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Lenovo’s Latest Servers Well Suited For Virtualization

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Lenovo today announced its latest line of servers, the ThinkServer TD200 and TD200x tower servers as well as the RD210 and RD220 rack servers. The new servers offer small to mid-sized businesses the latest in performance with several choices of Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors and vastly expanded memory and storage. These ThinkServers are also equipped for virtualization and several power saving features to help customers cut their energy usage without sacrificing performance.Equipped with the latest Intel Xeon 5500 Series processors, the new ThinkServers are up to three times faster than their predecessors. With high-speed DDR3 memory up to 128GB, the latest models offer more memory than previous Lenovo servers. These highly scalable, dual processor servers also offer increased storage capacity with up to 12 hard drive bays in the rack models and up to 16 in the tower models.

Lenovo’s new ThinkServers are virtualization-ready and are equipped with several time and cost saving features that help customers seamlessly transition to a virtual environment. The latest ThinkServers come with an onboard connector for an embedded hypervisor. With the expanded memory and storage capacity on the new models, customers can consolidate several legacy servers onto a single new ThinkServer to save on hardware costs and energy usage while boosting their return on investment. Lenovo supports a variety of virtualization solutions from Microsoft, Novell, VMWare and Red Hat.

The ThinkServer TD200, TD200x, RD210 and RD220 are the most energy efficient servers from Lenovo yet, featuring low wattage processor and memory options, and small form factor hard drives. Select models are compliant with Energy Star for Servers 1.0, finalized in May 2009, which provides a 30 percent reduction in power usage compared with other x86 servers that do not meet the standard. In addition, the ThinkServers’ power supplies are more than 92 percent efficient, meaning more energy is translated into usable power.

The new ThinkServers come with the Integrated Management Module (IMM), which provides complete, “always-on,” out-of-band server management capabilities via an easy-to-use Web interface. With IMM, users can remotely access and manage their ThinkServer from anywhere, anytime, even if the server has crashed or is turned off.

Select models come with IMM Premium, giving users full control of their ThinkServer (including the mouse, keyboard and video) from remote locations, as well as the ability to connect local drives remotely to their ThinkServer through virtual media.

Servers are a critical IT mechanism at the heart of many businesses. That’s why Lenovo’s server solution provides total support for both hardware and software to help customers without IT departments quickly set up, update and manage their servers.

In addition to its standard warranty, Lenovo offers ThinkServer customers a 90-day trial of ThinkPlus Priority Support services so customers have the complete support they need during the critical first days after their server purchase. This provides services such as next business day warranty service, 24×7 hardware and software phone support as well as priority call routing to advanced technicians. For customers who need on-site hardware installation and online training, Lenovo also offers the ThinkPlus Productivity service plan.

The RD210 and RD220 are available immediately, and TD200 and TD200x will be available starting July 2009. The ThinkServer RD210, RD220 and TD200x are available worldwide through business partners and Lenovo sales representatives. The TD200 is available through Lenovo sales representatives for special bid. Pricing for the RD210 starts at approximately $1,699 and $2,199 for the RD220. The TD200x starts at approximately $2,699.

Andreessen, Horowitz Back Cloud Computing Startup WebappVM

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A new cloud computing startup funded and advised by legendary entrepreneurs turned investors Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz plans to help enterprise companies deploy and manage applications in the cloud. Other webappVM team members have experience at Cisco Systems, Tellme, and Juniper Networks, according to the company’s web site.

WebappVM is the name of the Redwood City company, and they’re building a “self-monitoring application cloud” for web applications that will provide enterprise-style app management capabilities to public and private clouds.

The company is backed by Shasta Ventures and Sierra Ventures as well as Andreessen and Horowitz, who recently raised $300 million to fund early-stage investments.

webappVM was previously known as OSS-1701, and was founded in May 2008 by CEO Issac Roth and CTO Tobias Kunze Briseño. Roth most recently worked as director of product management at the Wily Computing business of Computer Associates, while Briseno was a senior development manager at Lycos Europe.

Roth recently demonstrated webappVM’s technology at Sun’s CommunityOne event, describing it as “a special kind of virtual machine” that allows developers to build an app on a local machine, upload it to the cloud (in this case Sun’s OpenCloud) and immediately begin running the application with built-in management tools.

(Via Data Center Knowledge)

Phoenix Technologies Announces $13.05 Million Registered Direct Common Stock Offering

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Phoenix Technologies has entered into definitive purchase agreements with selected new and existing institutional investors to sell 5,800,000 shares of its common stock, at a price of $2.25 per share in a registered direct offering. Federated Kaufmann Fund was the lead investor in the offering.

The per share purchase price represents an approximate 22 percent discount to the three day volume-weighted average price of Phoenix’s common stock. The company expects to receive gross proceeds from the offering of $13.05 million and net proceeds of approximately $12.0 million, after deducting placement agent’s fees and other offering expenses.Phoenix intends to use the net proceeds from this offering for general corporate purposes. The offering is expected to close on or about July 2, 2009, subject to customary closing conditions.

The shares of common stock are being offered by the company pursuant to its existing shelf registration statement, which as amended, was declared effective by the Securities and Exchange Commission on June 26, 2009. A prospectus supplement describing the terms of the offering will be filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which forms a part of the effective Registration Statement.

Needham & Company, LLC served as exclusive placement agent for the offering. The shares of common stock may be offered only by means of a prospectus.

Virsto Raises $7 Million For Virtual Storage Solutions

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Virsto Software, provider of storage solutions for virtual servers, announced today it has completed its Series A round of funding, raising $7 million. The round was led by August Capital and includes Canaan Partners.

Canaan Partners was also a seed investor in Virsto in 2008. Virsto will use the funds to launch its new storage solution for virtual servers. The company will also focus on building its customer base and engaging new partners. Maha Ibrahim, General Partner at Canaan, will remain on Virsto’s board of directors and Vivek Mehra, General Partner at August Capital, will join the board.

Virsto was founded in the fall of 2007 to address the growing need for cost-effective and efficient storage for virtualized data centers.

Virtualized data centers are transforming IT infrastructures by reducing costs, improving performance and increasing efficiency. Server virtualization platforms from VMware, Microsoft, Citrix, Oracle, Red Hat, and others are being rapidly adopted as the technology matures.

Most data storage systems in use today were designed before server virtualization came about. The older storage techniques and technologies used for physical servers are not optimal for virtual servers. While existing vendors have tweaked storage solutions to work better for virtual servers, the products are inadequate, expensive and complex. Later this year, Virsto will launch a new type of storage solution designed for the unique needs of virtual servers.

Release: PDH Virtual Patch Downloader 6.0

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PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced availability of Patch Downloader 6.0, a new freeware solution to simplify patch downloading for various VMware ESX versions. Patch Downloader is the fifth free virtualization utility to be offered by PHD Virtual as part of its longstanding commitment to the virtualization community.

Patch Downloader v6.0 eases the pain of downloading patches for various ESX versions from the VMware support site by automating the process for users that cannot use the VMware Update Manager. Now, rather than downloading each patch manually through a Java Download manager, VMware administrators can simply select the version of ESX from the Patch Downloader drop down menu, and select the file repository (including folder, drive map, SMB share, etc.) to download the patches to. The new freeware solution will list all of the available patches and information about the patches including severity of the problem it corrects, what the impact on VM/Host uptime is, and a description of the problem fixed.. Downloads of selected patches are performed with a simple click making it easy to keep the ESX patch repository up to date.

Patch Downloader joins PHD Virtual’s suite of other free VMware ESX utilities which include:

· VMNetBac 1.2.0 – VMNetBac allows customers to backup and restore the network configuration of a virtual machine. VMNetBac is a quick recovery tool to minimize the risk of losing network configurations when intrusive or mass-upgrade type tasks are performed.
· Virtual SAN 1.0.0 – This Virtual SAN appliance for VMware ESX 3 Server provides the benefits of shared VMFS storage without the cost of a SAN. It utilizes, otherwise unused, local storage in the ESX server to facilitate enterprise-level features such as vMotion, DRS and HA.
· SnapHunter 0.5.3 – SnapHunter is an ESX 3 Service Console utility which reports back on the Snapshot status of virtual machines from multiple ESX Servers.
· KS QuickConfig 1.3.0 – KS QuickConfig is a Windows GUI utility that reduces the time needed to deploy and configure VMware ESX 3 servers, and to eliminate inconsistencies that can arise with manual operations.

Also available on the PHD Virtual website is a full-featured trial download of the company’s award winning, scalable esXpress data recovery and data protection solution for virtual IT. esXpress v3.5 uniquely uses the virtual environment to backup itself without requiring any additional hardware or software, making it the most scalable and cost effective VMware backup solution on the market.