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EMC Introduces Business Continuity Services Suite for VMware Environments

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EMC today announced a full range of new consulting, implementation, education and managed services that leverage EMC’s expertise in virtualization and business continuity. EMC Global Services can effectively integrate VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager into customers’ EMC business continuity environments to automate recovery of virtual environments.

Business continuity is a critical requirement in virtualized data centers as more mission-critical applications are virtualized. As a top-tier member of the VMware Partner Network with hundreds of VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs), and years of business continuity experience, EMC Global Services has the deep expertise to help customers address their availability and recovery challenges for virtual environments. EMC’s end-to-end solutions methodology applies best practices from both enterprise business continuity and virtualization disciplines to provide cost-effective recovery strategies for VMware environments. This approach leverages integration of EMC’s full portfolio of replication technology with the automation capabilities of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to provide a robust solution that mitigates risk. The following new EMC services help customers design and implement a consistent recovery strategy for x86 virtualized environments across the enterprise:

  • EMC Consulting services for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager automate and provide a recovery strategy for virtualized infrastructures to integrate VMware vCenter Site Recovery manager into enterprise business continuity programs.
  • EMC Design and Implementation for VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager delivers a customized design and complete integration of VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager with customers’ existing business continuity plans.
  • EMC Education Services for VMware environments offers training modules including, VMware Integration with EMC Storage and Replication Technologies training for both EMC Symmetrix(R) and EMC CLARiiON(R), and VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, to be proficient in installing, configuring, and operating VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, as well as the testing of EMC disaster recovery plans.
  • EMC Residency Services for VMware environments provide the infrastructure management resources and expertise to manage the day-to-day operations of the virtual infrastructure.

VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager, when deployed in conjunction with EMC’s industry-leading portfolio of replication software including EMC SRDF (Symmetrix Remote Data Facility), EMC Celerra Replicator, EMC MirrorView and EMC RecoverPoint, enables customers to rapidly and efficiently bring their virtualized servers and mission-critical information online at a secondary site.

Customers who work with EMC Velocity2 Authorized Services Network (ASN) partners will also be able to accelerate the business benefits of integrating their EMC business continuity environments with VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager. Velocity2 ASN partners are trained, certified and field tested to provide value-add services in VMware environments, and channel partners who also VMware partner can further provide value to customers through their deep technical knowledge of EMC and VMware products.

EMC Global Services provides the strategic guidance and technology expertise organizations need to address their business and information infrastructure challenges and derive the maximum value from their information assets and investments. With over 13,000 professional- and support-service experts worldwide, plus a global network of alliances and partners, EMC Global Services leverages proven methodologies, industry best practices, experience and a knowledge base derived from EMC’s 30-year information-centric heritage to help customers reduce risk, lower costs and speed time to value. .

OpenOSX Releases WinTel 3.0, Speeds Up Virtualization Performance

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OpenOSX Thursday announced WinTel version 3.0, the company’s Windows, Linux and other OS virtualization solution for Mac OS X.

WinTel is an application that allows host operating systems (and applications) such as Microsoft Windows and Ubuntu Linux to run in protected, virtual environments within windows on Mac OS X. WinTel’s new virtualization performance is comparable with the performance of VMWare’s Fusion and Parallels Inc.’s Parallels Desktop software.

According to OpenOSX, the update allows users to run most of the instructions of the virtual machine natively, drastically increasing performance in the process. The firm said performance was comparable to VMWare’s Fusion or Parallels.

The OpenOSX WinTel product is available immediately for US$30 plus shipping delivered on CD-ROM, with download-only delivery available for US$25.

Hyper9 Releases Andrew Kutz’ Virtualization Mobile Manager

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Hyper9 released yesterday a browser-based management and monitoring tool that allows Virtualization administrators to control their virtual infrastructures from a mobile device.

The Virtualization Mobile Manager (VMM), which was created by Andrew Kutz, a well-known developer in the VMware community, has been in beta for the last month, where hundreds of virtualization administrators have used the product in the field and provided positive feedback to Hyper9.

During the beta period, VMM demonstrated its ability to work with VMware Server 2, VMware Infrastructure 3, VMware vSphere 4, Microsoft Hyper-V, and Citrix XenServer 5. The application will also work with almost any mobile device, including the Apple iPhone, Blackberry, Google Android and Windows Mobile Devices.

VMM also offers the ability to monitor host and VM performance statistics (CPU, Memory), control VMs and take action on the go – start, stop, pause, reset and disable network – all of which were important features to the beta users. Hyper9 is doing its part to make VMM a compelling offering, by giving users the ability to manage up to five VMs for free as well as special introductory pricing of $199.00 for up to 1000 VMs.

Layer 7 Release SecureSpan Virtual Appliance For Cloud Governance

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Layer 7 Technologies today announced the availability of the Layer 7 SecureSpan Virtual Appliance for cloud governance. The Virtual Appliance offers all the features of the SecureSpan family of hardware appliances, including sophisticated runtime governance, agent-less SOA management and industry-leading XML security in a VMware or ESX-based soft appliance. The Layer 7 Virtual Appliance for cloud governance allows organizations to secure cloud-based interactions, monitor service level conformance and adapt to changing conditions and needs.

Traditionally, Layer 7 customers have deployed the SecureSpan Virtual Appliance as a budget-friendly alternative to hardware appliances. The SecureSpan Virtual Appliance for cloud governance incorporates the new Layer 7 Enterprise Service Manager (ESM), which is a lightweight method of centrally managing, tracking and measuring application services no matter where those services reside: in enterprise SOAs, as part of a Software-as-a-Service offering or in cloud (both public and private) initiatives. With the Virtual Appliance for cloud governance, Layer 7 customers can seamlessly reuse their existing, on-premise SOA governance solution for their cloud-based initiatives.

In addition to cloud governance, Layer 7 enables organizations to control, monitor and adapt application services in a variety of enterprise settings, including internal environments and between external domains (such as partners or branch offices). Only Layer 7’s highly automated and interoperable gateway solutions, available as hardware, software and virtual (VMware) appliances, are capable of holistically governing today’s complex and ever-changing ecosystem of application services, no matter where they reside.

Bluepoint Solutions Debuts Virtual Backup and Recovery Services

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Bluepoint Solutions, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing and electronic document management software technology for financial institutions, announced the availability of a cohesive Virtual Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution (Virtual BDR), designed to backup and virtualize multiple servers.

Bluepoint clients now have the capabilities of Virtual BDR to backup and restore information. According to a recent ICSA survey, U.S. businesses lose more than $12 billion per year because of data loss and 93 percent of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. If, for any reason, a file is lost or corrupt, the system archives the information, recovering the most current version of data just prior to a data loss event.

In addition to its on-site backup efforts, the system offers off-site backup storage as well. The encrypted data is stored simultaneously at two off-site data centers, so in the event of a system disaster, natural or manmade, a backup server can be shipped to an institution within one day to get you back up and running without having to wait for lengthy server replacements and complicated server restores.

Bluepoint’s offerings are fully monitored and managed 24/7 by its Network Operations Center. Daily verification tests are performed to maintain the integrity of the data. Bluepoint encrypts data before it leaves a server with an encryption key that only the institution controls. The data is encrypted again for its transfer over the Internet. Files are stored in encrypted form on multiple servers in high-security facilities. The data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption technology, which cannot be read without the corresponding keys, ensuring the highest level of security for the data.

Vizioncore Updates Virtualization Management and Optimization Solutions

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Vizioncore today announced the general release of updates to two of its key products: vOptimizer Pro 2.2, Vizioncore’s storage and VM optimization tool, and vFoglight 5.2.6, an updated version of the company’s popular performance monitoring solution.

Vizioncore vOptimizer Pro 2.2 brings the ability to scan an organization’s VMware vCenter Server and ESX Hosts in order to determine the amount of over-allocated virtual storage that exists unnoticed. According to industry analysts, as much as 90% of storage in virtual infrastructure may be unused because of over allocations at the initial point of provisioning. vOptimizer Pro helps reclaim storage from across the data center to help increase utilization, reduce costs and improve performance.

Key features of the vOptimizer Pro 2.2 include:

  • Infrastructure Scanning – Locating and determining the amount of unused virtual storage across the virtual infrastructure enables the customer to see exactly how much storage is being wasted. Furthermore, the product can estimate the total potential savings gained from reclaiming wasted storage and generate a report for use within the business
  • Broader OS Support – vOptimizer Pro now includes full support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows 2008 giving customers the ability to reduce or defer storage acquisition costs across even more environments
  • Enhanced Browsing – Improved ability to select virtual environment targets to be scanned, making an easier task of space reclamation
  • VMware vSphere 4 Support – vOptimizer Pro 2.2 supports VMware’s latest virtual infrastructure

vFoglight is expanding in the areas of capacity planning to help optimize resource utilization and chargeback to help IT recover infrastructure costs.

The new features of vFoglight 5.2.6 include:

  • Capacity Planning – Determining the required infrastructure resources needed to support organizational growth and change is among the greatest challenges for VM administrators. To help combat this challenge, a new capacity planning module, included with vFoglight Pro, builds on the “Migration Modeler” to allow “What If ..?” scenarios for moving VMs to or from actual or hypothetical physical servers.
  • Measured Resource Utilization (Chargeback) – For customers who meter for the use of infrastructure, vFoglight includes Measured Resource Utilization (MRU). MRU is based on measured consumption of IT resources in the infrastructure and can, for instance, help IT understand which user, group or application is using physical servers or VMs.

With vFoglight, administrators can view their entire infrastructure through detailed architectural representations and use out-of-the-box alerts and expert advice to detect, diagnose and resolve problems affecting performance and availability. vFoglight also allows administrators to plan, manage and optimize infrastructure capacity for improved performance and better resource utilization. And for organizations that seek to recover costs for the use of infrastructure, vFoglight supports leading chargeback models to track infrastructure usage and costs. Finally, vFoglight integrates with existing tools and monitoring frameworks already in place helping organizations leverage existing investments.

Trial versions of vOptimizer Pro 2.2 and vFoglight (available in Standard or Pro editions) are available to download free here.