virtualization

Citrix Integrates Access Gateway 1.8 With XenDesktop

June 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Citrix has integrated its Access Gateway appliance, version 1.8 with its recently released XenDesktop virtual desktop solution. Citrix’ security solution will allow companies to deliver virtual desktops to users based on identity, location and security status.

Citrix said its SmartAccess technology, when applied to its VDI solution, will allow customers to deploy virtual desktops more quickly and more securely to users worldwide. Additionally, the gateway’s wizards have been extended to support XenDesktop. The configuration wizards now enable IS managers to automate common XenDesktop configuration tasks.

The 8.1 release of Citrix Access Gateway costs about $3500 and includes end user licenses for XenDesktop use.

[Source: ZDnet Blogs]

INX Buys VMware Virtualization Consulting Organization AccessFlow

June 10, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

INX yesterday announced that it has acquired the operations of AccessFlow, a consulting organization focused on delivering VMware-based virtualization solutions.

AccessFlow is an award winning VMware Premier & Gold Certified VAC Partner and is one of the first VMware partners experienced in VMware’s new Site Recovery Manager product, expected to be available later this year. The company currently has 30 employees of which 17 are solutions engineers.

The acquisition closed on June 6, 2008, and was structured as a purchase of the ongoing operations of AccessFlow by INX. INX expects the transaction to be accretive to per-share earnings for the 12-month period following the transaction.

VMware’s x86 Virtualization Benchmark Tool VMmark Upgraded To Version 1.1

June 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMmark, VMware‘s free tool that hardware vendors, virtualization software vendors and other organizations can use to measure the performance and scalability of applications running in virtualized environments, has just reached version 1.1.

You can download it here and/or check the release notes over here.

[Source: VMware Blogs]

Build Your Own Cloud!

June 6, 2008 by Kris Buytaert 2 Comments

Given enough hardware, you can now build your own Amazon Elastic Cloud or similar platform. And all in Open Source.

A group of developers from the Department of Computer Science at the University of California, Santa Barbara has recently released a tool that can make your personal Cloud dreams come true!

EUCALYPTUS – Elastic Utility Computing Architecture for Linking Your Programs To Useful Systems – is an open-source software infrastructure for implementing “cloud computing” on clusters. The current interface to EUCALYPTUS is compatible with Amazon’s EC2 interface, but the infrastructure is designed to support multiple client-side interfaces

Eucalyptus has been developed in the MAYHEM Lab within the Computer Science Department at the University of California, Santa Barbara, primarily as a tool for cloud-computing research. It is distributed as open source with a FreeBSD-style license that does not restrict its usage much. Eucalyptus 1.0 targets Linux systems that use Xen (versions 3.*) for virtualization.

Eucalyptus is based on the Rocks cluster management platform. In the future, the EUCALYPTUS team will offer a source release along with other methods of deployment.

Being API compliant with Amazon EC2 means you can reuse the tools you already wrote for Amazon and effectively build your own while not having to change your applications. EUCALYPTUS also opens the door for other organizations with spare CPU cycles to offer Virtual Machines instances at a competitive price.

Eucalyptus 1.0 was just released last month and the ISO iso available for download.

Virtual Bridges Upgrades Win4Lin Desktop, Releases Win4Solaris Desktop 5

June 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Virtual Bridges announced today the release of a major upgrade to its Win4Lin Desktop product and a specially priced edition for Ubuntu users. Version 5 of its desktop virtualization system features performance increases that it claims beat the likes of VMware Workstation and other competitors in the growing desktop virtualization market.

Win4Lin Desktop 5 is based on code that has been re-engineered since 2005, when the assets of the former company NeTraverse were acquired to form Win4Lin, now renamed Virtual Bridges. The new verison includes support for 64-bit Linux and its architecture capable of interfacing with KVM.

Virtual Bridges has created a special Win4Lin Desktop 5 Ubuntu Edition, which they are offering for $29.99.

These are the major Features of Win4Lin Desktop Products, according to the news release:

Runs virtually all Windows applications from Microsoft, Intuit, Adobe, and most others, including in-house developed applications
Compatible with the latest Linux desktops (Ubuntu, Fedora, Open SuSE, Mandriva, and more)
A new Win4Lin Console for easy installation, backup, and management of Windows sessions
Share files and documents between Windows and Linux applications
Seamless printing from Windows
Easy access to files on flash drives, memory sticks, and digital photo cameras from Windows
Run Windows as a “desktop-in-a-box”, full-screen, or as “floating applications”
No need to understand complex virtual machine technology – Win4Lin does all the work for you

Win4Lin Desktop is being offered to users in two editions, Win4Lin Desktop 5 Ubuntu Edition and Win4Lin Desktop 5 Pro Edition. It is a no-cost update for Win4Lin Pro 4.5 users and is available here.

The company has also released Win4Solaris Desktop 5, also in two editions; Win4Solaris Desktop 5 Home Edition and Win4Solaris Desktop 5 Pro Edition.

Virtualization Picking Up More Steam in Asia Pacific

June 6, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Research from Springboard had already estimated the virtualization software and services market in Asia Pacific to reach $ 1.35 billion with CAGR of 42 % by 2010, here’s another indication that Asia is poised to become the biggest growth market for virtualization in the future, particularly with financial institutions.

According to The Asian Banker, the Asia Pacific region is now adopting virtualization technology at a faster rate than the U.S. -14 percent of companies in Asia plan to implement virtualization in the next 12 months, compared with 12 percent of companies in America says Forrester.

According to Jim Lenox, VMware’s South Asia general manager, the motivation for adopting virtualization has varied significantly across Asia’s banking sector, with consolidation and cost savings as the “first-step” goal.

“After the organization achieves some experience running virtual machines, we generally see them expanding their usage of virtualization largely due to the agility and flexibility that comes with running applications inside of easy-to-create virtual machines.”

Virtualization is often cited as one of the solutions to improve banks’ disaster recovery capabilities, an issue that has come into the spotlight following recent trauma in China and Myanmar.