Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

vCloud

Dell Debuts ‘Cloud’, Based On VMware vCloud Datacenter Services

by Leave a Comment

Today at VMworld 2011, Dell and VMware jointly announced the availability of the Dell Cloud based on VMware vCloud Datacenter Services designed to provide a seamless multi-tenant environment for running virtual systems.

Dell is one of the first providers authorized to provide VMware vCloud Datacenter Services for enterprise-class, secure, public, private and hybrid clouds.

Today’s announcement is the first public and hybrid cloud offering by Dell and supports Dell’s strategy to provide customers next-generation computing solutions composed of hardware, software and services.

Dell will also offer consulting, application and infrastructure services to help companies transform their legacy IT environment and integrate these cloud services effectively in their business.

Dell and VMware will provide Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) choice for customer organizations, hosting and outsourcing firms, system integrators and service providers. The offer provides automation, multi-level security and availability in order to manage on-demand capacity, workload scalability, or as a platform to respond to changing business needs more rapidly.

Dell is currently offering the Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service with beta customers. The offering will be generally available in the U.S. in the fourth calendar quarter this year with rollout planned for EMEA and APJ in 2012.

Virtacore Debuts VMware vCloud Express, An On-Demand Self-Service Cloud Offering

by Leave a Comment

Virtacore Systems, provider of hybrid cloud services, has announced the availability of the company’s vCloud Express offering. The public cloud solution, based on VMware vCloud technology, provides virtual servers from a shared resource pool for a low monthly cost.

One of only two global providers to offer vCloud Express, Virtacore vCloud Express provides organizations with an on-demand, pay-as-you-go infrastructure that meets the needs of organizations seeking a flexible and affordable infrastructure.

rPath X6 Now Supports OpenStack And VMware vCloud Director

by Leave a Comment

rPath has announced that rPath X6 now supports OpenStack and VMware vCloud Director for private and hybrid cloud computing environments.

OpenStack is the open source cloud operating system and emerging open cloud standard backed by more than 50 organizations and contributors across the globe. VMware vCloud Director allows enterprises and service providers to build and operate secure clouds.

With this announcement, rPath’s system automation and standardization features can be combined with OpenStack’s elasticity and vCloud Director’s requisition, approval and provisioning capabilities to provide customers with a tangible means of requesting, deploying, maintaining and dynamically scaling a complete IT system.

rPath is a founding member of the NRE Alliance, a coalition of independent vendors collaborating to deliver a solution for enterprise cloud computing by enabling capabilities for self-service, automation and elasticity. Other members of the NRE Alliance include newScale, Eucalyptus Systems and MomentumSI.

BlueLock Launches VMware vCloud Datacenter Service With CloudConnector

by Leave a Comment

At VMworld 2010, BlueLock, a provider of cloud hosting and managed IT services, announced it is partnering with VMware to announce the beta availability of a new enterprise-class cloud service, VMware vCloud Datacenter Service in North America.

BlueLock is one of only three North American service provider partners to offer the vCloud Datacenter Service beta. As part of BlueLock’s enterprise cloud offering, the company also announces beta availability of BlueLock CloudConnector, a plug-in that enables VMware customers to view and manage private cloud environments and BlueLock’s public VMware vCloud Datacenter Service resources in a single interface.

As a VMware vCloud Datacenter beta provider, BlueLock’s public cloud is an enterprise-class cloud delivering consistent and auditable security and performance features including layer 2 isolation, role-based access control and LDAP integration in a SAS 70 type II certified data center. BlueLock’s use of the same VMware technology provides a common management and security model that enables complete application portability across internal data centers and all VMware vCloud Datacenter services.

With BlueLock CloudConnector, VMware customers can immediately realize the benefits of the next generation of cloud capabilities provided by VMware vCloud Director, the cloud delivery platform for VMware vCloud Datacenter. BlueLock CloudConnector for VMware vCloud Director enables current VMware customers to view and manage their existing VMware environment (their private cloud) and BlueLock’s VMware-based public cloud resources in the VMware vSphere Client control panel they already have, making the transition to public cloud even easier for existing VMware administrators.

BlueLock hosted VMware vCloud Datacenter Service with BlueLock CloudConnector is available immediately for beta.

To get started, VMware customers must contact BlueLock for a beta account, then download and install the BlueLock CloudConnector into their VMware vSphere Client interface. Additional capabilities will be rolled out in general availability planned for later this year.

VMware announces VMware vCloud Express, goes head to head with Amazon EC2

by 2 Comments

VMware today announced vCloud Express, a new class of service that will deliver on-demand, pay-as-you-go computing power as a service, much like Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Built on VMware vSphere, vCloud Express enables to quickly start using enterprise quality computing platforms based on vSphere. As the vCloud environments are based on vSphere, it is easy to import and export workloads between the internal IT environment and external cloud providers.

VMware vCloud Express will be available through many service providers. Several of them are launching beta releases of these services today. Among those are Terremark, Hosting.com They can be found through the VMware Website.

So far, this field has been dominated by Amazon. The vCloud Express solution will probably kickstart some serious competition, both on price and service levels. Several “big names” announced support for vCloud and vCloud Express today. Since debuting the vCloud initiative at VMworld 2008 last year, more than 1000 service providers have signed up. Today the spotlight is on a few of the bigger “enterprise” cloud providers, that are collaborating closely with VMware on the vCloud API.

VMware submitted the vCloud API to DMTF to get it certified as an open standard, to ensure customers can “get their data out of the cloud” if needed, and to allow interoperability between different clouds.

Enterprise infrastructure providers

Several large infrastructure providers announced their own vSphere based cloud offerings. AT&T, Verizon Business, SAVVIS and Terremark all announced similar offerings.

Software providers
Several software providers already support the vCloud API to automatically provision virtual appliances to vCloud-compatible service providers. This greatly facilitates software distribution. Several of these VM build services like CohesiveFT and rPath have announced support for vCloud.

More open source competition coming up

While VMware only spoke about Amazon EC2, another interesting development is the Xen Cloud Platform, an initiative of the Xen Project to enable completely open source cloud infrastructures. XCP was announced yesterday. The Xen project will build upon the work done by projects like the Eucalyptus Project and OpenNebula to create what basically is an open source equivalent of the vSphere / vCloud stack.

Citrix, a major contributor to the Xen Project and a major competitor of VMware, is expected to announce a commercial XCP offering soon.

Insight Enterprises Named First Reseller Partner In U.S. To Serve VMware Service Provider Program

by 1 Comment

Insight Enterprises announced today that it has been named the first U.S.-based reseller partner to offer subscription licenses to serve the expanded VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP). With the addition of Insight, VSPP partners can now expect the licensing flexibility they need in hosting environments leveraging the VMware technology, marketing and training they need.

VSPP partners are part of the VMware vCloud Initiative, which delivers an enterprise-class cloud computing platform. The VMware vCloud initiative offers broad support for existing and new applications, and it enables federation between on- and off-premise clouds. The core technology underpinning of the VMware vCloud Initiative is a set of VMware vServices that provide the APIs and technologies to enable this federation and facilitate business needs such as flex capacity, disaster recovery, or test and development for enterprises. VMware vServices also enable cloud providers to simplify how SMBs acquire compute capacity.

With the growth of cloud computing and VMware’s vCloud initiative, Insight can enable service providers to rent VMware licenses to capitalize on the market opportunity in delivering new on-demand cloud-like services for enterprises and SMBs, while preserving their capital.