Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

virtualization

Bluepoint Solutions Debuts Virtual Backup and Recovery Services

by Leave a Comment

Bluepoint Solutions, Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and innovator in remote deposit capture (RDC), image-based item processing and electronic document management software technology for financial institutions, announced the availability of a cohesive Virtual Backup and Disaster Recovery Solution (Virtual BDR), designed to backup and virtualize multiple servers.

Bluepoint clients now have the capabilities of Virtual BDR to backup and restore information. According to a recent ICSA survey, U.S. businesses lose more than $12 billion per year because of data loss and 93 percent of companies that lost their data center for 10 days or more due to a disaster filed for bankruptcy within one year of the disaster. If, for any reason, a file is lost or corrupt, the system archives the information, recovering the most current version of data just prior to a data loss event.

In addition to its on-site backup efforts, the system offers off-site backup storage as well. The encrypted data is stored simultaneously at two off-site data centers, so in the event of a system disaster, natural or manmade, a backup server can be shipped to an institution within one day to get you back up and running without having to wait for lengthy server replacements and complicated server restores.

Bluepoint’s offerings are fully monitored and managed 24/7 by its Network Operations Center. Daily verification tests are performed to maintain the integrity of the data. Bluepoint encrypts data before it leaves a server with an encryption key that only the institution controls. The data is encrypted again for its transfer over the Internet. Files are stored in encrypted form on multiple servers in high-security facilities. The data is encrypted using 256-bit AES encryption technology, which cannot be read without the corresponding keys, ensuring the highest level of security for the data.

Vizioncore Updates Virtualization Management and Optimization Solutions

by Leave a Comment

Vizioncore today announced the general release of updates to two of its key products: vOptimizer Pro 2.2, Vizioncore’s storage and VM optimization tool, and vFoglight 5.2.6, an updated version of the company’s popular performance monitoring solution.

Vizioncore vOptimizer Pro 2.2 brings the ability to scan an organization’s VMware vCenter Server and ESX Hosts in order to determine the amount of over-allocated virtual storage that exists unnoticed. According to industry analysts, as much as 90% of storage in virtual infrastructure may be unused because of over allocations at the initial point of provisioning. vOptimizer Pro helps reclaim storage from across the data center to help increase utilization, reduce costs and improve performance.

Key features of the vOptimizer Pro 2.2 include:

  • Infrastructure Scanning – Locating and determining the amount of unused virtual storage across the virtual infrastructure enables the customer to see exactly how much storage is being wasted. Furthermore, the product can estimate the total potential savings gained from reclaiming wasted storage and generate a report for use within the business
  • Broader OS Support – vOptimizer Pro now includes full support for 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows 2008 giving customers the ability to reduce or defer storage acquisition costs across even more environments
  • Enhanced Browsing – Improved ability to select virtual environment targets to be scanned, making an easier task of space reclamation
  • VMware vSphere 4 Support – vOptimizer Pro 2.2 supports VMware’s latest virtual infrastructure

vFoglight is expanding in the areas of capacity planning to help optimize resource utilization and chargeback to help IT recover infrastructure costs.

The new features of vFoglight 5.2.6 include:

  • Capacity Planning – Determining the required infrastructure resources needed to support organizational growth and change is among the greatest challenges for VM administrators. To help combat this challenge, a new capacity planning module, included with vFoglight Pro, builds on the “Migration Modeler” to allow “What If ..?” scenarios for moving VMs to or from actual or hypothetical physical servers.
  • Measured Resource Utilization (Chargeback) – For customers who meter for the use of infrastructure, vFoglight includes Measured Resource Utilization (MRU). MRU is based on measured consumption of IT resources in the infrastructure and can, for instance, help IT understand which user, group or application is using physical servers or VMs.

With vFoglight, administrators can view their entire infrastructure through detailed architectural representations and use out-of-the-box alerts and expert advice to detect, diagnose and resolve problems affecting performance and availability. vFoglight also allows administrators to plan, manage and optimize infrastructure capacity for improved performance and better resource utilization. And for organizations that seek to recover costs for the use of infrastructure, vFoglight supports leading chargeback models to track infrastructure usage and costs. Finally, vFoglight integrates with existing tools and monitoring frameworks already in place helping organizations leverage existing investments.

Trial versions of vOptimizer Pro 2.2 and vFoglight (available in Standard or Pro editions) are available to download free here.

BlueBackUp Goes Virtual With Backup Product For ESX Environments

by Leave a Comment

BlueBackUp, a subsidiary of Oodrive Technologies, is enriching its focus on big company needs by offering an outsourced backup solution for virtual VMware ESX environments.

Thanks to its VMware ESX plug-in coupled with “Delta Block” technology, BlueBackUp is today proposing a complete protection solution for VMware environments. This offers hot backup possibilities in respect of critical applications (databases, etc.) and restoring an entire machine as well as a single file.

Main Features of the BlueBackUp Solution for Virtualised Environments

– Complete protection of the ESX environment: backup of the ESX server
and all its virtual machines in their entirety – applications, set-ups,
and so on and so forth.

– Hot backup of virtual machines: applications no longer have to be
stopped in order to start the backup. So there’s no activity slowdown.

– Restore granularity: possibility of restoring a virtual machine in its
entirety (OS, settings,…) or individual files (Exchange database,
SQL,…).

– Delta Block technology: only the blocks within the files that have been
altered since the last backup are sent in an encrypted and compressed
format, which seriously limits the bandwidth requirements.

– Automatic delocalisation of the backups (and images) to BlueBackUp’s
external storage servers.

Advantages for Companies Working with VMware:

– Fewer risks of data loss, thanks to the automatic delocalisation of
their virtual machines to top-security data centres.

– Less down time following a data loss, thanks to the restore procedures’
granularity.

– Fewer resources used for backup tasks, thanks to the Delta Block
technology, which prevents any deceleration of virtual environment
performance.

With this protection solution for ESX virtual servers, combined with its exclusive restore tools, BlueBackUp is reinforcing its determination to focus on big company needs and is clearly positioned as the specialist in terms of complex environmental backup.

Icomasoft Raises Series A Funding From ZKB

by Leave a Comment

Icomasoft AG today announced the securing of funding from Zurich Cantonal Bank (ZKB). The co-founders keep the majority of the company’s common stock shares. The funds are devoted to commercializing the company’s leading-edge software solutions that rapidly and efficiently address automation, management and compliance requirements of companies operating a virtual IT.

icomasoft’s software enables IT administrators to achieve a better control of their virtual IT infrastructure through a very high degree of automation and integration of 3rd party management software into their favorite virtual infrastructure platform.

Thanks to icomasoft’s unique approach of cross-platform integration and automation, customers can quickly restore transparency across their datacenter and experience an immediate and substantial reduction of their operating cost and an increased IT compliance through reduction of human errors in their daily routine processes.

icomasoft has already secured strong partnerships with global technology and market leaders, such as VMware, Network Appliance, Microsoft and Citrix and experiences an increasing demand for integrated automation and management solutions restoring transparency between virtual and physical IT environments.

Citrix Leads $10 Million Investment In Vyatta

by 1 Comment

Vyatta today announced it has completed its $10 million Series C round of financing led by Citrix Systems. The new funding round also includes existing investors, Comcast Interactive Capital, Panorama Capital, and ArrowPath Venture Partners. As part of the investment, Gordon Payne, senior vice president and general manager of the Delivery Systems Division at Citrix, has joined the Vyatta Board of Directors where he will assist the company in its next phase of development.

Today, Vyatta also announced that it has joined the Citrix Ready product verification program to create solutions for customers deploying cloud computing infrastructures.

Vyatta will use the funds for operating capital as the company scales its sales efforts and accelerates growth across multiple markets.

Vyatta runs on standard x86 hardware and can be virtualized with modern hypervisors, including the Citrix XenServer™ virtualization platform. Vyatta delivers a full set of networking features that allow customers to connect, protect, virtualize, and optimize their networks, improving performance, reducing costs, and increasing manageability and flexibility over proprietary networking solutions. Vyatta has been deployed by hundreds of customers world-wide in both virtual and non-virtual environments.