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Cloud.com, a new Open Source Cloud management platform..

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With a domain like Cloud.com you are doomed to deliver something Virtualization related,

And today that plan became visible for the rest of the world, the company formerly known as VMOps , today emerges from stealth mode and announces that it will be rebranding to Cloud.com

We had a chat earlier this week with Peder Ulander who joined Cloud.com as chief marketing officer bringing more than 15 years of experience. Previously, Peter could be found at companies such as Sun Microsystems responsible for launching Java into the open source market by re-licensing, building a community and launching the open source Java platform. but also at other Open Source companies icluding MontaVista Software, the largest distributor of Linux for embedded devices, and Cobalt Networks, one of the early open source for networking companies, Cisco and Symantec.

Next to Peter the company also announced two other new additions to it’s management team

Kevin KLuge joins as vice president of engineering and previously served as vice president of engineering at Zimbra, an open source server software provider for email and collaboration, which was acquired by Yahoo! in 2007 and sold to VMware in 2009. Prior to Zimbra, Kluge was vice president of engineering at Corvigo, a leading anti-spam provider. Additionally, Kluge has held leadership positions at Openwave Systems, where he led engineering for multiple innovative products including instant messaging, voicemail and multi-media messaging services (MMS), Sun Microsystems and Portola Communications.

and Kyle MacDonald joins as chief evangelist having most recently served as vice president of corporate development and strategy for Hosting.com / Wachovia Capital Partners. Prior to this position, MacDonald held executive leadership positions at Sun Microsystems including leading the Web 2.0, Internet and next generation service providers sector at Sun Microsystems, acquired by Oracle in 2009. MacDonald also held the position of corporate technologist for software and strategic technology at AMD where he helped developed AMD’s software strategy and key strategic alliances with companies such as IBM, BEA, Adobe, EMC and Symantec.

The new team members join the team of CEO Sheng Liang, who founded the company in 2008. Liang has extensive experience in the technology industry and has served in a number of both technical and executive leadership roles. Prior to Cloud.com, Liang co-founded and served as CTO of Teros, which was acquired by Citrix in 2005. Sheng also was a member of the senior management teams at SEVEN Networks and Openwave Systems, and was the lead developer and key contributor to the success of the Java Virtual Machine at Sun.

Cloud.com also lets the Virtual world know that it closed a $11 million Series B round led by new investor Index Ventures. Current investors Redpoint Ventures and Nexus Venture Partners also participated in this round, bringing the company’s total funding to date to $17.6 million

Apart from its new name, management and funding Cloud.com today also announced their product : CloudStack,
an open source software solution that accelerates the deployment, management and configuration of private and public cloud services. They provide an integrated software solution for delivering infrastructure as a service (IaaS) which comes in three distinct versions: CloudStack Enterprise Edition, CloudStack Service Provider Edition and CloudStack Community Edition.

CloudStack is the result of work started by VMops in 2008 and is already being used in productions by some key customers.

Next to the expected features such as definition, deployment and management of cloud devices, CloudStack also adds metering to the feature list, so billing can be done based on actual usage of the public , private or hybrid deployments.

About the Open Source release availabel on Cloud.com tells us :
The CloudStack Community Edition is distributed under the General Public License 3 (GPL3). The Community Edition offers a leading open source software stack integrated with the open source Xen and KVM hypervisors, and can be deployed with Ubuntu and Fedora distributions. With its simple to install software package, Cloud.com is a fully integrated binary that enables developers to quickly and easily build, manage and deploy IaaS clouds.

There is a lot of competition in the Open Source Cloud and Virtualization management area, Corporate OpenQRM just being relaunched by Matt Rechenburg, Eucalyptus these days being managed by Marten Mickos and Abiquo just having opened a new office in the US, … and this all seems just like the start

So I`m keen to follow this one … and I’ll be having a closer look at the Cloud.com platform in our lab soon.

NetQoS Launches Network-Based Virtualization Management Offerings

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For all its benefits, server virtualization masks critical data that IT organizations need to ensure optimal delivery of applications across the network to end users. With new virtualization capabilities, the NetQoS Performance Center unearths this data and combines it with network and application performance information from the physical environment to show how well the entire infrastructure is supporting application delivery.

The NetQoS Performance Center bridges the gap between the virtual and physical environments by collecting and analyzing application response times, traffic flows via Cisco IOS NetFlow, and device performance statistics within multi-tiered, virtual hosts as well as into and out of the virtual environment. The new offerings include:

· NetQoS Response Time Virtual Collector: This software only version of the NetQoS Performance Center application response time monitoring capability runs as a virtual machine in VMware, Microsoft or Citrix environments to provide visibility into the communications between each virtual server residing on the same physical machine. In addition, the Virtual Collector monitors the traffic between each virtual machine and the physical infrastructure.

· NetQoS NetFlow Reporting for Virtualized Environments: The NetQoS Performance Center network traffic analysis capability now supports NetFlow statistics exported from the Cisco Nexus 1000v and the VMware vSwitch to help network groups monitor how virtual application traffic is impacting network performance.

· NetQoS Performance Center Integration with VMware vCenter: The NetQoS Performance Center retrieves device health information from the VMware vCenter API to report data such as the number of virtual machines running on a host, CPU utilization, disk usage, and memory utilization.

By integrating the performance data from these three sources in one management console, the NetQoS Performance Center is uniquely positioned to help IT organizations understand how applications are performing across the infrastructure and better manage virtualization. For instance, the ability to measure the before and after impact of infrastructure changes, isolate the source of latency to the network, application or server, and predict bandwidth consumption will help IT organizations solve problems faster and make more informed decisions about which applications to virtualize. In addition, correlating device health information alongside response time and traffic flow information in the NetQoS Performance Center is important as network groups troubleshoot latency and other performance issues in real time.

Evolve Technologies CEO Dave Sobel Joins Server Virtualization Advisory Board

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Evolve Technologies, a company that specializes in providing information technology solutions for the small business, faith-based and nonprofit communities in the D.C. Metro area, announced today that CEO, Dave Sobel, has joined TechTarget’s new SearchServerVirtualization.com Server Virtualization Advisory Board.

Sobel was selected for his extensive knowledge on the subject including the recently published book, “Virtualization: Defined. A Primer for the SMB Consultant,” and his successful blog, SMBvirtualization.net. Sobel is an active member of the Heartland Technology Groups in the U.S. and Europe, serving as a founding member of HTG5 and a facilitator for HTG11.

  • As a member of the Server Virtualization Advisory Board, Sobel will provide guidance meant to focus the publication’s virtualization news coverage and expert tips.
  • The Server Virtualization Advisory Board consists of systems administrators and consultants specializing in server virtualization technology.
  • Other members of the board include: Jack Kaiser, Vice President of Business Development and Marketing, International Computerware; Rob McShinsky, Senior Systems Engineer, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center; CJ Metz, Senior Systems Administrator, Orange County United Way; Eric Siebert, Senior Systems Administrator, Boston Market; Shannon Snowden, Consulting Partner, New Age Technologies; and Rick Vanover, Systems Administrator and virtualization expert.

VMware, Cisco Join Microsoft Server Virtualization Validation Program

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Microsoft’s Server Virtualization Validation Program, which was first announced in November 2007, and launched last June with the patricipation of Citrix, Sun, Novell and Virtual Iron, signed up two notable new members.

Cisco has announced its membership and is already included on the SVVP website, and VMware signed up pretty late so they’re not on there yet (but Chris Wolf had already confirmed the news). Microsoft and VMware had been working diligently for several months on the completion of their support agreement and VMware’s inclusion in the SVVP, and this will evidently drive virtualization adoption even further the coming months and years.

The costs associated with joining the program include membership in TSAnet at Mission Critical level, so that the vendor and Microsoft can share support information, incremental costs, if any, to perform the validation tests, and a nominal expense (currently $250) to qualify each ‘configuration’ that is submitted for validation.

Microsoft

Pivot3 Asks: Who Needs Servers Anyway?

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Pivot3 today announced a “technology breakthrough”, allowing for the elimination of servers for most applications that store information. Pivot3 Serverless Computing allows customers to absorb compute-intensive workloads, now performed using stand-alone application servers, into Pivot3’s X86-based storage nodes.

Pivot3 Serverless Computing also enables environments that have not typically been considered good candidates for conventional server virtualization deployments, because of the technology’s unique performance characteristics.

“Pivot3 has taken advantage of the openness and high performance of the Xen hypervisor to deliver a powerful new architecture for storage subsystems,” said Ian Pratt, chairman of xen.org. “Xen virtualization is rapidly becoming embedded in all components of enterprise IT architectures, from servers, to storage and network appliances.”

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“As Pivot3 works with its partners to apply Pivot3 Serverless Computing to the general marketplace, we believe we can enable a significant reduction to the carbon footprint of today’s datacenter. We intend to help our customers do more on fixed power and physical space constraints while insuring they are as efficient and responsible as technology will allow,” added Bob Fernander, chief executive officer of Pivot3.

Pivot3 Serverless Computing technology, and products based on the technology will be announced and made generally available this fall.

Pivot3

Oracle VM Reaches Version 2.1

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Oracle VM, the company’s server virtualization software unveiled in November 2007, is a surprisingly strong offer that you hear little about, even though Oracle boasts an impressive list of technology partners on their websites with names like Dell, Intel, HP, IBM and NetApp. Ericom recently announced PowerTerm WebConnect, a desktop virtualization (VDI) solution based on Oracle’s server virtualization software.

As Alessandro points out, the software has evolved a bit since its launch and now carries version number 2.1.1. The release notes for the Oracle VM Server component can be consulted here.

You can download the new version free of charge here.