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FlashSoft Introduces Application Acceleration Solution for VMware Environments

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FlashSoft, the “Flash Virtualization Company”, today announced the immediate commercial availability of FlashSoft SE-V, the company’s solution for accelerating application performance on Windows Server in virtual machine environments based on VMware vSphere 5.

The new solution is based on FlashSoft SE, the company’s software that enables enterprise flash as a server-tier cache, and is already used today in numerous business-critical production environments.

Today FlashSoft brings the same performance benefits to applications running on virtual machines (VMs) based on the VMware ESXi software platform. The solution is available for free evaluation through a 30-day “Try Before You Buy” program.

FlashSoft SE-V is designed specifically for Windows Server instances running on VMs supported by the VMware ESXi platform. In performance tests, a standard OLTP application suite based on MS-SQL was accelerated by more than 3X — the same kind of performance acceleration that FlashSoft SE provides in non-virtual server environments.

FlashSoft SE-V for Windows Server/VMware is available for evaluation and purchase now. T

The new FlashSoft SE-V product is licensed for use in multiple Windows Server VMs running on a single VMware server. License cost is based on the number of virtual machines on the server and the SSD or PCIe flash card used to host the cache.

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.

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.

Veeam Debuts New Versions Of Reporter And Reporter Enterprise Products

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Veeam Software, award-winning provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today delivers new executive management reporting, integration with corporate CMDBs (change management databases), new change management capabilities, and numerous technical enhancements in version 3.5 of its Veeam Reporter and Veeam Reporter Enterprise products. Veeam Reporter is a favorite of virtualization consultants and systems integrators for documenting customer engagements. Veeam Reporter Enterprise is ideal for documenting large ESX and ESXi environments over time for capacity planning and chargeback.

New features in Reporter Enterprise 3.5 include:
  • Executive Management Reporting — documentation of the virtual environment looks better than ever, with new Visio diagram formats, new pre-defined reports, and a new ability to create and save custom report templates, including corporate logo and formatting.
  • CMDB Integration — provides integration of the VMware environment into common configuration management processes by exporting data into an existing centralized CMDB. Reporter Enterprise 3.5 provides a new PowerShell Extension to run scripts to automatically export Virtual Infrastructure data (both for the current state and earlier points in time) into a company’s centralized CMDB. This eliminates the manual work of     creating inventory spreadsheets, and keeps the central CMDB up-to-date automatically. In addition, running PowerShell scripts against the Reporter Enterprise server instead of vCenter allows users to offload script     processing activities from vCenter, providing for better availability of this critical Virtual Infrastructure element.
  • Change Management — because Veeam Reporter Enterprise gathers virtual infrastructure data periodically on a scheduled basis and stores it in a central Microsoft SQL database, administrators can see point-in-time views  or generate reports to analyze changes over time for configuration drift, security auditing and troubleshooting. In addition or instead of that, administrators can simply opt to receive an e-mail with all changes to the virtual infrastructure since the last data collection.

Veeam Reporter Enterprise 3.5 is available immediately, with North American pricing at $375 USD per socket.

Veeam Offers Free Version Of Monitor 3.0

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Veeam Software, a provider of systems management tools for VMware ESX Server environments, today announced general availability of a new free tool: Veeam Monitor Free Edition. This lightweight version of Veeam Monitor is designed to provide comprehensive real-time monitoring in ESX and ESXi environments, including VMware’s free version of ESXi.

Veeam Monitor Free Edition is built from the ground up specifically for the virtual world, and uses an agentless approach (VMware API) to monitor system health and performance on both VMware ESX and ESXi. Customers can view real-time resource usage data for any virtual infrastructure object or collection of objects, as well as known infrastructure events, all on a single screen.  This unified view of the virtual infrastructure improves administrator productivity vs. fragmented views of isolated hosts and guests.

Key features of Veeam Monitor Free Edition include:

  • Consolidated view with drill-down in VMs – find out at a glance which components of the VMware infrastructure are the largest resource consumers, drill down to an individual VM to see how much CPU and memory it is consuming, and even connect to the VMware Virtual Machine Console – all right from the Veeam Monitor user interface.
  • Correlation of event and performance data – known virtual infrastructure events, such as VMotion, snapshot creation and deletion, or backup activities, are shown directly on the performance graphs.
  • Advanced alerting and flexible alarms – set up to ten e-mail notifications or SNMP traps for important events such as a given number of running VMs is exceeded, VM heartbeat is lost, or a specific event is generated by VirtualCenter.
  • Scalable architecture – client/server architecture supports multi-admin access to performance data without affecting ESX server or VirtualCenter performance.
  • Ease of deployment – takes just minutes to install, configure and begin using.

Novell Offers Solution For Workload Management In The “Mixed IT Data Center”

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Novell today announced significant enhancements to its PlateSpin Workload Management solution. The new PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Migrate, PlateSpin Protect and PlateSpin Orchestrate enable customers to profile, migrate, protect and manage server workloads between physical and virtual infrastructures in heterogeneous IT environments. Through these new enhancements, PlateSpin Workload Management is the only solution on the market today to support 32- and 64-bit Windows and Linux servers, as well as all leading hypervisors including Citrix XenServer, Microsoft Hyper-V and Virtual Server, VMware ESX and ESXi and Xen integrated in SUSE Linux Enterprise Server.

As data centers increasingly deploy diverse hardware platforms, operating systems and virtualization technologies in heterogeneous environments, the artificial boundaries between physical and virtual machines are being erased by portable workloads – the combination of an operating system, application and data software independent from the underlying physical or virtual platform. PlateSpin Workload Management enables data center administrators to optimize the distribution of workloads to provide the best performance for users and applications across both physical and virtual machines. As a result, customers can transform their IT environment into a more efficient and resilient next-generation data center.

PlateSpin Workload Management has added key functionality that makes PlateSpin a critical component of the day-to-day operation of the next-generation data center. PlateSpin Recon, PlateSpin Migrate and PlateSpin Protect are available now. PlateSpin Orchestrate will be available in the first quarter of 2009.