virtualisation

Xsigo Hooks Up With Dell

February 5, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Xsigo Systems, the I/O virtualization specialist, today announced that Dell has selected the company as a provider of I/O virtualization solutions — a critical technology necessary for optimizing data centers. In addition to reselling Xsigo’s virtual I/O solutions, the companies will work together on technology roadmaps and the development of reseller resources, allowing Dell to further expand its data center offerings.

As a result of this agreement, Dell will offer the Xsigo I/O Director as an option with its PowerEdge servers and storage solutions, creating a simple path to creating fully virtualized data centers. The combined Xsigo – Dell solution lets IT professionals manage I/O resources across multiple vendor platforms from a single console, instead of being restricted to a single vendor solution. In addition, the combined system eliminates the restriction of physical I/O ports, letting users deploy new I/O resources to servers on-demand.

Dell customers using Xsigo’s I/O virtualization products can reduce both the operational and capital costs associated with server I/O. Xsigo consolidates the I/O infrastructure and replaces physical network and storage interfaces (NICs and HBAs) with virtual resources that can be deployed on-the-fly.

This open standards-based solution, interoperable with servers and storage across most leading platforms, is designed to remove the constraints imposed by traditional I/O cards and cables that otherwise limit the flexibility to re-deploy assets. The result is a wire-once infrastructure where configuration changes are completed in minutes rather than days, are executed in software rather than hardware, and can be remotely managed. Eliminating the need to re-cable can help reduce operational costs and remove the risk of cabling errors that may cause unplanned downtime.

Included within the agreement is the full range of Xsigo products, including the VP780 I/O Director. The Xsigo offering complements Dell’s product families by enabling universal connectivity across all I/O types, which simplifies and accelerates the adoption of heterogeneous solutions such as Dell PowerVault, Dell/EMC and Dell EqualLogic storage. The Xsigo I/O Director provides a scalable I/O solution interoperable with most currently available Dell servers, including the Dell PowerEdge M-Series Blade Systems.

Pricing for the Xsigo Virtual I/O System begins at approximately $30,000, and is immediately available.

Here Comes Citrix XenDesktop 3

February 5, 2009 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Citrix Systems today announced Citrix XenDesktop 3, the newest release of its desktop virtualization solution. XenDesktop 3, a key component of the Citrix Delivery Center product family, incorporates several of the company’s new Citrix HDX technologies, giving virtual desktop users a richer “high-definition” experience with enhanced support for multimedia, audio and video.

XenDesktop 3 also dramatically improves scalability, hosting twice as many virtual desktops per server as previous versions. And with version 3, XenDesktop becomes the first product on the market to deliver Microsoft Windows desktops from a common set of centrally managed images that can be run either in the datacenter (hosted), or directly on a PC or thin client device (local). This new capability gives IT organizations far more flexibility, reducing desktop management costs by making efficient use of distributed processing power across both servers and end point devices.

XenDesktop 3 includes several enhancements that dramatically improve virtual machine density and efficiency in the datacenter, allowing customers to host up to twice as many hosted virtual desktops per server as previous versions. These new optimizations cut server acquisition costs in half and dramatically reduce ongoing management and power consumption costs, allowing significantly larger deployments than before at no additional cost.

With version 3, XenDesktop becomes the first solution on the market to deliver both hosted virtual desktops and local streamed desktops from a single image store, leveraging the same delivery infrastructure. Most virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) solutions on the market offer only hosted virtual desktops, in which each desktop runs inside a virtual machine in the datacenter.

Adding support for local streamed desktops lets XenDesktop administrators stream desktops from the same golden master images, and execute them locally on any network-connected endpoint capable of running a desktop operating system. This powerful combination adds significant flexibility and cost savings, allowing IT to centrally manage desktops for office workers and run them wherever it makes the most sense, leveraging the distributed processing power of both servers and endpoint devices.

XenDesktop 3 also includes a variety of new features to support simpler management, easier user personalization and enhanced security. Most significant among these new features is fully integrated user profile management, making it far easier for IT to provide a consistent, personalized experience for each unique user every time they log in. Version 3 also includes broad support for smart card security authentication systems which are widely adopted throughout government, financial services and healthcare organizations. XenDesktop not only enables this added level of security for gaining general access to the desktop environment, it also ensures that this information is seamlessly and transparently passed through to individual applications within each virtual desktop.

Citrix XenDesktop 3 will be generally available from authorized Citrix partners in February 2009, and from the Citrix website at http://www.citrix.com/xendesktop. Suggested retail pricing begins at $75 per concurrent user.

Release: Lanamark Suite 2009

February 3, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Lanamark today announced general availability of Lanamark Suite 2009. The new version includes support for monitoring Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX, supplements server information with power consumption, form factor, age and warranty metrics, and simplifies capacity planning with significant user experience and reporting automation enhancements.

Lanamark Suite 2009 now includes monitoring of Citrix XenServer and VMware ESX free of charge for all assessments commencing prior to March 31, 2009. Standard licensing per desktop or server workload per assessment still applies.

Pano Logic Raises Follow-Up Financing To The Tune Of $6 Million

February 3, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Pano Logic today announced it has closed an extension to its Series B round of $6 million led by Foundation Capital and Goldman Sachs. This funding brings the total Series B financing to $18 million, and completes a year of expansion for Pano Logic, which experienced quarter-over-quarter growth and has received extensive industry recognition since bringing its first product to market in late 2007.

Over the course of 2008, Pano Logic has significantly increased its install base and signed more than 150 partners including one of the leading distributors, Avnet. Additionally, the Pano Virtual Desktop Solution received a SearchServerVirtualization.com Product of the Year award, the red dot 2008, and Good Design 2008 product design awards. Pano Logic was also named a finalist for the 2008 Red Herring North America 100 Awards, which recognizes startups that will lead the next wave of disruption and innovation.

VMware Debuts Open Source Virtual Desktop Client

February 3, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware today announced the first open source client for virtual desktop infrastructure, VMware View Open Client.

VMware View enables IT organizations to safely host user desktops in the datacenter, while letting users access their personalized desktop environments from almost any device, at any time – all at a lower cost of ownership than traditional desktop environments. Now, VMware is providing VMware View Open Client for partners, enabling them to use VMware View source code to optimize their products to deliver rich, personalized virtual desktops to users. In addition, partners will be able to use the source code to help accelerate the development and delivery of solutions for enterprises to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops simply, securely and at substantially lower operating costs.

This announcement is another important step in VMware’s vClient Initiative to deliver universal clients – desktops that follow users to any end point while providing a rich personalized experienced that is secure, cost-effective and easy for IT to manage.

VMware View Open Client is available under the GNU Lesser General Public License version 2.1 (LGPL v 2.1) and is accessible from http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/. Some of the features included in this release support secure tunneling using SSL, two factor authentication with RSA SecurID, Novell SUSE Linux Enterprise Thin Client Add-On RPM package and a full command line interface. Support for the source code distribution is available through the VMware View Open Client community at: http://code.google.com/p/vmware-view-open-client/.

3Tera Introduces AppLogic 2.4 Release

February 3, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

3Tera has announced general availability of release 2.4 of the AppLogic cloud computing platform. The release includes commercial support for both 32- and 64-bit virtual appliances running the most popular datacenter operating systems Linux, Sun Solaris, Open Solaris and Microsoft Windows Server. Other new features include interface improvements, system dashboards, catalog application stacks in ready-to-run templates, an appliance kit for easy creation of new appliances and an architecture-aware monitoring system with API.

AppLogic 2.4 is available immediately both as a software license for in-house deployment of private cloud computing solutions and as a hosted cloud computing service – virtual private datacenters – within 3Tera’s network of partners.

3Tera’s cloud computing solutions are available worldwide through 3Tera’s network of datacenter partners, allowing users a choice of location and support level. Leveraging global resources is made intuitive through AppLogic’s visual interface and ability to make applications of any size portable between both private and public cloud resources in multiple locations.