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Release: HyTrust Appliance Community Edition

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HyTrust recently announced the availability of HyTrust Appliance Community Edition, a free product that delivers a central point of control for management and visibility of virtualized environments. HyTrust Appliance Community Edition features the same functionality, features, and benefits as the company’s Enterprise Edition but is limited to three protected hypervisor hosts. HyTrust also announced that it has built and made available a new online community to support this strategic vision and provide a central repository for sharing information, gathering feedback and fostering interaction among community members.One of the key drivers behind Community Edition is to enable small and medium businesses to cost-effectively gain the same features and benefits for their virtualized environments as their counterparts in the largest enterprises.

In addition to serving the needs of the SMB market, HyTrust aims to build a community of professionals who are committed to growing the reach of cloud-based computing services and expanding the use of virtualization throughout their organizations. Community Edition enables large enterprises to quickly and easily evaluate HyTrust Appliance capabilities in their environments. Most importantly, HyTrust is now able to widely disseminate its product and gain valuable insight directly via Community feedback. This will lead to more rapid product development and innovation, allowing HyTrust to respond quickly to an already dynamic and rapidly changing marketplace.

HyTrust Appliance Community Edition is now available for download as a pre-built, VMware-compatible virtual appliance to members of HyTrust Community.

Springsource Snaps Up Web App Monitoring And Management Software Maker Hyperic

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Enterprise Java house Springsource today announced it has acquired substantially all of the assets of Hyperic, the open source leader in web application and infrastructure management (see our earlier coverage). With the acquisition, SpringSource offers a comprehensive product set for powering the entire Java application lifecycle, with lean and powerful solutions for building, running and managing enterprise applications. By accelerating and unifying the application lifecycle from developer to data center and bridging the divide between development and IT operations teams, SpringSource can meet all the needs of companies building and deploying business-critical Java applications.

San Francisco-based Hyperic, provides web application performance management software that is used by numerous Fortune 1000 entities, including many of the world’s largest SaaS and consumer web companies. Hyperic’s solutions monitor and manage the performance and availability of the entire application stack from hardware and operating systems to virtual machines, web servers, application servers, databases, and more — giving IT and web operations a unified view and control of the performance and health of their entire web infrastructure.

SpringSource has a successful track record incorporating open source technologies into its offerings, creating the industry’s most comprehensive and productive solution set for the entire Java application lifecycle while supporting and contributing to the related open source communities. With the acquisition, SpringSource solutions now cover the entire application lifecycle including:

  • Build
    SpringSource leads enterprise Java innovation with Spring, the de facto standard programming model for enterprise Java applications. More than half of the Fortune 500 power their Java applications with Spring, and about two thirds of all Java developers use Spring. More than 70 percent of enterprises cite improved productivity, faster project completion, improved portability and application quality as top reasons for using Spring. SpringSource is driving even higher levels of innovation with Groovy and Grails, a dynamic language web application stack offering productivity benefits rivaling Ruby on Rails, but on a proven and scalable Spring-powered Java platform.
  • Run
    SpringSource is at the forefront of rapid enterprise adoption of lightweight application server runtimes and contributes 95 percent of bug fixes to Apache Tomcat, the most popular application server with 68 percent usage across IT organizations. SpringSource tc Server is an enterprise version of Tomcat that provides developers with the lightweight server they want paired with the operational, management and diagnostic capabilities businesses need to deploy Tomcat widely across the enterprise. SpringSource is also ensuring enterprise Java runtimes are prepared to handle virtualized and cloud computing needs with SpringSource dm Server, the leading OSGi-based Java server for modular next-generation applications.
  • Manage
    Businesses require application management and monitoring capabilities that provide deep and transparent insight into application performance and service levels as requests flow through the web servers, application servers, databases, message queues and other application infrastructure deployed on physical, virtual, and cloud computing platforms. With the addition of Hyperic, SpringSource is uniquely positioned to address modern application requirements and provide the single source of insight behind the behavior and performance of every layer of an application. Thousands of companies worldwide already depend on Hyperic for their web application and infrastructure management as well as their IT service level commitments.

“This is the marriage of two companies that share a common vision for the future of enterprise solutions and the application lifecycle. SpringSource is the default choice for many developers and IT architects creating Java applications, and Hyperic is the default choice for many IT operations professionals that need to manage those applications,” said Javier Soltero, formerly CEO of Hyperic and now CTO of Management Products at SpringSource. “Managing Enterprise Java requires visibility up and down the stack and across a company’s network and data center, including virtualization and cloud computing environments. The divide that separates development from IT operations has just become a lot smaller.”

(Via CNET)

DMTF Announces Virtualization Management Forum Formation

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The Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF) today announced the formation of its Virtualization Management (VMAN) Forum, a group dedicated to promoting interoperability between products that support the VMAN standards. The forum will develop and conduct programs to determine specification conformance in the areas of system virtualization management, virtual system management, and the open virtualization format.

The VMAN Forum plans to develop a set of test tools for measuring conformance to the specifications included in DMTF’s VMAN Initiative. These tools will allow DMTF members to confirm the conformance level of their products that implement DMTF virtualization management standards. The forum also plans to host plugfests to help identify interoperability issues among various implementations and validate conformance testing procedures.

Twenty leading companies in the virtualization management industry are currently participating in the VMAN Forum. These companies include:

  • Broadcom
  • Cisco
  • Citrix Systems
  • Dell
  • Emulex
  • Fortisphere
  • Hewlett-Packard Company
  • Hitachi
  • IBM
  • Infosys Technologies Limited
  • Intel Corporation
  • Microsoft Corporation
  • NextIO
  • Novell
  • SAP AG
  • Solarflare Communications
  • Sun Microsystems
  • Symantec Corporation
  • VMware
  • WBEM Solutions

Membership in the VMAN Forum is open to all DMTF members.

Embedded below is our earlier video interview with DMTF President Winston Bumpus:

Neocleus Debuts Client Virtualization Solution Neosphere

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Neocleus last week introduced Neosphere, a desktop and laptop management platform and the first Neocleus product built upon Neocleus’ second generation, Type 1 client hypervisor. Neosphere centrally manages and controls multiple concurrent isolated operating system (OS) instances as virtual machines (VMs), which execute locally on a single laptop or desktop.

Neocleus will demonstrate Neosphere for the first time at the upcoming Citrix Synergy Conference, May 4 – 7 in Las Vegas, NV. The product will begin shipping to customers and partners this May.

The most prominent use cases Neosphere tackles include:

  • Side by side execution of two separate and isolated OS instances. One instance could be a 100 % secure locked-down operating environment containing all the corporate applications, data, network connections, and hardware configurations while the other OS could run an open image with applications that have a high intrusion threat such as music sharing software, games and social networking websites.
  • Operating two separate corporate images side by side on the same laptop or desktop; ideal for running two environments on separate, secure networks, managing application migration during mergers and acquisitions, and multi-project initiatives or environments with outsourced workers.
  • Running two versions of Microsoft Windows natively on the same machine to allow those legacy applications that have not yet been updated to Windows Vista or the upcoming Windows 7 to still be used while end users also leverage the benefits of the later operating environment in a separate VM.
  • Creating new efficiencies in desktop and laptop management by delivering a single “gold” image to a variety of different hardware platforms, thus dramatically reducing the amount of time necessary to prepare and test the corporate OS environment prior to delivering it to end users.
  • Controlling hardware components without ever touching the laptop or desktop by centrally virtualizing the hardware components of the desktop and laptop and allowing IT administrators to turn various hardware components of the endpoint device on and off on a per-VM basis.

Neosphere leverages the company’s second generation Type 1 client hypervisor to address these challenges. The product allows two fully functional virtual machines, or “spheres” to run simultaneously and natively on a single desktop or laptop. Each sphere is centrally controlled by IT policies and requires no incremental hardware in the data center. Spheres are distributed to PCs where they execute locally in 100% secure isolated VMs. Users seamlessly move between environments without any degradation in performance. The spheres have full access to the power of the underlying hardware, including native access to the RAM, CPU, hard disks, network cards, USB devices, touch screens, and other devices attached to the local desktop or laptop. Neosphere offers the broadest hardware support of any client-side virtualization product in the industry with future plans to support the Apple iMac and MacBook platforms.

The Neosphere product is designed to work in conjunction with existing systems and tools familiar to desktop administrators. There is tight integration with applications such as Microsoft Active Directory and SQL Server. The system is designed to work in conjunction with all OS patching and updating products as well including existing change and configuration management systems such as Microsoft SCCM, Symantec Altiris Client Management Suite, Tivoli, HP Radia, BigFix, Novell ZENworks, and others. In addition, Neosphere works in conjunction with existing application virtualization solutions such as Microsoft App-V, VMware ThinApp, and InstallFree.

RingCube Introdes vDesk Version 2.0

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RingCube recently announced vDesk version 2.0, an enterprise desktop virtualization solution that simplifies the creation, access and management of Windows desktops. With the release of vDesk 2.0, RingCube advances its virtualization architecture through its new Workspace Virtualization Engine (WVE) expanding the manageability, security, and supportability of its enterprise-class virtual desktop solution. With version 2.0, vDesk also extends its advantage in the areas of application support and ease of management as compared to application virtualization offerings while continuing to maintain a significant cost and performance advantage over client hypervisor-based solutions.

RingCube vDesk 2.0 delivers a Workspace Virtualization Engine (WVE) which provides a lightweight and complete virtual desktop that can join an enterprise domain, has an isolated network stack and supports applications such as endpoint security, databases, and PC management software that require drivers and security services. Below is a listing of key components of the Workspace Virtualization Engine (WVE):

  • Virtual Networking, called vDeskNet, allows the virtual workspace to separate and isolate network traffic from the host PC including VPN clients running within the virtual workspace.
  • Virtual User Management allows the virtual workspace to have a unique set of user accounts separate from the host PC. Also, vDesk users within the virtual workspace can add/join an Active Directory domain independent of the user authentication and authorization rights of the host PC.
  • Virtual Security Store provides a separate protected storage area within the virtual workspace where items like certificates are kept isolated from the host PC.
  • Virtual Windows Services allows greater process and application isolation from the host PC. Virtualized services within the virtual workspace include LSA (local security authority), Microsoft TCP/IP networking, and NTFS volumes. These virtualized services help to increase the number of kernel-mode applications that can be supported within the virtual workspace.
  • Generic Driver Support provides a virtualized framework for the installation of drivers within the virtual workspace which includes a virtualized Plug-n-Play service. The generic driver framework increases application support particularly when new drivers are required.

vDesk 2.0 delivers full workspace encryption through its integration of 3rd party encryption software which protects the information stored within the virtual workspace. Also, vDeskNet provides a virtual networking stack so all network traffic within the virtual workspace can be isolated from the host, protecting confidential information from spyware on the host PC. VPN clients and end-point security software can also be installed inside the virtual workspace for additional security protection of the virtual workspace.

vDesk 2.0 improves the manageability of the virtual workspace by allowing users within the vDesk virtual workspace to add or join an Active Directory domain. Further, vDesk 2.0 has the ability to consume and apply Group Policy Objects (GPO) within the virtual workspace itself independent of the host PC. Enterprise customers can leverage existing management tools with vDesk by running them outside or inside the virtual workspace. By co-existing with traditional PC life cycle management tools and processes, vDesk provides a seamless transition path from traditional desktop management to virtual workspace management.

The vDesk 2.0 client has a more streamlined interface making it easier for vDesk users to get access to their virtual workspace with less interaction required. Also, vDesk support of Windows Vista has gone from technology preview in the previous release to general availability.

vDesk 2.0 is available immediately through RingCube. Pricing starts at $200 per user.