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Dell’s Latest Virtualization Play

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Dell has announced a series of products and updates around their virtualization offering. Here’s the takeaway:

  • New Dell PowerEdge full-height blade servers
  • Pre-installed integration and support of Microsoft Hyper-V for centralized management of virtualized environments
  • Advanced EqualLogic integration across multiple hypervisors
  • New services help customers simplify the design, deployment, security and management of virtualized environments: Infrastructure Consulting Services for Microsoft Hyper-V deployments, Site Recovery Manager (SRM) + Lifecycle Management for VMware environments

More information in the press release.

The most exciting news is that the company added to its EqualLogic product line a new, highly-scalable array – the PS5500E – and introduced advanced software features, including the EqualLogic Auto-Snapshot Manager/VMware edition to improve data protection for virtual server environments.

The PS5500E builds upon Dell’s EqualLogic family with 24 or 48 terabytes (TB) of raw capacity in a 4U array – more than doubling the density and tripling the capacity of its predecessor model, the PS5000E, with equivalent hard disk drives. With the PS5500E, an EqualLogic SAN can scale up to 576 TB under a single management interface. This new array can be combined in the same SAN group with the existing EqualLogic systems. It provides an ideal solution for consolidating common tiered business data and applications such as file services, moderate I/O email, databases and virtual server environments. It can also be deployed for capacity-intensive near-line storage tiers and for disaster recovery sites.

You may be interested in the fact that Dell has also set up a dedicated section on its website about Microsoft Hyper-V.

Dell

Sun Announces xVM Server, xVM Ops Center 2.0 — Public Release Coming Soon

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Sun Microsystems today announced the availability of Sun xVM Server software and Sun xVM Ops Center 2.0, key components in its strategy. Sun also announced the addition of comprehensive services and support for Sun xVM Server software and xVM Ops Center 2.0 to its virtualization suite of services . Additionally, Sun launched xVMserver.org, a new open source community, where developers can download the first source code bundle for Sun xVM Server software and contribute to the direction and development of the product.

Sun xVM Server software and xVM Ops Center 2.0 join Sun’s xVM product portfolio, which includes Sun xVM VirtualBox software for desktop virtualization and Sun Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) software for virtual desktop consolidation and management.

Sun offers standalone subscriptions for Sun xVM Server software and Sun xVM Ops Center, as well as additional options that offer the combined benefits of the two products. Commercial subscriptions are priced annually in four-socket increments and provide premium 24X7 support, access to the latest, up-to-the-minute patches and updates, as well as installation and training.

Available pricing options include:

  • Sun xVM Server software: Priced at $500/year per physical server.
  • Sun xVM Infrastructure Enterprise Subscription: Priced at $2000 per physical server per year, the enterprise subscription is designed to simplify the management of large scale virtualized environments and includes advanced features, such as management of live migration and of multiple network storage libraries.
  • Sun xVM Infrastructure Datacenter Subscription: Priced at $3000 per server per year, this option includes all the features in the Sun xVM Infrastructure Enterprise Subscription in addition to physical server monitoring, management and advanced software lifecycle management capabilities.
  • Sun xVM Ops Center: Available from $100 per managed server up to $350 a year, depending on customer selected features, along with a required $10,000 Satellite Server annual subscription for Sun xVM Ops Center.

Good news also for licensing, straight from ‘Virtual’ Steve Wilson’s blog:

“xVM Server is comprised of several open source components, and some have different source licenses, but the bulk of the code specific to xVM Server (including the all-new management UI) is being distributed through xvmserver.org under GPL v3.”

As for actual public availability:

Sun started early access testing with a limited number of customers last month. The company will now be increasing the number in the EA program and selected several additional customers already from those who have registered.  For those who’ve registered for the early access, more details on the program will be informed shortly.  Sun is aiming for a generally available binary EA release from xvmserver.org in about 30 days and a release candidate within 60 days.

Sun Microsystems

Release: VMware Studio 1.0

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VMware has (quitely) released the first version of VMware Studio.

VMware Studio 1.0 enables software developers and hardware appliance vendors to build customized virtual appliances that can be shipped in industry standard Open Virtualization Format (OVF).

The OVF specification was originally co-authored by Citrix and VMware, with contributions from Dell, HP, IBM and Microsoft. With this release, VMware beat Citrix to the punch.

VMware Studio is available as a free download here.

VMware

Ericom Adds VDI support for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers

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After announcing support for Oracle VM last May, Ericom has now added VDI support for with its Parallels Virtuozzo with its PowerTerm WebConnect software solution.

Parallels Virtuozzo Containers is an OS-level server virtualization technology that partitions the underlying operating system into multiple isolated containers, so that many workloads or virtual desktops can be run simultaneously on the same physical box.

Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect enables organizations to centrally manage and deploy virtual desktops based on Parallels Virtuozzo Containers from within the datacenter and hosting facilities – reducing the cost and complexity of traditional desktop PC management. As a comprehensive solution for virtualized desktop environments, Ericom’s PowerTerm WebConnect increases security and desktop manageability, enables business continuity implementations, and provides a superior, customizable desktop experience.

For PowerTerm WebConnect licensing, Ericom offers both perpetual licensing for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers on-premise implementations and subscription licensing for Parallels Virtuozzo Containers based hosting environments.

Ericom Software

Citrix To Jump On Cloud Wagon, But How?

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Tarry is hinting at a “big” announcement that Citrix will make on september 15th. He reveals nothing, apparently having signed an NDA, but hints that the news concerns his topic of focus of lately.

Tarry’s blog recently shifted from pure virtualization news to reports on virtualization and cloud computing. So our bet is that Citrix will be jumping on the “Cloud Wagon”, or should we say “Cloud Hype” somewhere next week. And why shouldn’t they?

(Update: one of our commenters suspects an acquisition of some sorts, and that’s not unlikely.)

Citrix has been in the business of remotely accessing applications and managing such environments since they started out, so it makes perfect sense for them to actually tebrand their whole product line from Citrix to Xen … and then to “XenCloud”.

Oh, and Intel obviously will announce a new chip, called the CloudCore, no more need to buy an octocore CPU, Intel will instead host them for you. 🙂

On the other hand: given next week’s VMWorld event, Citrix and Intel might also be announcing some real news to steal some of VMware’s thunder.

What’s your guess?

RingCube Unveils vDesk, (Another) Enterprise Desktop Virtualization Solution

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RingCube Technologies today announced vDesk, a high-performance enterprise desktop virtualization solution that delivers employees, contractors and customers anytime, anywhere access to a personalized desktop environment complete with applications, data and settings.

RingCube Technologies delivers enterprise desktop virtualization solutions that can be used to increase user productivity, lower desktop management costs, and eliminate the performance and resource overhead commonly found in legacy virtualization technologies. With the vDesk solution, RingCube now enables customers to rapidly deliver lightweight, high-performance virtual desktops to PCs and portable drives, directly from the network, and from virtualization desktop infrastructure (VDI) environments.

vDesk’s virtualization technology, with 23 virtualization patents pending, separates the user’s desktop environment, including applications, data, settings and system resources from the operating system and encapsulates it into a secure container. vDesk virtualizes components of the host Windows operating system without the need to carry a second operating system inside the virtual workspace. IT organizations use the vDesk Administration Server to create and deploy vDesk workspaces, assign security and isolation policies and provision updates to existing workspaces. vDesk provides users with a list of available workspace masters from which users can create their own personalized workspace instances.

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

RingCube Technologies