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VirtualLogix VLX Adds Support for Intel-Based Mobile Internet Devices

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VirtualLogix (previous coverage) today announced that its VLX virtualization solution will be supporting the latest Intel Atom processor Z5XX series-based Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

Device makers using VLX on these MIDs can simplify hardware designs, reduce costs and enhance the end-user experience through improved quality of voice, multimedia services and stronger security capabilities. VirtualLogix VLX also offers complete power management support for virtualized environments, which reduces MIDs’ overall energy consumption.

The VLX hypervisor integrates transparently into a Windows or a Linux-based MID with no re-installation of the native operating system (OS) and no intrusion into the existing user environment. As a result, customers can use VLX’s flexible software architecture to securely separate critical applications while boosting the quality of service offerings. Additionally, by servicing the virtual appliances while the main application OS and associated hardware resources are not in use, VLX improves power consumption management.

The demand for next-generation devices is expanding. In a recent report, “Mobile Internet Device (MID) & Chip Market Opportunities,” Forward Concepts forecasted MID shipment growth from 305,000 units in 2008 to 39.6 million units in 2012.

Workspace Service Morphs Into Nimbus 2.0

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Grid is dead, and reinventing itself as Cloud. All kidding aside, the idea of providing a virtual machine instance as a service in the Grid rather than just CPU time with the appropriate environment and libraries to be used by different users isn’t new; it actually makes a lot of sense to provide e.g. a working virtual machine instance for a complex scientific application, which is a lot easier than having to document the correct setup for fellow researchers to implement.

The Workspace Service project part of Globus.org has just announced it’s rebranding and releasing the 2.0 version of what will now be known as Nimbus.

One of the core services of the Virtual Workspace project was orchestrating the deployment of VMs on remote resources as well as the release versioning. Today, Nimbus is a set of tools that together provide a “infrastructure-as-a-service” (IaaS) cloud computing solution targeted specifically towards scientific applications. Many non-scientific use cases are supported as well.

Nimbus allows a client to lease remote resources by deploying virtual machines (VMs) on those resources and configuring them to represent an environment desired by the user.

It was formerly known as the “Virtual Workspace Service” (VWS) but the “workspace service” is technically just one the components in the software collection.

Just as Eucalyptus, it is capable of managing clients that are compatible with the Amazon EC2 service.

Open Source Virtualization management platforms like Nimbus , Eucalyptus, OpenNebula and openQRM are catching on. This probably isn’t the last one we’ll learn about. The question is which one will survive eventually.

Demand Media Picks 3PAR for Scaling Utility Storage

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3PAR, provider of utility storage, announced today that Demand Media has chosen 3PAR Utility Storage to support its rapidly growing social media business. (see our previous coverage on 3PAR)

Demand Media uses its network of vertically-oriented web properties to connect content creators and large audiences with advertisers. To improve infrastructure agility, storage scalability, and capacity utilization over the data lifecycle, the social media company has implemented multiple 3PAR InServ Storage Servers in addition to 3PAR Thin Provisioning and 3PAR Dynamic Optimization software. Demand Media has also chosen to deploy an entire virtual datacenter based on the 3cV blueprint, which combines 3PAR Utility Storage with products from HP and VMware to create a complete utility computing environment.

Due to the rapid expansion of its business, Demand Media found that storage scalability and flexible, easy database and storage management were becoming critical requirements. To keep up with growth, Demand Media determined that it needed to enhance its server and storage infrastructure. The social media company promptly sought out a highly-virtualized server and storage platform that would enable greater flexibility and scalability than their previous infrastructure. They ultimately decided to implement 3PAR Utility Storage and a complete virtual datacenter based on the 3cV blueprint. “3cV” stands for the combination of the 3PAR InServ Storage Server, HP BladeSystem c-Class, and VMware Infrastructure.

To support their virtual datacenter, Demand Media chose to deploy the 3PAR InServ S800 Storage Server with 188 terabytes of storage and two 3PAR InServ E200 Storage Servers with 36 terabytes of storage. Demand Media’s 3PAR deployment also utilizes several 3PAR software products including 3PAR Thin Provisioning, 3PAR Dynamic Optimization, 3PAR Virtual Copy, and 3PAR System Reporter.

3PAR

GoGrid Takes Windows Server 2008 Into The Cloud

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GoGrid announced today the immediate availability of 32-bit and 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008 within its Cloud Computing infrastructure. Parent company ServePath is a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner, and launched Windows Server 2008 dedicated hosting in February of this year.

With this release, GoGrid becomes one of the first Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers to offer Windows Server 2008 “in the cloud.” GoGrid customers can now deploy Windows Server 2008 servers in just a few minutes for as little as 19 cents an hour.

Initial Windows Server 2008 offerings on GoGrid include both 32-bit and 64-bit preconfigured templates. GoGrid users select the desired operating system and then choose preconfigured templates in order to minimize time to deploy. Pre-configurations include:

  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with Internet Information Services 7.0 (IIS 7)
  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with IIS 7 and SQL Server 2005 Express Edition
  • Windows Server 2008 Standard with IIS 7, SQL Server 2005 Express Edition and ASP.NET

GoGrid continues to offer Cloud servers for Windows Server 2003 as well as various Linux distributions and will continue to expand GoGrid’s “Control in the Cloud” offerings in the future.

Microsoft Unveils New Licensing, Expanded Product Support Policies to Ease Path to Virtualization

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Microsoft just made a couple of noteworthy announcements.

Update: more background information on the Windows Virtualization Team blog.

Beginning Sept. 1, 2008, customers will be able to move any of 41 Microsoft server applications between servers within a server farm as often as necessary without paying additional licensing fees, and they can take advantage of expanded technical support.

As you probably already know, Microsoft also will begin a worldwide series of “Get Virtual Now” events this month that will showcase Microsoft virtualization products and partner solutions, reaching more than 250,000 IT professionals.

Microsoft is updating its software licensing terms for 41 server applications, including Microsoft SQL Server 2008 Enterprise edition, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Service Pack 1 Standard and Enterprise editions, Microsoft Dynamics CRM 4.0 Enterprise and Professional editions, Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, and Microsoft System Center products.

The company is waiving its previous 90-day reassignment rule, allowing customers to reassign licenses from one server to another within a server farm as frequently as needed. For many customers, the change will reduce the number of licenses they need to support their IT systems, increase agility, and simplify the tracking of application instances or processors because customers now can count licenses by server farm instead of by server.

Microsoft has also updated its technical support policy for 31 server applications so that customers can receive technical support when deploying those applications on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V, Microsoft Hyper-V Server or any other third-party validated virtualization platform. Now customers can get the same level of product support in a virtualized environment that they are accustomed to with non-virtual environments.

To enable this support policy, Microsoft launched the Server Virtualization Validation Program last June. The program is open to any software vendor to test and validate its virtualization software to run Windows Server 2008 and previous versions of Windows Server. We just reported that Cisco and VMware are joining the program.

iStor Introduces integraSuite Management Center

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iStor Networks today announced (PDF) that it has started shipping its new management interface, integraSuite/MC Management Center.

iStor’s storage virtualization technology eliminates the requirement for managing individual RAID groups and their LUN configurations. Instead, integraSuite presents a pool of storage that is easily carved up into individual customized volumes, reducing administrative, support, and other operational costs.
iStor’s virtualized storage supports multiple RAID levels across drives, allowing the storage Quality of Service level to be tailored to each individual application. integraSuite facilitates flexible storage configurations by managing integraStor’s storage virtualization engine which can fully utilize all drive capacity in a pool of mixed drive configurations. When new larger disk drives are added to a system with older, smaller capacity drives, the newer larger capacity can be fully utilized. It’s just as easy to grow volumes and migrate RAID levels on the fly during disk I/O with just a few mouse clicks.
integraSuite includes a Java-based Graphical User Interface (GUI), Command Line Interface (CLI), and Microsoft’s Virtual Disk Services (VDS) interface.