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Stand By Your Woman: Mendel Rosenblum Leaves VMware Too

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Reporting on the recent removal of Diane Greene as president, CEO and board member of VMware, we wrote:

“We’re wondering how the VMware troops will react on the news, and what will happen with Mendel Rosenblum, Chief Scientist at VMware and Greene’s husband.”

Now IHT / The New York Times has received confirmation that Rosenblum, co-founder and top executive at the company as well as husband to Greene, has resigned from his position (hat tip to Tarry). He announced his resignation and return to Stanford as a full-time professor in a companywide message on Monday night.

The NY Times also offers some insight about the removal of Greene:

On July 7, she found out just how cold it had become. After Greene made a special presentation to VMware’s board, Tucci, who heads VMware’s parent company, EMC, pulled her aside, according to people familiar with the events, who asked for anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss internal company decisions.

Inviting Mendel Rosenblum, Greene’s husband and the co-founder of VMware, into the room, Tucci told Greene she was fired, effective immediately. And he said the board wanted Rosenblum, VMware’s chief scientist, to take her seat on the board. Rosenblum declined the offer.

The news comes after the surprising move of Richard Sarwal, former executive VP of research and development at VMware, who returned to Oracle after a brief stint at the company. Another executive to jump ship is Paul Chan, Vice President of Product Development at VMware until recently.

Who’s next?

We’ll update the post should new information come to light.

BlueStripe Software Introduces FactFinder

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BlueStripe Software, provider of Application Service Management (ASM) solutions for virtualized data center environments, today announced (PDF) the availability of its flagship product, FactFinder. FactFinder enables enterprises to stage, deploy, and manage business?critical applications in virtual data center environments with the same degree of confidence and control as traditional environments.

FactFinder delivers three critical elements of application service management for virtual environments:

• Application Discovery & Mapping – FactFinder offers automatic discovery and topology mapping of
the application connections, processes, and interdependencies allowing for unmatched visibility into
both physical and virtual environments.
• Application?level Health Measurement – By enabling simple drill down into performance indicators
of connections, usage, and application access times, FactFinder depicts the relative health of a
business’ critical applications.
• Automatic Triage of Application & Server Problems – FactFinder’s easy to understand performance
indicators highlight areas of concern, showing where to focus efforts to solve problems and optimize
the supporting IT environment.

FactFinder is the only application management solution that enables enterprises to confidently deploy business-critical applications in virtualized environments. This makes it easy for infrastructure groups to gain visibility into application management and performance in virtual data center environments, including service response times, virtual machine utilization, and cross?server dependencies.

Unlike OS?based or network?based monitoring products, FactFinder measures performance across multi?tier and service?oriented architecture applications regardless of whether they are distributed across clusters of ESX hypervisors or a mix of physical and virtual environments. This allows enterprises to measure the impact of P2V conversions on business success and make decisions based on intelligent, accurate, and timely information.

eG Innovations Adds XenServer and Sun LDoms Support to Its VM Monitor

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eG Innovations today announced that its eG VM Monitor now supports Citrix XenServer and Sun Microsystems’ Solaris Logical Domains (LDoms).

The enhancements are part of v4.2 of the company’s eG Enterprise Suite, which already supports VMware ESX and ESX 3i servers as well as Solaris Containers. The new software release also strengthens management of VMware environments. eG Enterprise agents can now be integrated directly within VMware’s Virtual Center. This greatly simplifies configuration of the monitoring for VMware server farms.

Also, the eG VM Monitor software now monitors the VMware Virtual Desktop Manager to provide an end-to-end view of a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployment. A new VM Search capability makes it easier to track the status and performance of virtual machines (VMs) as they move from one physical server to another.

The eG Enterprise Suite monitors Citrix XenServers and Sun LDoms in much the same way it monitors VMware ESX servers. eG Enterprise v4.2 offers agent-based and agentless monitoring of CitrixXen server v4.0 and 4.1. For agent-based monitoring, an eG agent on the control domain of a XenServer monitors the hypervisor and all its virtual machines (VMs).
Administrators can also choose to monitor their XenServers without agents, with either a Linux or a Windows system being used to host the remote data collector. Citrix XenMotion activity is tracked to determine when, how often, why and where VMs migrate to.

eG Enterprise v4.2 provides many other improvements and new features. These include: tracking and reporting uptime of individual VMs, ability to share customized views and reports among all or specific administrators, allowing administrators to select a console display “skin” (color) of their choice, providing selectable alert modes (e.g., email and SMS) to accommodate preferences of administrators who work in shifts; and custom monitoring of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server.

The eG Enterprise v4.2 will be available at the end of September. Pricing for any virtualization platform supported is per server monitored, regardless of the hardware capabilities (e.g., CPU, memory, socket) of the server, or the number of virtual machines or virtual desktops it supports. Pricing for a 25-node environment starts at $50,000.

Kingston Technology Highlights Importance of Memory in Performance of Microsoft Virtualization Technologies

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Kingston Technology Company emphasized the importance of memory in delivering the features and benefits offered by Microsoft virtualization technologies to improve computing environments ranging from the data center to desktop and beyond, during today’s Microsoft “Get Virtual Now” launch event in Bellevue, Wash.

“When deploying virtualization technologies, optimizing system memory is essential. Kingston offers multiple system options with our new 16GB server memory kits and 4GB notebook modules,” said Liesl Schwoebel, branded product memory marketing manager, Kingston. “With adequate memory installed, IT and business professionals can best reap the benefits offered by Microsoft’s portfolio of virtualization solutions, including improvements in computing efficiency, flexibility, continuity and agility.”
“As we fuel the next stages of IT innovation to make virtualization available to as many different types of users as possible, memory is fundamental in all of these scenarios,” said Zane Adam, senior director of integrated virtualization at Microsoft Corp. “Whether it’s virtualization to consolidate servers or to maximize desktop and notebook efficiency, in working with Kingston, Microsoft is confident that customers can take full advantage of the benefits of our full suite of virtualization offerings.”

Kingston memory modules are backed by a lifetime warranty and free 24/7 technical support. Kingston server memory is covered by the exclusive KingstonCare program, an additional layer of customer service that provides on-site spares, service reimbursement, cross-ship RMAs and all the tools necessary to minimize server downtime.

Xsigo Upgrades VP780 I/O Director

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Xsigo Systems (previous coverage), provider of data center I/O virtualization solutions, today announced the availability of an enhanced version of the company’s VP780 I/O Director. The enhanced product, called the VP780 x2, is designed to set new performance and ease-of-use standards for data center customers using virtual I/O technologies.

The new VP780 x2 offers all the benefits of its predecessor — greater data center agility, up to 50% less capital cost, and 70% fewer cables — now with a 100% increase in server connectivity speed. The VP780 x2 delivers 20Gbs of bandwidth to each server, making it the world’s fastest converged I/O fabric. The product also offers industry-first features that allow users to quickly monitor and manage their I/O topology with a single view that extends from the virtual machines to the physical switch ports.

The enhanced data center I/O management capabilities of the VP780 x2 include a single-screen view of virtual machines, virtual switches and I/O topologies. This view enables end-to-end visualization of resources extending from the virtual machine to a physical switch port. Enhanced performance monitoring now includes traffic statistics accessible through third party tools.

The faster server connection speed delivers greater throughput and increased VMotion performance for faster deployment of virtual resources.

Also new in the VP780 x2 are enhanced SAN and iSCSI boot capabilities that allow users to boot any server from any Fibre Channel or iSCSI LUN for fast re-purposing of server resources. Customers can now adapt to dynamic workloads, deploy resources on demand, and boost utilization by rapidly changing both a server’s I/O personality and its application workload, all within the Xsigo virtual I/O environment.
Xsigo is the only vendor to combine virtual I/O technology, a unified fabric, and a hardware-based platform to deliver data center-wide scalability and a single point of management for all I/O resources.

Xsigo launched its first virtual I/O product in September of 2007 specifically to address the I/O complexity and performance bottlenecks found in today’s data centers. Xsigo consolidates the I/O infrastructure and replaces physical network and storage interfaces (NICs and HBAs) with virtual resources that are remotely manageable from a single console. The Xsigo solution works with today’s existing infrastructure, and incorporates a modular design that is easily adapted to accommodate new networks, servers, and interconnect standards.

The beta version of the VP780 x2 is available immediately and sold directly through Xsigo Systems, Inc. and its qualified resellers.

Xsigo Systems

Radiant Logic Introduces “Context Server” at DEMO

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Radiant Logic today announced at the DEMO conference the first-ever “Context Server”. The RadiantOne Virtual Context Server (VCS) expands upon Radiant Logic’s identity virtualization platform. By extracting contextual information buried in application silos, RadiantOne VCS enables better integration of business processes.

RadiantOne VCS publishes information out of application silos by dynamically generating English sentences out of application metadata. Those sentences are organized into meaningful views acting as contextual links across business processes. This enables information to be searched, retrieved across application silos and updated in the right context.

RadiantOne VCS builds upon Radiant Logic’s identity virtualization platform, which includes the company’s flagship product RadiantOne Virtual Directory Server (VDS).