virtualization

Leostream Updates Connection Broker

July 16, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Leostream today announced new functionality has been added to its vendor-neutral connection broker that simplifies the management of virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI). Already the most effective technology of its kind for VDI deployments in heterogeneous environments, the Leostream Connection Broker 6.1 now also features enhanced policy and reporting capabilities, power control for physical machines, Web browser access to Citrix XenApp applications, and bulk delete, refresh and release actions for even easier IT administration.

The latest version closely follows the April release of the Leostream Connection Broker 6.0. Leostream’s goal has long been to anticipate market demand for virtualization solutions and continually build upon its already mature connection management technology to meet this demand. This is especially important for enterprises that need to handle the multi-vendor environments that invariably exist in larger-scale virtualization projects. As a result, the Leostream Connection Broker provides organizations with the capability to integrate existing technology easily and achieve the maximum ROI for end-user computing.

The Leostream Connection Broker, delivered as a virtual appliance, is the software management layer that ties desktop images in the data center to users’ thin client, laptop, desktop or Web interface. It allows enterprises to provide end-users with a virtual desktop experience equal or superior to traditional desktops. End-users can access their virtual desktop from any machine, regardless of location, due to the technology’s ability to direct users to their own virtual desktop image. IT managers can also maximize the virtualization of existing resources by easily integrating an array of clients, back-end systems and viewers. Additionally, the product integrates with existing data center infrastructure without changes, including authentication services and SSL VPN systems, and provides a rich set of policies for the exact implementation of business rules for users and machines.

Particular highlights of Leostream Connection Broker 6.1 include:

Policy Enhancements: Expanded flexibility of policies offers “granular customization” to suit an enterprise’s precise needs.
- Policies can now be applied to hard-assigned desktops, providing consistent policy application for all types of machine assignment.
- Policies now allow administrators to offer as many resources as desired to the end-user, but can limit the number of machines actually assigned to a set limit, improving control of license usage.
- Power control and release policies make it easier to reuse power and assignment options.
Enhanced Reporting: New reporting features have been added to give IT greater insight and control. A metrics report provides information on disk usage and load averages for all Connection Brokers in a cluster, with another report summarizing the setup of all policies.
Web Browser Access to Citrix XenApp: An extension of the Connection Broker’s current XenApp functionality, end-users can now launch Citrix XenApp desktops and applications via the Connection Broker Web browser.
Access and Power Control for Physical Machines: The Connection Broker can make Microsoft SMS server calls to power up physical machines. This Wake-on-LAN feature allows users the convenience of starting and accessing physical machines from remote locations, while providing enterprises with greater control over power use.
Bulk Actions for Improved IT Management: Bulk delete, refresh and release actions bring improved ease-of-use to IT administrators.

Google Loses Engineering Director To VMware

July 15, 2009 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

After nearly 5 years with the company, Engineering Director Mark Lucovsky has left Google for a role with VMware, TechCrunch has learned.

Before Google, Lucovsky worked at DEC and then Microsoft for 16 years, eventually gaining the title of “Distinguished Engineer.” He had been the principle architect on Windows NT, which would eventually evolve into Windows XP. Lucovsky was also the architect of Microsoft’s Hailstorm project to port older Microsoft products into .NET.

A famous anecdote recounted on TechCrunch:

But Lucovsky may be best known for the role he played in a complete and utter meltdown that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer once had. As the NT architect, Lucovsky was clearly pretty vital to Microsoft, so when he went in for a meeting with Ballmer in 2004 to let him know he was leaving, you can be sure the CEO was a bit on edge.

“Just tell me it’s not Google,” Ballmer reportedly said according to court documents (for a case surrounding another Google ex-Microsoft hire). When Lucovsky said it was Google, Ballmer allegedly picked up a chair and threw it across the room.

Windows Azure Cloud Computing Service: Release Date And Pricing Details

July 15, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Microsoft has shared details on how much it will charge companies that want to use its Windows Azure cloud computing service – which will compete with the likes of Amazon WS and Force.com – when it is released in final form later this Fall. Redmond announced a couple of plans, including one that charges purely on consumption and another that offers discounted rates for those that agree to a 6-month commitment.

The cloud operating system isn’t launching in final form until Microsoft’s upcoming Professional Developer Conference (November 2009), but an executive apparently had informed CNET that the pricing announcement would be made at this week’s Worldwide Partner Conference, which is taking place in New Orleans.

Microsoft said it will charge 12 cents per hour for computing, 15 cents per gigabyte for storage and 10 cents per 10,000 storage transactions. For network bandwidth, the software maker is charging between 10 cents and 15 cents per gigabyte. The discount plan comes in two forms and offers a 15 percent to 30 percent discount off the consumption charges. It requires a six-month commitment, with overage charges billed at the regular rates. After six months, the pricing reverts to the standard Azure rates.

Microsoft also announced pricing for its SQL Azure database, charging $9.99 for the basic Web edition, including up to a 1GB relational database and $99.99 for the Business Edition, which includes up to a 10GB database.

The software maker said it would promise 99.95 percent reliability for its compute and connectivity and 99.9 percent for role instance and storage. Ultimately, though, Ray Ozzie has said that trust will play a big role in which company businesses are willing to choose to host their applications.

Release: xkoto GRIDSCALE 5.1

July 15, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Xkoto today announced it is previewing the new release of GRIDSCALE 5.1, the latest edition of itsactive/active solution for mission-critical databases. General availability of the product is expected in Q3, 2009.

Currently in beta testing, GRIDSCALE 5.1 adds several features that improve the performance and compatibility of the industry’s first shared-nothing solution for commercial databases. Two key GRIDSCALE features in this release are native Microsoft SQL Server support and a new Cluster Lock Manager.

GRIDSCALE 5.1 features a new “driverless” configuration mode for SQL Server environments, eliminating the need to reconfigure database drivers. Implementing Microsoft SQL Server’s native communication protocol, GRIDSCALE delivers several benefits, including compatibility with most native SQL clients such as ADO, .NET, OLE DB, and others. Plus, IT professionals can now use GRIDSCALE to simultaneously manage multiple SQL Servers using existing, popular tools such as SQL Server Enterprise Manager.

GRIDSCALE’s patent-pending Cluster Lock Manager is an industry first, enabling reliable scaling of transaction-intensive workloads across independent database servers. Traditionally, relational databases have relied on distributed lock management solutions to coordinate transaction locking across disparate database servers.

These approaches have significant drawbacks, such as risk of a single point of failure, poor performance due to synchronous behavior, and significant management overhead. GRIDSCALE’s new Cluster Lock Manager operates completely transparent to an application to isolate and coordinate row-level transactions across database servers. As a result, applications can scale reliably across the pool of database servers managed by GRIDSCALE.

Novell Updates PlateSpin Migrate, Releases Version 8.1

July 15, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Novell today announced the addition of physical-to-virtual migration support for Sun’s Solaris 10 Operating System in the latest version of PlateSpin Migrate, the leading workload management product that enables data center managers to move workloads anywhere to anywhere: between physical, image, virtual and cloud environments.

PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 is a leading workload migration product offering support for Solaris Containers, giving customers the ability to migrate workloads from physical to virtual environments. The latest version of PlateSpin Migrate significantly expands the already broad list of platforms supported for physical to virtual migration, by adding support for the recently released SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 from Novell to the existing support for prior versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise. PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 also adds support for Windows2008 and Windows Vista. PlateSpin Migrate now offers the industry’s broadest support for operating systems, hypervisors and hardware platforms in the heterogeneous data center.

PlateSpin Migrate offers support for more configuration options for migrating business-critical workloads than any other solution on the market today. As customers increasingly adopt virtualization for production servers, IT managers need a more powerful and reliable migration tool that minimizes server downtime and maximizes the success of key data center initiatives – such as server consolidation and data center relocation.

PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 makes it easy to migrate workloads between physical servers, image archives and virtual hosts. PlateSpin Migrate also offers performance improvements for business-critical workload migrations, making increased use of block-based transfer technology which transfers only the portion of the file that has changed. This innovation limits the amount of downtime during the migration process, and improves migration performance, especially over slower and expensive WAN connections.

PlateSpin Migrate is an integral component of Novell’s PlateSpin Workload Management solutions, which also includes PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Orchestrate,PlateSpin Protect and PlateSpin Forge. PlateSpin Workload Management solutions enable customers to profile, migrate, manage and protect server workloads. Only PlateSpin Workload Management supports the Solaris OS, 32-and 64-bit Windows and Linux servers, as well as all leading hypervisors including VMware ESX and ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer, Virtual Iron, and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with integrated Xen. With PlateSpin Workload Management solutions, customers can consolidate and migrate servers across multiple data center locations, balance workloads between physical servers and virtual machines, and protect a larger number of servers with faster recovery using virtualization.

PlateSpin Migrate 8.1 is available later this month. The Windows/Linux version is priced at $289 for a workload license. PlateSpin Migrate for UNIX* is priced at $1,495 for a one-time license.

VMware Debuts vCenter AppSpeed, vCenter Chargeback and vCenter Lab Manager 4

July 13, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware today announced advancements in virtualization management with the general availability of two new products: VMware vCenter AppSpeed and VMware vCenter Chargeback. VMware also announced today a major release of VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4. These new products simplify and automate key IT processes such as application performance monitoring, chargeback, and management of dev/test environments to increase IT productivity in the datacenter – delivering more value to customers as they scale out their virtual environments.

Generally available today, VMware vCenter AppSpeed provides service-level reporting and proactive performance management for multi-tier applications running in virtual machines. AppSpeed gives IT administrators visibility into how application performance depends on the different tiers of virtual and physical infrastructure. Easy to install and non-intrusive, VMware vCenter AppSpeed discovers, monitors, and reports within minutes of installation/download, helping customers:

Increase application performance and uptime
Troubleshoot and resolve performance issues more quickly, saving hours of administrative time
Virtualize more machines at a faster rate

VMware vCenter AppSpeed is available for $1250 per processor.

Also generally available today, VMware vCenter Chargeback ensures accountability across the business by allocating and reporting on costs associated with the use of virtual infrastructure. With VMware vCenter Chargeback, multiple factors such as cost-based models and fixed costs can be mapped to datacenter resources and then applied across cost centers to ensure proper business alignment. VMware vCenter Chargeback helps customers:

Provide business units with a clear view into resources consumed and their associated costs – enabling “showback” of valuable information, even for organizations not yet ready to chargeback to the business
Automatically create detailed billing reports that can be submitted to business units within an organization
Transition the IT environment from a cost center to a value center

VMware vCenter Chargeback is available for $750 per processor.

VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4, first introduced in 2006 and now in its fourth generation, provides IT with the ability to create and manage an internal cloud for dev/test, providing higher service levels to users through self-service access to resources needed for development, test, staging and deployment of complex, multi-tier applications. With VMware vCenter Lab Manager, IT can give users on-demand, role-based access to a shared library of pre-configured multi-VM environments, eliminating the need for repetitive system setup and teardown, while enabling IT to maintain security and full administrative control.

The new features in VMware vCenter Lab Manager 4 include:

Unification with VMware Stage Manager, creating a single solution to encompass multiple use cases including streamlined application delivery from development to production; simplified release management; and better training, support and online demo environments.
Next-generation network fencing capabilities to better support teams working on multiple instances of extremely large-scale application environments
Support for both ESX and ESXi form factors to give IT administrators more deployment choices for internal cloud resources.

VMware vCenter Lab Manager helps IT reduce dev/test infrastructure costs and administrative overhead, while providing users with improved team collaboration, accelerated workflows, and faster time to market for new or updated applications. VMware vCenter Lab Manager is available for $1,495 per processor.