virtualisation

Michael Torto Appointed New CEO Of rPath

May 13, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

rPath today announced that Michael Torto has been appointed CEO, positioning the company for growth in solutions for automating deployment and maintenance of complex applications across traditional, virtual and cloud-based environments.

“Enterprises have demonstrated strong interest in rPath technology for addressing the growing cost and complexity of application delivery,” said Tim Buckley, executive chairman of the board for rPath. “Mike has the ideal skill set and personal attributes to accelerate rPath’s growth as we harvest our deep R&D and market development investments to build a scalable business to serve enterprise markets. We’re very pleased to have Mike leading the next phase of our growth.”

Torto takes the CEO position as rPath continues its campaign to reform application delivery and system management, which typically remain time- and cost-intensive manual processes. rPath dramatically reduces the time, cost and risk of enterprise application delivery by automating the packaging, deployment, and maintenance of applications as complete and self-contained systems that are ready to run and manage in any traditional, virtual or cloud-based environment.

Prior to joining rPath, Torto served as president and CEO of Centive, a leader in incentive management software, where he led the company’s growth and expansion into global markets and through its acquisition by Xactly Corp. earlier this year. Before joining Centive, Torto was president and CEO of InCert Software, successfully transitioning the company from a start-up to a leading software provider. Before InCert, Torto served as president and CEO at Swan International, Inc., a provider of application delivery and self-healing software, which he led to a successful IPO on the European EASDAQ in April of 1999.

Mike Torto’s complete bio can be found at http://www.rpath.com/corp/about-us/management#torto.

Likewise Open Finds It Way Into Citrix XenServer

May 13, 2009 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

The integration of Likewise Open with Citrix XenServer now enables IT administrators to protect information and data from unauthorized access — and ensures that virtual servers have the same levels of security as physical servers.

Likewise, the leader in open source audit and authentication for mixed networks — provides identity management solutions that improve security and operational efficiencies by integrating Linux, Unix and Mac systems with Microsoft Active Directory.

Citrix XenServer provides customers with a robust, scalable, feature-rich virtualization platform that is exceptionally powerful, yet incredibly easy to learn and use — creating a flexible, aggregated pool of computing resources by virtualizing application workloads across any number of servers in the datacenter.

XenServer software with Likewise Open is scheduled to be available in June 2009.

Release: Unitrends 4.1 (Data Recovery Software)

May 13, 2009 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Further expanding its OS, virtualization and application support, Unitrends today announced the latest version of its data recovery software with new support for the Windows Server 2008 family and the Novell OES family of products, including Microsoft Hyper-V and Xen virtualization platforms. Unitrends Release 4.1 also includes expanded multi-appliance management and monitoring capabilities as well as enhanced support for Network Attached Storage (NAS) systems.

The new Unitrends Release 4.1 backup and recovery software offers support for more than 40 operating systems and applications. This support now includes:

· Windows Server 2008 (including Hyper-V)

· Exchange 2007 support on Windows Server 2008

· SQL 2008

· Novell OES1 and OES2 (including Xen and Groupwise 8.0)

· MacOS X 10.5

· Linux 64-bit

· pSeries 6.1

The latest Unitrends release also delivers extensive context-sensitive help, increased appliance management and monitoring functionality, and new reporting flexibility. In addition, Unitrends Release 4.1 adds new appliance scalability features and supports NAS protection via CIFS and NFS protocols without a high-priced NDMP agent.

The new Unitrends Release 4.1, with enhanced operating system support, is available now for all Unitrends rapid-recovery appliances including the recently announced, 1U Recovery-610. There is no charge for the new version for existing Unitrends customers.

VKernel Scores $7 Million Series B Round

May 13, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VKernel Corporation, a provider of easy-to-use and quick-to-deploy virtual server management and optimization solutions, today announced it has closed a $7 million Series B round of funding. The latest round was led by Longworth Venture Partners and joined by prior investors Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Polaris Venture Partners. The new funding will be used to accelerate sales, marketing, and product development efforts to capitalize on the rapidly growing server virtualization management market.

The VKernel suite of next-generation virtual server management and optimization solutions is designed to solve real world data center challenges that are impacting IT departments. VKernel leverages the virtual appliance format to instantly deploy its products for enhancing performance, lowering operational and capital costs, optimizing virtual environments of all sizes, and delivering instant ROI. Currently, VKernel supports VMware ESX and plans to support Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XEN, and others. The company’s current products include:

Capacity Analyzer — proactively and predicatively monitor shared capacity resources to prevent current and future problems and optimize the environment
Chargeback — provide instant cost visibility and implement a chargeback processes
Modeler — quickly test and validate additions and changes to see the performance impact on the environment before going live
SearchMyVM — free “Google-like” search utility quickly finds information in virtual environments
CompareMyVM — a free community website tool allows visitors to exchange and compare virtual machine (VM) resource allocations with that of the community at large
SnapshotMyVM — free tool that completely automates the time-consuming process of documenting the virtual data center

Nilanjana Bhowmik, Partner at Longworth Venture Partners, and Doug McNary, the former CEO of Onaro (acquired by NetApp in 2008) and past executive vice president at Motive and Tivoli, have joined the VKernel Board of Directors.

HDS Comes Out With Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V

May 12, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation, a subsidiary of Hitachi and provider of Services Oriented Storage Solutions, today announced the availability of Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V, a new business continuity and disaster recovery solution for virtualized environments based on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V.The solution combines Microsoft Windows Server 2008 capabilities such as high availability through Microsoft Multipath I/O, server virtualization and clustering with the proven platform capabilities of Hitachi storage virtualization and system-based replication to create a cost effective, highly available and remotely replicated virtual server infrastructure for organizations looking to reduce business risk and associated downtime costs.

Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V extends Microsoft migration capabilities to remote sites, allowing midrange to enterprise customers to replicate and migrate virtual machines within virtualized environments either locally or across geographically dispersed sites. The solution also features breakthrough automated failover and data resynchronization, as well as simplified failback of virtual machines. Additionally, organizations looking to optimize business continuity can use the quick and live migration capabilities of Windows Server for local protection of virtual machines.

According to a recent report by Enterprise Strategy Group, an estimated 85 percent of organizations who suffer a major disaster and do not have a viable business continuity or disaster recovery solution in place are either out of business one year after the disaster or suffer huge financial losses. In addition to the many benefits that server and storage virtualization can provide separately such as consolidation, improved resource utilization, and improved performance, Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V can help organizations reduce downtime and improve data availability, which have important risk-reduction and cost savings implications.

Hitachi Storage Cluster for Microsoft Hyper-V is immediately available through Hitachi Data Systems Global Solution Services (GSS).

SoftLayer Debuts CloudLayer Computing (Buzzwords, Anyone?)

May 12, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Today SoftLayer Technologies launched CloudLayer Computing, part of its new CloudLayer line of services. CloudLayer Computing is built on the Citrix XenServer virtualization platform, and brings enterprises massive scalability and unique opportunities for their IT environments. In as few as five minutes, customers can have cloud-based computing instances running enterprise-grade and open source operating systems.

CloudLayer Computing instances can be seamlessly integrated with dedicated servers, automated services, and other CloudLayer services (including CloudLayer Storage and CloudLayer CDN) to create a fully unified computing solution. Monthly billing is based on hourly usage or a monthly rate with no long-term commitment, providing an exceptional degree of flexibility. Other advantages include:

Image Library—Capture, template, and store images for accelerated provisioning and management
Ease of Use—Full access and control via Customer Portal and API
Full Virtualization—Virtualized networking, security, storage, and management optimizes “beyond the box”

In addition to offering on-demand computing instances, CloudLayer Computing lets SoftLayer customers build their own cloud computing environments from the ground up. SoftLayer dedicated servers can be paired with leading cloud solutions such as the Citrix Cloud Center (Citrix C3) to customize and manage environments ideal for providing online applications and other Web-based services.