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VKernel Introduces New Optimization Pack

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VKernel Corporation has announced the new VKernel Optimization Pack to help organizations achieve maximum ROI from their virtualization projects.

VKernel’s new Optimization Pack includes three powerful applets, Wastefinder, Rightsizer and Inventory, that help users improve the efficiency of their virtual infrastructures. The new applets allow organizations to run more virtual machines (VMs) with the same hardware, maximize the utilization of infrastructure resources, reclaim terabytes of wasted storage, reduce VM sprawl and assure optimal VM performance.

A successful virtualization project balances proper resource allocations and utilizations with VM performance and cost per VM. With the Optimization Pack, VKernel enables organization to rapidly achieve their goals by providing a very affordable and simple-to-use toolset. Delivered as a virtual appliance, deployment is instant and users immediately begin solving their critical needs. The VKernel Optimization Pack includes three powerful management applets:

  • Wastefinder – quickly finds where resource capacity (CPU, memory, and storage) are being wasted in the virtual infrastructure. By identifying zombie VMs, expired snapshots, and other wasteful consumers, users can reclaim expensive capacity to optimize virtual environments and achieve a better, faster ROI.
  • VM Rightsizer – a simple tool for tuning your VMs with the right amount of resources (CPU, memory, and storage) to drive maximum VM densities without impacting performance. Rightsizer is unique in its ability to make recommendations and automatically implement changes to find improperly allocated resources and optimally configure VMs.
  • Inventory – automatically collects important information about all VMs in the virtual infrastructure and creates a detailed inventory report showing VM name, created by and when, resource allocations, and much more. The inventory is continually updated to match the dynamic environment and is searchable by different criteria to quickly find specific information.

VKernel currently supports VMware ESX and vSphere and plans to support Microsoft Hyper-V (later this year) as well as Citrix XEN Server. The company believes that a heterogeneous capacity management and optimization offering will be increasingly important as the enterprise virtual infrastructure becomes a mix of hypervisor platforms.

The VKernel Optimization Pack is currently available in a bundle with Capacity Analyzer 4.1 for $399 per CPU socket including the first year of maintenance and support. Subscription pricing is also offered at $179 annually per CPU socket including maintenance and support.

Trend Micro Expands Virtualization Security Portfolio

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Trend Micro is expanding its overall virtualization security portfolio with the introduction of a content security solution to protect VMware ESX/ESXi environments.

Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines is designed to secure VMware virtual machines, both active and dormant, comprehensively and efficiently. The product leverages the VMsafe APIs from VMware to offer layered protection through the use of dedicated scanning VMs coordinated with real-time agents within the VM.

A tough economy is driving companies globally to adopt more cost-effective measures and pursue efficiency, one of the main reasons why analysts expect the virtualization industry to hit over $7 billion over the next four years.

But while server virtualization increases efficiency in the data center, it also challenges the security of the IT environment: Existing content security solutions imported from the physical world typically leave security gaps when deployed in virtual environments. For example, dormant or offline virtual machines can get infected even while dormant, yet are unable to protect themselves with a virus scan agent and signature updates.

Similarly, resource-intensive security operations such as scheduled full system scans can significantly degrade the performance of the host and render the security ineffective, especially when initiated concurrently on multiple virtual machines.

Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines is part of Trend Micro Enterprise Security – a tightly integrated offering of content security products, services and solutions which is powered by the Trend Micro(TM) Smart Protection Network. Trend Micro Enterprise Security delivers immediate protection from emerging threats while greatly reducing the cost and complexity of security management.

Trend Micro Core Protection for Virtual Machines 1.0 will be available in August 2009 both as a standalone as well as part of the OSCE X Advanced Suite. The solution is also available as part of a new Virtualization Security suite that includes Trend Micro Deep Security, brought to the company from its acquisition of Third Brigade in April 2009. Core Protection for Virtual Machines can be deployed standalone or as a plug-in to OfficeScan Client/Server and managed through the OfficeScan console.

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.

Layer 7 Release SecureSpan Virtual Appliance For Cloud Governance

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Layer 7 Technologies today announced the availability of the Layer 7 SecureSpan Virtual Appliance for cloud governance. The Virtual Appliance offers all the features of the SecureSpan family of hardware appliances, including sophisticated runtime governance, agent-less SOA management and industry-leading XML security in a VMware or ESX-based soft appliance. The Layer 7 Virtual Appliance for cloud governance allows organizations to secure cloud-based interactions, monitor service level conformance and adapt to changing conditions and needs.

Traditionally, Layer 7 customers have deployed the SecureSpan Virtual Appliance as a budget-friendly alternative to hardware appliances. The SecureSpan Virtual Appliance for cloud governance incorporates the new Layer 7 Enterprise Service Manager (ESM), which is a lightweight method of centrally managing, tracking and measuring application services no matter where those services reside: in enterprise SOAs, as part of a Software-as-a-Service offering or in cloud (both public and private) initiatives. With the Virtual Appliance for cloud governance, Layer 7 customers can seamlessly reuse their existing, on-premise SOA governance solution for their cloud-based initiatives.

In addition to cloud governance, Layer 7 enables organizations to control, monitor and adapt application services in a variety of enterprise settings, including internal environments and between external domains (such as partners or branch offices). Only Layer 7’s highly automated and interoperable gateway solutions, available as hardware, software and virtual (VMware) appliances, are capable of holistically governing today’s complex and ever-changing ecosystem of application services, no matter where they reside.

BlueBackUp Goes Virtual With Backup Product For ESX Environments

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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.

Desktone Virtual-D Platform for DaaS Gets An Upgrade

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Desktone today announced significant new capabilities for its Desktone Virtual-D Platform. The enhancements enable service providers to more easily and cost-effectively scale their Desktone-powered desktops as a service (DaaS) offerings, while helping end-customers quickly benefit from virtual desktops.

Desktone’s Virtual-D Platform enables organizations to quickly realize the cost and flexibility benefits of virtual desktop computing without upfront CAPEX investments. Uniquely designed along two tiers (service provider and enterprise), it lets enterprises keep their data secure within their own network, and maintain ownership and control over their Windows OS images, applications and all relating licensing, while outsourcing the physical data center infrastructure powering their virtual desktops to service providers.

The new Virtual-D Platform capabilities enable Desktone partners to efficiently scale and operate their services at attractive price points. They include:

  • Multi-tenancy: Exposes all the previously-existing, rich multi-tenancy capabilities of the underlying platform, making it easier to create, manage and monitor multiple customers on the same shared infrastructure. It is designed to support tenant isolation across hosted and on-premises infrastructure, including environments with stringent security requirements.
  • Multi-data center: Enables service providers to leverage their global data center footprint to support widely distributed enterprise environments and deliver high availability/disaster recovery offerings. Enterprises benefit from improved user experiences over internally implemented VDI, since virtual desktops can be closer to users, and from reliable, continuous service.
  • Virtual-D Service Center: A single management web console for service operators to create, manage and monitor many customers on common network, storage, and virtualization infrastructure.
  • Improved hosting economics: Giving service providers the ability to choose the virtual desktop building block technologies best suited to their business is a fundamental tenet of the Desktone platform. Service providers now have the option to use a VMware ESX or ESXi environment, with or without Virtual Center, to lower their operational costs.

Enterprise customers can take advantage of the following enhancements to the Virtual-D Platform:

  • Rapid service on-boarding: Enterprise administrators can easily upload virtual desktop images to their service provider’s infrastructure to accelerate DaaS implementations and time-to-value.
  • Global language support: Multi-national organizations can more easily leverage the Desktone Virtual-D Portal—a self-service, browser-based tool that allows end-users to access and manage their hosted virtual desktops. The portal now includes support for twelve languages.
  • Delegated Administration: Roles and permissions can be assigned at different levels to desktop administration, helpdesk and management staff, and—at the end-customer’s sole discretion—back to the service provider. All desktop management and desktop access remains under the end-customer’s user authentication authority (e.g., Active Directory).

Desktone-powered DaaS solutions are available through select Desktone service provider partners.