VMware ESX

Chelsio Communications’ 10GbE Adapters Get VMware ESX 3.5 Hypervisor Certification

July 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Chelsio Communications, provider of 10-Gigabit Ethernet (10GbE) adapters and ASIC solutions, today announced that its single- and dual-port 10GbE adapters are now certified for the VMware ESX hypervisor and have been added to the VMware ESX 3.5 Hardware Compatibility List.

With this certification, Chelsio offers VMware customers low-latency adapters for high-performance computing in virtualized environments. Chelsio’s adapters are powered by T3 ASIC technology, designed for virtualization at the silicon level and enabling line-rate performance for transmit and receive. Chelsio’s T3 architecture delivers a high volume of transactions per second., and its customers are able to use the same drivers for any host bus, any physical media, any offload protocol, and any number of ports and speeds of Ethernet. In addition to VMware virtualization support, Chelsio’s T3 technology provides support for RDMA, iSCSI, TOE, Traffic Management and packet classification. This enables Chelsio’s customers to future-proof their systems.

Xcedex Agrees To Resell VKernel Suite of Virtual Appliances

June 25, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VKernel today announced a partnership with Xcedex, a North American VMware premier partner. Under the agreement, Xcedex becomes a VKernel Gold Partner that will resell VKernel’s Suite of Virtual Appliances for analyzing and monitoring capacity, implementing chargeback, and gaining cost visibility in VMware ESX environments to its growing customer base.

The VKernel Virtual Appliance Suite for Systems Management is a set of “plug-and-play” virtual appliances designed to quickly address real world systems management challenges as organizations migrate to VMware virtual environments.

Xcedex’ X-Factor solution set enables its customers to quickly and cost-effectively take virtualization from concept to production. Based on IT lifecycle principles, X-Factor has been custom developed to accelerate virtualization deployments for Xcedex’ client and ensure the projects are successful. X-Factor consists of four phases (prove, plan, build, and maintain) that include custom services and vendor products.

“We have strategically aligned ourselves with industry innovators specializing in virtual infrastructure solutions. Working very closely with their sales and technical teams, we bring complete, robust solutions to our clients,” said Steve Audette, director of professional services at Xcedex. “VKernel’s products fit perfectly into our X-Factor solution set and enable our customers to experience the benefits of virtualization throughout the deployment lifecycle.”

[Source: Trading Markets]

Hyper9 Comes Out Of Stealth, Focuses On Letting You Find And Manage Virtual Machines

June 24, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Hyper9, formerly known as InovaWave, provider of search-based software for virtual environment management, today announced its first product, carrying the same name as its parent company. Hyper9 will be free to download in September.

Hyper9, a privately held company headquartered in Austin, Texas, leverages a “Google-like” search engine to access both real-time and historical data on everything from the guest operating system to the physical infrastructure, then presents that data via a “next-generation” user interface. As a result, Hyper9 claims this approach supports faster troubleshooting, comprehensive monitoring and detailed reporting on the performance, configuration and utilization of virtual environments.

“Just as virtualization is transforming traditional computing, Hyper9 is ready with a truly scalable, flexible and intuitive approach to managing these dynamic environments,” said Chris Ostertag, president and CEO of Hyper9, Inc. “Hyper9’s unique architecture ensures that it can adapt to and accommodate the continually changing nature of virtual environments even as they gravitate to more hybrid states.”

The initial Hyper9 virtual appliance is designed to work only with the VMware ESX environment. Later versions will work with additional hypervisors, the company announced.

VMware Seals New Partnerships with Original Design Manufacturers

June 3, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

At Computex Taipei 2008, VMware announced new relationships with original design manufacturers (ODMs) ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan, adding to VMware’s current relationship with Supermicro announced in February 2008.

The relationships aim to enable channel partners and system builders to make virtualization available to a broader range of customers by certifying a wide range of one-, two- and four-socket server systems as well as blade servers for the VMware virtualization platform. The vendors are certifying their server systems for the VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisor, with certified systems expected to be available later this year.

“Working with the ODM community, we are helping our channel partner and system builder ecosystem bring new options for offering the transformative business advantages of VMware virtualization to a broader range of customers. Organizations of all sizes will benefit from these new relationships, particularly small and medium businesses looking for cost-effective ways to get more value from their investments, better protect their systems and data, and improve staff productivity,” said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions at VMware.

VMware ESX and ESXi are certified on server systems from Supermicro and available immediately. VMware ESX and ESXi are expected to be certified and available on server systems from ASUS, Gigabyte, Inventec and Tyan by the end of the third quarter of 2008.

[Source: ChannelWeb]

Xiotech Introduces Virtual View, Aims To Simplify Storage Management in VMware Infrastructure Environments

May 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Xiotech today announced Virtual View, a new add-on for its ICON Manager user interface that aims to simplify storage monitoring, management and provisioning tasks in virtual environments. Virtual View enables administrators to manage storage in their VMware infrastructure environments from a single interface. Users can have a global view of the three storage layers (array, VMware ESX and virtual machine) from a single console and then automate configuration across all layers.

The Virtual View plug-in expands the Xiotech’s ICON Manager interface, enabling administrators to explore and map all VMware ESX hosts, storage relationships and properties in a unified view. As a result of Virtual View’s tight integration with the VMware APIs, it can automate the creation and expansion of virtual disks; logical unit number (LUN) assignments; and datastore creations for ESX systems and clusters.

You can watch a Flash demo of the capabilities of Virtual View here.

Xiotech’s development platform for storage management is based on Web services. As a result, Xiotech says it can add new management capabilities faster using industry-standard technology and more easily integrate storage services from other vendors.

Xiotech announced the latest version of ICON Manager in October 2007 with the release of its Magnitude 3D 4000 storage system. ICON Manager is built on a Web services platform and features capabilities as Server View, which simplifies storage provisioning for servers, and Intelligent Provisioning, which enables automatic storage provisioning without the risk of over-subscription.

eG Innovations Releases eG Enterprise Suite 4.1, Delivers Advanced Monitoring of VMware ESX 3i and Solaris Containers

May 28, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

eG Innovations announced the immediate availability of version 4.1 of its eG Enterprise Suite with support for monitoring of VMware ESX 3i and Solaris Containers. Later in the year, eG Enterprise plans to include monitoring of servers and desktops running the Citrix XenServer virtualization platform, and is also planning to support virtual environments from Microsoft, IBM, and others.

eG Innovations first announced its eG Monitor for VMware Infrastructures^T (eG VM Monitor^T^TM technology, the eG VM Monitor provides a comprehensive view of ) at VMworld 2007 in September 2007. eG VM Monitor is a monitoring solution that provides real-time “inside” and “outside” performance views of a virtual infrastructure.

With version 4.1, eG Enterprise supports both agent-based and agentless monitoring for VMware ESX 3, 3.5 and 3i servers. Complete inside and outside views of the VMs are available with either approach. The guest VMs being monitored can even be in different Microsoft Windows domains, and can be monitored without requiring agents on the guest VMs. Agentless monitoring is performed either from a Windows or a Linux system, and a single system can monitor several ESX servers running versions 3, 3.5, or 3i.

For Sun virtualized environments, an eG agent on a Solaris server can be configured to monitor all the zones on the server. Using the metrics collected, administrators can easily compare resource usage levels across zones on a server.

The eG Enterprise v4.1 is available immediately. Pricing is per ESX server monitored, regardless of the hardware capabilities (CPU, memory) of the ESX server, or the number of virtual machines or the virtual desktops it supports. Pricing for a 25 node VMware-based environment starts at $50,000.