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StorMagic SvSAN Configuration Guides Now Also Available For Intel Server Platforms

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StorMagic, a developer of iSCSI SAN management software for virtualized server environments, today announced the availability of a validated configuration for StorMagic SvSAN and VMware Infrastructure 3 for ESX 3.5 software on the Intel Server Board S5520UR.

This server configuration was developed jointly by StorMagic and Intel engineers through the Intel Enabled Server Acceleration Alliance (Intel ESAA), a collaborative program that streamlines technical certification and validation of Intel-based server products and enables Intel OEMs and channel partners to quickly deliver reliable, high-quality server solutions to their customers.

With the StorMagic SvSAN, IT administrators can turn unused storage capacity into a virtual SAN, benefiting from high-end features of the VMware platform such as VMware VMotionT, and building a high-availability shared storage solution for less than US$2,000. The StorMagic SvSAN also works with VMware vCenter Server to enable administrators to quickly and easily configure and manage the entire virtual environment from a single management console.

VISI Launches Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) Product Based On VMware Infrastructure 3

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VISI, Minnesota’s largest cloud computing, data center services and managed hosting provider, is proud to announce the launch of its new Virtual Dedicated Server (VDS) product based on VMware’s industry-leading virtualization and management suite, VMware Infrastructure 3.

VISI’s VDS product was designed to provide a higher level of security, reliability and performance than you can get with traditional hosting products. VISI has leveraged VMware’s High Availability (HA) feature to maximize customer’s uptime by rebooting a virtual server on another physical host in the event of hardware failure.

VMware’s Infrastructure 3 allows VISI to offer customers greater control and flexibility by providing them their own operating system (OS) instance. Customers are able to select the amount of CPU, memory and storage they need. Data is stored on a SAN-based storage system for enterprise-class reliability.

As a member of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), VISI is well positioned to deliver knowledge and expertise to customers from initial pre-sales and consulting engagements to post sales support and implementation services. VISI has attained the following credentials as part of its VMware practice: VMware Sales Professional (VSP), VMware Technical Sales Professional (VTSP), and VMware Certified Professional (VCP).

3PAR Performs Well For Managed Health Care Associates

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3PAR announced today that Managed Health Care Associates has saved 50% on storage CAPEX by consolidating onto a single, highly virtualized 3PAR InServ F-Class Storage Server.

With 3PAR, MHA has doubled storage performance and improved VMware server performance while the hyper-efficient design of the InServ F-Class has also lowered MHA’s OPEX, reducing datacenter power consumption by 30% and storage administration time by 80% as compared to MHA’s previous storage environment.

By consolidating onto 3PAR, MHA has gained the scalability to meet anticipated growth without compromising performance. With the move to utility storage and more specifically the InServ F-Class, MHA has seen a 100% performance increase in storage performance and also a dramatic improvement in VMware performance. MHA’s virtual machines (VMs) — all of which leverage 3PAR Utility Storage — run faster with 3PAR than they did with MHA’s traditional storage arrays. This has allowed MHA to better serve the needs of their member pharmacies, which utilize MHA’s services to assist in the purchase of pharmaceuticals and medical supplies and for network access to major national and regional prescription drug plans.

Since deployment, the InServ F-Class has also saved MHA on OPEX by reducing the amount of storage administration time required by their current IT staff by approximately 80% — from several hours per day to only a few hours per month. Additional savings have come in the form of a 60K-BTU reduction in energy consumption over the past year as compared to MHA’s previous storage system — a 30% savings in cooling costs alone.

The InServ F-Class mid-range array has saved MHA a significant amount on storage footprint and up-front capacity costs — a savings of 50% over the purchase of storage from the other vendors they evaluated. A major reason for this savings is that, with 3PAR, MHA no longer has to overpurchase storage capacity because they are unable to predict their future storage needs. For example, when converting physical servers to virtual machines using VMware, MHA was previously forced to purchase more storage up front than was actually required for those VMs. The Thin Built In capabilities of the F-Class, combined with 3PAR Thin Provisioning software, have given MHA the ability to overallocate storage to their virtual servers, thus allowing MHA to reduce their of up-front capacity purchases. In addition, the high port connectivity of the InServ F-Class array has eliminated the need for MHA to invest in additional Fibre Channel switching equipment that would have been required with storage arrays purchased from another vendor.

MHA has also seen a reduction in storage footprint due to the native tiered-storage capabilities of the F-Class. MHA has configured its 3PAR array with both high-performance Fibre Channel drives for performance-intensive production workloads and more cost-efficient Nearline (SATA) drives for disaster recovery from remote 3PAR arrays. MHA’s lab management and testing environments as well as their VMware environment also take advantage of the more economical Nearline drives while other servers use the higher-performance Fibre Channel drives.

OpenNebula 1.4 Beta 1 Is Ready for Testing

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The OpenNebula team has announced the availability of OpenNebula 1.4 Beta1 Hourglass (1.3.80), the first preview of the next stable release of the OpenNebula Virtual Infrastructure Manager.

OpenNebula focuses on incorporating bleeding edge technologies and innovations in many areas of virtual infrastructure management and Cloud Computing.  OpenNebula 1.4 aims to be the swiss-army knife of Cloud Computing, letting you deploy any type of Cloud.  The OpenNebula team has been set now to bug fixing mode to provide a robust and stable OpenNebula 1.4.0 to your data centers.

Please note that OpenNebula 1.4 Beta 1 is not suitable for production settings. Its sole purpose is gathering feedback and testing new exciting features.

Highlights of OpenNebula 1.4 are:

  • EC2 Query API interface on top of OpenNebula, so you can transform your OpenNebula installation into a Public Cloud
  • A new OpenNebula Cloud API (OCA) to easily develop any Cloud interface or Cloud application (several Cloud interfaces, such a OGF OCCI-API, are planned)
  • Support for the VMware Hypervisor family
  • Multiple user support and access-right control for Virtual Machines and Virtual Networks
  • Advance contextualization support to integrate VM packs and implement multi-component services
  • Libvirt interface has been moved to the libvirt repository
  • New ElasticHosts drivers and support for multiple Amazon EC2 Clouds in Hybrid Cloud deployments
  • Easy integration within your data-center services and procedures with a new hook system
  • Many bug fixes, and scalability and performance improvements in several components of the OpenNebula system
  • A whole new set of documentation pages, guides and examples

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Altor Networks Integrates Altor VF 3.0 With Juniper Networks STRM Series Security Threat Response Managers

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Altor Networks today announced the integration of Altor VF 3.0 with Juniper Networks STRM Series Security Threat Response Managers to extend its powerful solution for correlation and threat management into virtualized server environments.

Altor VF 3.0 provides logs, events, and inter-virtual-machine traffic statistics from inside the virtualized server to the STRM Series via Syslog and Netflow. With this combined solution, customers can continue to use the STRM product features, work flow, and user interface they are already trained for, with the added benefit of including the virtualized server environment.

Altor VF 3.0 uses purpose-built, patent-pending technology, and integration with VMware VMsafe APIs to deliver defense-in-depth and address the unique security challenges of the virtualized environment. By deploying the integrated solution, enterprises can bring the benefits of the leading log and event management solution to the virtualized environment with minimal overhead and cost.

Release: Univa UniCloud 2.0

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Univa UD, a provider of software solutions for enabling dynamic IT environments, today announced UniCloud 2.0, a new release which includes unique capabilities for enabling private, public and hybrid cloud environments.

UniCloud 2.0 enables the formation of an elastic compute infrastructure or cloud environment that unifies provisioning, configuration and virtualization management with application configuration into a single RESTful web-services-based framework. By integrating this flexible, powerful framework with management of resources and policies, UniCloud 2.0 greatly simplifies the deployment and operation of both physical and virtual (i.e. ‘dual-mode’) compute infrastructures. As a result, users can maximize software license optimization, throughput and resource utilization.

The new release is groundbreaking in several respects:

  • First to simultaneously manage ‘dual-mode infrastructures’ that consist of both physical and virtual resource nodes, the most common use case in a cloud scenario
  • First to integrate provisioning, infrastructure configuration, application configuration, and physical and virtual resource management into a single, unified product

UniCloud 2.0 is the ideal cloud solution for a variety of real-world usage scenarios, such as high-throughput engineering organizations that are trying to optimize expensive software licenses or fair-share compute resources that require check-pointing. UniCloud is also a valuable product for small business HPC and ISV appliance manufacturers who need a cloud enablement component for their customers.

UniCloud 2.0 is the first cloud enablement product to operate and support simultaneous dual-mode infrastructure, instead of requiring users to choose between deploying physical or virtual compute nodes in a cloud environment. The built-in descriptive policy management ensures applications automatically use the best available mode by switching the hardware profile or live-migrating workload as required to achieve the service level objective. This means all workloads and users get the fastest possible throughput performance and the greatest possible utilization.

UniCloud 2.0 provides a single construct to manage complex infrastructures and workloads using service level objectives. Workload of any type is automatically managed through integration with powerful Sun Grid Engine software. Workload requiring expensive application licenses, or meeting other prescribed priorities, can be run immediately without having to restart current jobs – check-pointing and live-migration are fully supported, so all workload finishes within a predictable amount of time. Integrated policy management enables automation by harmonizing workload, resources and hardware profiles. Changing system behavior is as simple as publishing a policy – new actions instantly become available.

UniCloud 2.0 allows any typical cluster administrative functions to be supported in a cloud environment and also supports many capabilities that are not typical or possible with incumbent solutions such as basic check-pointing. UniCloud can dynamically add virtual or physical compute resources to the cluster infrastructure, automatically delivering real-time resource optimization based on available memory, licenses, power consumption, CPUs and even data locality. With UniCloud 2.0, users can place multiple applications safely on the same compute resource without worrying about swapping or application interference and can reduce power consumption significantly by shifting workload to less expensive data centers. “If you can think it, you can do it,” quips Tyreman.

Coverage of Top Cloud Use Cases

UniCloud 2.0 addresses these top use cases:

  • Cloud Clustering: Provision an entire cluster in a public cloud
  • Cloud Bursting: Add virtual compute nodes to internal clusters by provisioning nodes in a public cloud
  • Private Cloud Computing: Create an internal virtual cluster that uses policies to place jobs on the most appropriate infrastructure, live-migrate or checkpoint jobs, and add virtual compute nodes by cloudbursting

UniCloud 2.0 is available as a standalone product or in an Enterprise package. Both packages include Sun Grid Engine software; the Enterprise package also includes Oracle VM, Oracle Enterprise Linux and a version of Reliance, Univa’s proprietary infrastructure and application service governor.