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Test Center

Devon IT Installs Thin Client / Virtualization Test Center In China

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Devon IT announced it will launch a thin client and virtualization test center at its China headquarters in Beijing. Customers can test the latest Devon IT thin clients working with virtualization software, mirroring the company’s Server-Desktop Solution Center at its U.S. headquarters.

For the first time, IT personnel in China will be able to test Devon IT’s latest thin client technologies against traditional PC environments. The test center will feature Devon IT’s newly launched green TC2 thin client series and the SafeBook LVO, which is built on the Lenovo ThinkPad and compatible with all Lenovo docking stations and accessories. Virtualization software from VMware and server solutions from IBM will round out the testing facility. In addition, the HC10 workstation blade will be available for demos in their facility. The HC10 is a remote workstation blade that delivers breakthrough graphics performance and a full PC experience. It connects to the TC10/CP20 using the PC-over-IP protocol, a technology that changes the desktop computing model by enabling desktop consolidation benefits to be realized across the enterprise.

StackSafe Test Center Gets Another Upgrade, Enhances Support for Virtualized Environments

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StackSafe, a provider of pre-production staging and testing solutions for IT operations teams, announced today that StackSafe Test Center, which was launched in the beginning of this year and significantly upgraded 2 months ago, now includes automated import of virtual infrastructure components.

Users can easily import virtualized production environments into Test Center, enabling them to stage both virtualized and physical production environments for testing activities. With this upgrade, Test Center provides testing that covers the gamut of potential scenarios, from physical infrastructure stacks to virtual infrastructure stacks to “hybrid” environments that include both physical and virtual components.

With the uses of virtualization becoming more widespread, the IT Operations industry is beginning to see an increasing use of virtual infrastructure stacks in production. Enhanced support for virtualized infrastructure enables users to more easily import virtual workloads into Test Center, making it possible to test against virtual and physical environments for complete end-to-end infrastructure stack testing. This inclusion, along with the product’s existing support for external infrastructure connectivity, gives Test Center a broad view of the entire IT Operations infrastructure, enabling testing across:

  • Physical machines – Production machines equipped with Windows, Red Hat Linux and CentOS Linux
  • Virtual machines – Test Center currently supports virtual machines on VMware ESX 3.x
  • External infrastructure components – Including large databases, mainframes and other network components that cannot be virtualized into Test Center

Organizations choosing to employ StackSafe Test Center can now ensure that their entire software stack is represented in the testing process, enabling for faster change impact analyses and fewer rolled-back changes.

As part of StackSafe Test Center’s subscription licensing model, the updated release of Test Center is generally available to current Test Center users at no charge.

StackSafe Upgrades Test Center

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StackSafe, a provider of pre-production staging and testing solutions for IT Operations teams, announced today the external infrastructure connectivity upgrade to its staging and testing solution, StackSafe Test Center, which it recently unveiled at the DEMO 2008 Conference.

StackSafe

The solution creates a virtual copy of the software infrastructure, and thanks to this upgrade, the virtualized Test Center environment can now be extended to interact with non-virtualized system components that reside outside of the Test Center environment.

“Virtualization technology offers the potential to deliver time-stressed, resource-thin IT operations staff a low risk way to test and assess the impact of making changes to the IT production environment,” commented Richard Ptak, Founder and Analyst, Ptak Noel & Associates. “StackSafe’s Test Center provides a validation environment that resolves a number of existing application deployment issues.”

According to the company, complex software infrastructure environments may include components that cannot be virtualized into StackSafe Test Center. These include physical storage tiers, large databases, hardware-based network topologies, or distributed components not owned by the IT Operations team. By enabling the inclusion of these components in the test scenarios, users can now have a more complete view of the impact of changes across the entire end-to end IT service.

The addition of external infrastructure connectivity adds the following features:

  • Enabling inbound connectivity from external infrastructure components and services into Test Center
  • Enabling outbound connectivity from Test Center to external infrastructure components and services
  • Customized control of connectivity options

As part of StackSafe Test Center’s subscription licensing model, the updated release of Test Center is generally available to current Test Center users at no charge.

StackSafe Unveils Test Center at DEMO 08

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I’m currently watching the live stream from DEMO 08 , listening to a pitch from StackSafe which is really compelling. The company was foreseeing enough to publish a press release in conjunction with the product launch.

“StackSafe, Inc., a provider of pre-production staging and testing solutions for IT operations teams, announced today the immediate availability of StackSafe™ Test Center . Test Center is the first virtualized staging and testing solution for IT Operations teams that improves availability and resiliency through enhanced software infrastructure testing. StackSafe’s solution directly addresses incomplete and ineffective IT Operations testing and analysis of changes to multi-tiered software infrastructure stacks.

“If IT Operations teams can test and certify changes to software infrastructures before they go live, then IT services become more available and resilient as well as more repeatable and better documented,” said Donna Scott, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. “Comprehensive and efficient staging, testing and analysis are essential to achieving optimum levels of availability.””

Watch the Flash demo here .

These are the key benefits according to StackSafe:

* Reduces the uncertainty and downtime associated with IT changes, thus avoiding costly application and system failure
* Enables pre-production changes to be made safely before they are implemented into the live environment
* Helps IT Operations teams to understand the potential impacts that changes could have on their environment-before they impact production systems
* Enables IT Operations to be more responsive to dynamic and changing business process requirements
* Improves confidence in IT changes, while reducing the percentage of time spent on testing and staging-which can significantly lower IT operating costs