environment using the recovery plan that would be used in an actual failover. Hardware configuration dependencies are eliminated and testing can occur without impacting production systems.
Automated failover and recovery. Automate execution of the recovery process, eliminating many of the slow and unreliable manual processes common in traditional disaster recovery.

VMware’s parent company, EMC, is one of the first vendors to officially announce support for Site Recovery Manager. Other vendors showing support for the product include 3Par, Dell, FalconStor Software, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Data Systems, IBM, LeftHand Networks, and NetApp.

Pricing for Site Recovery Manager is based on the number of processors in the servers. SRM can be purchased as a standalone product or purchased as part of VMware’s Management and Automation Bundle which includes two-processor versions of VMware Site Recovery Manager, VMware Lifecycle Manager, and VMware Lab Manager or VMware Stage Manager. There’s also a trial version available for download.

IBM Releases New Storage Virtualization Software

June 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

As part of the company’s “Project Big Green” offerings, IBM today announced new storage virtualization software that helps clients manage and consolidate volumes of business data, providing clients with a storage solution designed to help improve utilization rates, energy efficiency, availability, and scalability of critical applications.

According to the press release, the capabilities of the new IBM System Storage SAN Volume Controller (SVC) 4.3 software can help significantly improve the

flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructures by creating consolidated, virtual pools of information across the enterprise. Storage virtualization technology can reduce requirements for additional physical storage hardware systems, which can ultimately reduce overall energy usage in the data center.

Virtualization is confirmed as one of the five pillars of IBM’s Project Big Green offerings, and a key component of IBM’s new enterprise data center model, which is based on best practices for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

Since its introduction to the market in 2003, IBM has shipped over 12,000 SVC engines running in more than 4,000 SVC systems.

The new IBM SAN Volume Controller 4.3 functions will be available for download on June 27, at no additional charge, and existing SVC customers will be able to take advantage of these improvements when they upgrade to SVC 4.3.

[Source: CNN Money]

KVM Forum 2008 Schedule Has Been Announced

April 28, 2008 by Kris Buytaert 1 Comment

The schedule for the upcoming KVM 2008 forum in Nappa, CA is up.

Qumranet, as the main KVM sponsor, is inviting all KVM developers to their second KVM summit on June 10 to 13th at the Marriot Napa Valley, California.

Many of the world’s top kernel developers will gather to discuss the state of the union on KVM and virtualization technology in general. More specifically, the group will plan the technology roadmap and future of KVM.

Avi Kivity will be keynoting, and off course Qumranet will also talk about KVM in Solid ICE. Apart from that, there will be a variety of presentations from Red Hat, IBM, Transitive and Intel representatives.

Gerd Hoffmann of Red Hat (SUSE in a previous role) will be talking about mixing Xen and KVM with xenner, which is a utility able to run Xen paravirtualized kernels as guests on Linux hosts, without the Xen hypervisor and using kvm instead.

Different IBM people will be discussing the state of KVM on Big Iron and PowerPC. And there will also be some talk about Open-ovf , an open source software project around the Open Virtual Appliance Format.

Stay tuned for more!

(Full disclosure: Virtualization.com is a media partner of the KVM Forum 2008)

Nortel Spinoff Blade Network Technologies Aims To Virtualize Datacenter Racks

April 23, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

BLADE Network Technologies, the data-center server-switch company spun off from Nortel two years ago, announces the availability of its new RackSwitch network virtualization switches—the only switches designed specifically for IBM’s iDataPlex, an inexpensive, custom-configured rack system featuring design innovations in cooling and efficiency to address Web 2.0-style computing (see iDataPlex coverage on GigaOM and Ars Technica).

From the press release:

RackSwitch provides the high-bandwidth communications for IBM iDataPlex in today’s massive scale-out data centers that run I/O-intensive Web 2.0 applications and seek to make the most efficient use of the cloud computing model. Leveraging IBM and BLADE’s common blade server heritage, RackSwitch enables iDataPlex to increase the density networking within a single rack, use significantly less power for networking while maximizing bandwidth available to a single system, employ server-friendly cooling of the networking subsystem and provide 100-percent interoperability with existing network infrastructures. BLADE’s RackSwitch delivers standardized networking with the lowest latency and highest throughput, line-rate/non-blocking switching performance at 1 Gigabit and 10 Gigabit, with stacking and unified management.

Blade claims leadership in this particular market, having installed more than four million ports connecting more than 800,000 HP, IBM and NEC server blades, with products deployed across 26 market segments.

BLADE’s RackSwitch G8100, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 24 lossless, low-latency 10 Gigabit Ethernet (10 GE) ports, is designed to equip iDataPlex in high-performance clusters that require 10 Gigabit Ethernet bandwidth with latency of 300 nanoseconds or less. BLADE’s RackSwitch G8000, a 1U top-of-rack switch equipped with 48 Gigabit Ethernet ports and four 10 Gigabit Ethernet ports for uplinks and/or stacking, is designed for the use of iDataPlex for emerging high-volume cloud computing environments.

BLADE’s new RackSwitch products are available for iDataPlex in the US and Canada in June and globally by the end of the year at a starting price of US$5,500. The company will demonstrate the new switches at next week’s Interop conference in Las Vegas.

[Source: New York Times / NetworkWorld]

IBM Snaps Up Storage Provider Diligent Technologies

April 18, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

IBM today announced it has acquired Diligent Technologies, a privately held storage “de-duplication” technology company headquartered in Framingham, Massachusetts with research and development located in Tel Aviv, Israel. Diligent’s technologies and employees will become part of the IBM System Storage business unit of the IBM Systems and Technology Group. Financial terms were not disclosed, but The Register picked up rumors the deal was in the $200 million price range.

Diligent develops in-line data de-duplication software that is integrated with server and storage infrastructures to help organizations significantly reduce the amount and cost of physical storage required in data centers. From the press release:

Data de-duplication is an emerging technology that organizations are investing in today and Diligent’s innovative technology provides a single solution to support data protection, archive and data-retention applications – all while maintaining the integrity of the data.

The Diligent acquisition will be an important part of IBM’s New Enterprise Data Center model, which helps clients improve IT efficiency and facilitates the rapid deployment of new IT services for future business growth. The new model is based on best practices for virtualization, green IT, service management and cloud computing.

The acquisition of Diligent maps to the overall IBM enterprise strategy of developing more efficient, cost effective data centers and will further extend IBM’s storage portfolio.Combined with IBM, Diligent’s data de-duplication technology and solutions will:

address the unique data de-duplication requirements of enterprise clients for maximum in-line performance, scalability and data integrity;
complement clients’ installed backup/recovery applications (e.g. Tivoli Storage Manager and others);
reduce the amount of time required to backup and recover information;
enable the economical electronic transmission of back-up and archive data from primary to remote disaster recovery sites;
reduce the amount of physical storage required to help reduce costs and energy consumption

“Diligent’s data de-duplication software is a critical technology that will be integrated into the IBM Storage portfolio to further extend our information infrastructure strategy, allowing our clients to eliminate redundant data and streamline the infrastructure required to support their business – which can result in dramatic improvements in data center efficiency,” said Andy Monshaw, general manager, IBM System Storage. “Diligent’s industry-proven data de-duplication offerings are exceptionally suited for mid-range and enterprise clients, uniquely combining in-line performance, scalability and data integrity and extends IBM’s strong portfolio of strategic offerings that will help our clients reduce infrastructure costs, improve energy efficiency in the data center, and enable them to fully utilize their information on demand.”

Diligent will become part of the IBM System Storage brand of offerings.

Earlier this month, IBM announced its intent to acquire FilesX, a provider of continuous data protection software for mission-critical applications and remote offices.

Diligent, which has secured close to $47 million in funding, previously served as EMC’s Israel research and development lab before being spun-out from the storage firm in 2002.