NetApp

Rackable Teams Up With NetApp to Offer Storage for Customized Data Center Solutions

September 11, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Rackable Systems, provider of servers and storage products for large-scale data centers, today announced a partnership with NetApp to offer customers best-of-breed server and storage solutions for enterprise environments.

Under terms of the agreement, Rackable Systems is joining NetApp’s Embedded Systems Vendor Program and will integrate NetApp storage into Rackable Systems’ built-to-order Eco-Logical data center server and infrastructure offerings.

Rackable Systems’ data center solutions including NetApp’s FAS series will be available immediately worldwide via its direct sales and channel partners.

Rackable Systems

NetApp

Trading Activity In NetApp, VMware Spikes

August 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, stocks of both NetApp and VMware have been trading at unusual volumes yesterday.

Trading in NetApp spiked to four times the normal level, with investors picking up 38,000 calls that allow them to buy the company’s stock and 5,000 puts that allow them to sell it. NetApp shares closed at $25.55, up 6.1%.

Fueling activity in VMW trading was the recent chatter that Cisco could be interested in acquiring VMware. With calls outnumbering puts by seven to one, traders gravitated to September $45 calls. The contracts are priced at 70 cents and make money if VMware shares jump above $45.70.

They closed at $38.49, up 4.1%.

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.

Last Week’s Virtualization Headlines

May 18, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

We apologize for the limited reporting of last week, and we just wanted to let you know we’re going to pick up our usual pace as of today. For now, these are the most apparent stories we came across with regards to what happened in virtualization land:

Virtual Iron and Surgient both lost key marketing executives. Mike Grandinetti, who had been working for Virtual Iron since 2003 (see our video interview with Mike at VMWorld Europe 2008), has moved on to become Managing Director of Southboro Capital, presumably his own venture. Similar story at Surgient, who saw the leave of VP of Marketing Erik Josowitz who had been with the start-up since 2004. No word on what Josowitz is up to next.
Quest Software reported (PDF) its 2008 Q1 results. Total revenues increased to $172.8 million compared to the prior year’s first quarter revenue of $149.8 million.
Parallels has updated Parallels Desktop to build 5600. With the update, the company has added full support for Windows Vista SP1, Windows XP SP3, and improved compatibility with the MacBook Air, along with some minor bugfixes and performance enhancements.
Stealth startup DynamicOps, a venture-funded spinout of management technology developed by Credit Suisse’s research and development organization, launched its virtual machine management application Virtual Resource Manager.
HP joined Desktone‘s Service Provider Partner Program.
VMware announced that VMware Site Recovery Manager, a product for disaster recovery management and automation, will be available for order this week with general availability expected to follow within 30 days. Both 3PAR and NetApp have already announced integration / support for VMware SRM.
Check Point Software Technologies announced the general availability of ZoneAlarm ForceField, which it claims to be a comprehensive, virtualized browser security solution.
AMD announced enterprise customers now have more choices for rack-mount and blade systems based upon Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors with the launch of six new servers from Sun Microsystems.
EMC could very well be planning to sell off all or part of its majority stake in VMware, a rumor spread by Bloomberg. EMC will be able to do a tax-free distribution of shares in January 2009, and some are already citing Intel as a potential acquirer of the assets.

Arrow ECS Launches V-PWR Program To Help NetApp Resellers Sell Virtualization

March 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

The Enterprise Computing Solutions (ECS) business of Arrow Electronics today launched “V-PWR”, a program to help its North American NetApp reseller partners capitalize on increasing demand for virtualization.

From the press release:

Through the V-PWR program, Arrow ECS provides education, training and tools to help NetApp partners pursue and close sales for virtualization solutions with their customers. Partners receive educational sales materials about virtualization challenges and solutions; onsite sales and technical training; personalized sales coaching; and marketing support, among other program services.

In addition, partners gain certification to resell virtualization software that complement NetApp(R) environments, such as VMware, distributed through Arrow subsidiary Alternative Technology Inc. NetApp virtualization accreditation is also available for partners that are seeking to increase profits by offering storage virtualization solutions.