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Surgient Releases Virtual Automation Platform 6.0

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Surgient (previous coverage) today announced Surgient Virtual Automation Platform 6.0, a solution enabling IT operations to deliver self-service computing resources to users while maintaining full administrative control. With physical provisioning and Microsoft Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V support, the Surgient Virtual Automation Platform optimizes IT’s ability to support critical business initiatives, effectively manage diverse virtual resources and eliminate physical server and virtual machine (VM) sprawl.

The Surgient Virtual Automation Platform 6.0 reduces the burden on corporate IT departments by letting individual business units and users manage the reservation, configuration and deployment of virtual infrastructures needed to complete both simple and complex tasks. Surgient’s solution is used by application development teams to configure virtual labs for application testing, by sales teams to prepare software demonstrations, and by HR and training teams to aid in internal and external software training.

Surgient 6.0 now features a powerful new interface, post-deployment action, Microsoft Active Directory support and IBM Rational BuildForge integration, providing users with the industry’s most robust self-service virtualization automation and lab management platform for delivering customized computing environments on-demand.

Surgient will demonstrate its new offering at two upcoming industry events. The company is a silver sponsor of the Microsoft Get Virtual Now launch event on September 8 in Bellevue, Wash. In addition, Surgient is a silver sponsor of VMworld, held Sept. 15-18 in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Surgient Virtual Automation Platform 6.0 is available as either a licensed, onsite installation, where companies fully control the implementation and operation of the system, or as a hosted solution, enabling companies to get started immediately. General availability begins on September 30, 2008, and license pricing starts at $25,000.

Surgient

VMware ESX First Hypervisor to Receive Microsoft SVVP Validation

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VMware today announced it has qualified its VMware ESX hypervisor under the Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program (SVVP), shortly after they officially joined. VMware ESX 3.5 update 2 (ESX 3.5u2) is the first hypervisor to be listed under the program, providing VMware customers who run Windows Server and Microsoft applications with access to cooperative support from Microsoft and VMware.

Update: also see the post from Microsoft’s Virtualization Team blog.

Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program enables VMware and other software providers to test and validate their virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. Under this program, Microsoft offers cooperative technical support to customers running Windows Server on validated, non-Microsoft server virtualization software, such as VMware ESX 3.5 update 2. Customers with support policies in place, and running Windows Server-based applications on VMware ESX 3.5u2, can receive cooperative technical support from Microsoft.

VMware also offers an extra layer of protection for customers, outside of Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, who work directly with VMware for support. The additional protection is a part of the VMware Premier Support contract with Microsoft that enables VMware to escalate application issues rapidly and work directly with Microsoft engineers to expedite resolution.

Today’s move is expected to be particularly compelling for VMware’s tens of thousands of small and medium-size business (SMB) customers. Many of these customers turned to virtualization for the dramatic cost savings that virtualization can provide by reducing hardware requirements and power consumption.

VMware

Microsoft Exchange Managed Services Provider Azaleos Adds Hyper-V Support

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MS Exchange managed services provider Azaleos has announced its OneServer Virtual Edition now supports Microsoft Hyper-V Server, adding virtualization capability to Exchange email servers.

According to Azaleos’ announcement, Exchange virtualization can consolidate server and storage resources, simplify administration, and streamline high availability and disaster recovery. Already offering support for VMware ESX, Azaleos’ Exchange support gives customers the choice of either virtualization platform, or even a physical server.

According to another statement from Azaleos, “Microsoft Exchange Server typically does not require the full processing capabilities of an entire server, [making it] ideally suited for virtualization where its needs can be combined with other workloads.” This is also an early example of how email hosts can adopt Microsoft’s Hyper-V virtualization capabilities.

Managed services available on OneServer Virtual Edition include real-time monitoring and reporting system ViewXchange; remote command and control service ManageXchange; turnkey mobile device management and monitoring solution MobileXchange; anti-virus and anti-spam service ProtectXchange; disaster recovery service RestoreXchange; and archival and storage service ArchiveXchange.

BMC Software Launches Virtualization Management Solutions In Partnership with Microsoft, Sun and VMware

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BMC Software today announced nine new, integrated solutions specifically designed to help customers eliminate the rising risk and operational expenses associated with inadequate management of virtualized IT environments.

The new solutions are grounded in a BMC-invented, highly automated set of Closed-Loop Change and Configuration Management (CLCCM) process workflows that reduce the latency, cost and risk associated with change management by as much as 75 percent.

BMC virtualization management solutions give customers a holistic, unified approach to IT planning, control, automation and management for today’s virtualized, multi-vendor IT environments.
BMC has extended its Service Assurance and Service Automation portfolios — key components of its leading Business Service Management (BSM) platform — to deliver virtualization-specific capabilities. The nine new offerings have been optimized to support goals for performance, compliance and enterprise visibility by addressing some of the most pressing challenges created by virtualization.
All of these new offerings are architected to support both virtual and physical infrastructures, further reducing cost and complexity by allowing IT operations organizations to use a single set of management solutions across their entire IT infrastructure.
As part of this new virtualization management offering, BMC has completed full solution integration with long-time partners Microsoft, Sun and VMware.

GoGrid Takes Windows Server 2008 Into The Cloud

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GoGrid announced today the immediate availability of 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 within its Cloud Computing infrastructure. Parent company ServePath is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and launched Windows Server 2008 dedicated hosting in February of this year.

With this release, GoGrid becomes one of the first Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers to offer Windows Server 2008 “in the cloud.” GoGrid customers can now deploy Windows Server 2008 servers in just a few minutes for as little as 19 cents an hour.

Initial Windows Server 2008 offerings on GoGrid include both 32-bit and 64-bit preconfigured templates. GoGrid users select the desired operating system and then choose preconfigured templates in order to minimize time to deploy. Pre-configurations include:

  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7)
  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with IIS 7 and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with IIS 7, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and ASP.NET

GoGrid continues to offer Cloud servers for Windows Server 2003 as well as various Linux distributions and will continue to expand GoGrid’s “Control in the Cloud” offerings in the future.

Microsoft Unveils New Licensing, Expanded Product Support Policies to Ease Path to Virtualization

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Microsoft just made a couple of noteworthy announcements.

Update: more background information on the Windows Virtualization Team blog.

Beginning Sept. 1, 2008, customers will be able to move any of 41 Microsoft server applications between servers within a server farm as often as necessary without paying additional licensing fees, and they can take advantage of expanded technical support.

As you probably already know, Microsoft also will begin a worldwide series of “Get Virtual Now” events this month that will showcase Microsoft virtualization products and partner solutions, reaching more than 250,000 IT professionals.

Microsoft is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products.

The company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems, increase agility, and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.

Microsoft has also updated its technical support policy for 31 server applications so that customers can receive technical support when deploying those applications on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other third-party validated virtualization platform. Now customers can get the same level of product support in a virtualized environment that they are accustomed to with non-virtual environments.

To enable this support policy, Microsoft launched the Server Virtualization Validation Program last June. The program is open to any software vendor to test and validate its virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. We just reported that Cisco and VMware are joining the program.