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Oracle Launches New Oracle VM Template For MySQL Enterprise Edition

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In an effort to enable more efficient and lower cost deployments of virtualized MySQL environments, Oracle has announced the first Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition.

The new Oracle VM Template for MySQL helps eliminate manual configuration efforts and risks by providing a pre-installed, pre-configured and certified software stack that includes Oracle VM Server for x86, Oracle Linux with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel and MySQL Enterprise Edition.

By pre-integrating the world’s most popular open source database with Oracle Linux and Oracle Virtualization technologies, enterprise users and ISVs can quickly and easily deploy and manage a virtualized MySQL database server for Web and cloud-based applications.

“Oracle is committed to helping MySQL users more efficiently deploy and manage high-performance web and cloud-based applications at a lower cost,” said Tomas Ulin, vice president MySQL Engineering, Oracle. “With the introduction of the first Oracle VM Template for MySQL Enterprise Edition, customers can benefit from a fully integrated solution that is backed by Oracle’s world-class support, enabling faster deployments, increased reliability and higher uptime for MySQL applications in virtualized environments.”

Oracle Gets Sun xVM, Solaris Zones and Virtualbox

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When Oracle announced that it will be acquiring Sun it didn’t just impact the database market. It’s not just the question of what will happen with MySQL, OpenOffice and Java. The impact on the virtualization market is big as well.

At the moment Sun has a very confusing virtualization offering: they have different flavours, different tools and, depending on which Sun representative you talk to, another technology is their next big thing. They indeed cover the 3 big areas: with Solaris Zones they have a nice OS virtualization alternative, with xVM they have a powerful Xen-based Bare metal virtualization technology based on paravirtualization, and with VirtualBox they have a Type II hypervisor ready to tackle the deskop market. A nice set of features indeed.

Oracle on the other hand was really focussing on Xen, and probably will continue to do so, so what will the future hold for Solaris Zones and VirtualBox hold.
Some people already mentioned that VirtualBox could merge up with Hosted Xen .

Now what was Oracle’s Cloud offering again? Sun already has a strategy here, and with the acquisition of Qlayer earlier this year they also have got a solid product line.

Xen just got another really strong vendor backing it’s technology, with both Citrix and Oracle behind it now. We’ll probaly find out soon.

DEMO 09 Launch: AppZero, Formerly Known As Trigence

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AppZero (formerly Trigence) is launching today at the DEMO 09 Conference a set of tools for creating Virtual Application Appliances (VAAs). This new approach to provisioning and deploying applications on physical or virtual servers running anywhere, is designed for the cloud environment and for movement of server applications — datacenter to cloud, hosting environment, or cloud to cloud. VAAs package a server application with all of its dependencies, but no operating system component (zero OS).

AppZero’s first public demonstration of its VAA technology will show a live production application provisioned in seconds to on an Amazon EC2 cloud, and moved in less than one minute to a GoGrid cloud computing environment.

Designed for instant server-based application provisioning and deployment, VAAs enable an application to run wherever the business requires without the burdensome licensing issues that inclusion of an operating system (OS) introduces – VAAs contain zero OS. AppZero VAAs work with mission-critical applications across all tiers: web servers, application servers and database servers. Enterprise middleware from Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and Open Source servers like MySQL as well as in-house developed applications can all be easily transformed into VAAs without changing a single line of code.

Cloud providers, integrators, ISVs and IT professionals find AppZero’s wizard-based tools simple to use for creating VAAs and provisioning them on servers at the click of a mouse. This instant provisioning allows scalable resources to be used on a pay-per-use basis, without cloud lock-in.

AppZero software creates, maintains, and administers VAAs. The key enabler of AppZero’s VAA toolset is isolation and encapsulation technology created at Trigence, an early developer of multi-platform datacenter virtualization technology. Under its new name, AppZero, the company is focused on extending the proven concept of virtual appliances to server applications. AppZero is led by CEO Greg O’Connor, who was previously the founder of Sonic Software (acquired by Progress Software NASDAQ: PRGS) and pioneer of the Enterprise Service Bus, the foundation of Service-Oriented Architecture.

AppZero VAAs encapsulate applications at a level above the operating system, turning server applications into discrete objects that run protected from other applications and the underlying operating systems. In a virtual environment such as VMware, Xen and Microsoft Hyper-V, AppZero drives higher server consolidation ratios by provisioning applications to virtual machines (VM) with almost no overhead. VAAs significantly reduces VM sprawl and dramatically speeds the time to get an application up and running. AppZero VAAs also simplify the use of existing configuration and server provisioning solutions, such as HP-Opsware and BMC’s Bladelogic, allowing these systems to manage server applications as discrete objects.
AppZero’s VAA toolset runs on Windows, Solaris and Linux and includes three tools: the AppZero Creator for building a VAA; the AppZero Director, a run time system; and AppZero Administrator for administering a VAA. AppZero has made available a library of single-click server based VAAs for free download at vaa.appzero.com. The VAA toolset is available immediately via the website and is priced from $500 per VAA.

Elastra Raises $12 Million from Amazon for Cloud Management

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Elastra, a startup focused on providing solutions for internet cloud configuration and management, secured $12 million in Series B financing in its second venture round, which was was led by Bay Partners, with Amazon.com and existing investor Hummer Winblad also participating. Elastra had previously raised $2.6 million. If the investment by Amazon makes you raise your eyebrows too, go read the excellent analysis on GigaOM.

Check our previous coverage of the company here.

CEO Kiril Sheynkman says Elastra’s offering is unique because it can manage individual applications, rather than virtual appliances, and because it manages applications across private and public Internet clouds.

Elastra now has more than 40 paying customers running databases on Amazon’s cloud using its technology, and plans to announce support for VMware and additional components such as application and web servers. It’s also planning to support clouds other than Amazon.

Elastra

[Source: VentureBeat]

Release: CentOS 5.2, Free Red Hat Enterprise Linux Clone

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The CentOS development team has released CentOS 5.2, which is based on and promises full compatibility for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 5.2. Available for i386 and x86-64 architectures, the release offers new drivers and bug fixes, as well as improvements to the Xen virtualization kernel, according to the team.

The fresh clone comes with updated software support for Apache, Gnome, KDE, OpenOffice, MySQL and PostgreSQL. Also, you won’t be paying the $350-$2,500 per year subscription fee for RHEL 5.2!

Documentation can be found here, release notes here, download mirrors here.

[Source: The Register]

Elastra Makes Cloud Computing More Accessible For Enterprises

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San Francisco-based startup Elastra seeks to “unlock the value of the cloud” with a new service that lets enterprises quickly create database applications on utility computing platforms like Amazon Web Services. The company says its Elastra Cloud Server offers an easier way to deploy applications on Amazon’s infrastructure, providing customers with two markup languages that can be used to create database-driven services. The Cloud Server uses a metered, pay-per-use software pricing model, and will be available in April.

virtualization-elastra.jpg

Elastra’s tools include the Elastic Computing Markup Language (ECML) and Elastic Deployment Markup Language (EDML), and system management dashboards to scale deployments. Available databases include MySQL, PostgreSQL and EnterpriseDB, an Oracle-compatible database which just raised $ 10 million in Series C financing.

Dana Gardner at ZDNet notes:

In general the Elastra approach provides onramps to compute clouds based on descriptive tools that help reduce complexity for IT departments. This should encourage experimentation and ultimately lead to ramp ups in the use of public clouds, as well as the build-out and use of home-grown, so-called private clouds. Less attention has been given of late to the promise of private clouds, which are really a natural extension of current datacenter consolidation, clustering, application modernization, ITIL and virtualization initiatives.

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Part of Elastra’s DNA is putting more data in the cloud, where it can be used assiduously to support apps, services and business processes. And once the data layer makes its way to the cloud (private, public or both), can the rest of the support infrastructure be far behind? We’re already seeing a lot of talk around integration as a service, and infrastructure as a service. And we’re also increasingly seeing tools and development as a service.

[Source: Data Center Knowledge]