VMware Infrastructure 3

Kroll Ontrack Lets You Recover Data From VMware Systems

June 5, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Kroll Ontrack, a provider of data recovery and legal technologies products and services, today issued a news release claiming it is the first company able to perform data recovery services on VMware systems.

In essence, Kroll Ontrack conceived and developed capabilities specifically designed to recover folders and files on all types of virtual systems. This capability provides businesses with a viable resource when data loss occurs in these environments.

Specifically, Kroll Ontrack can successfully recover lost data on the following VMware systems:

* VMware Infrastructure 2 & 3 (ESX Server, VMFS)
* VMware Server – http://www.ontrackdatarecovery.com/server-recovery/
* VMware Workstation (all versions)

[Source: iTWire]

Fujitsu Siemens Now Shipping PRIMERGY BladeFrame With VMware Infrastructure 3

May 26, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Fujitsu Siemens Computers recently announced it will be shipping PRIMERGY BladeFrame (powered by Egenera) combined with VMware Infrastructure 3.

Here’s how the company explains the move:

“The virtualization boom has revolutionized data centers, accelerating the shift from fixed, unresponsive, locked-down server resources to dynamic data centers of the future, where server resources are allocated according to demand and are reconfigured on-the-fly to guarantee that they always provide the best-possible levels of availability.

Introducing the market leading data center software virtualization platform to the highly-versatile PRIMERGY BladeFrame line means that Fujitsu Siemens Computers and VMware are delivering the industry’s ultimate platform for data center virtualization, bar none.”

[Source: MySolutionInfo]

Dell Gets Down & Busy With Virtualization

May 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

As expected, Dell today announced its broadest lineup of dedicated virtualization solutions ever. More than a dozen new servers, tools, and services aim to simplify the deployment and management of virtualization in enterprises of any size.

“Virtualization is quickly moving beyond hypervisors and hardware consolidation,” said Rick Becker, vice president of software and solutions, Dell Product Group. “Enterprises are looking for a broad array of servers, storage and services designed specifically for virtualized environments. Having been a leader in the first wave of virtualization, today we are signaling our intent to lead the second.”

Dell comes out with updated on-line tools, new e-commerce capability and expanded factory integration. With the updated Virtualization Advisor tool, customers have more options for building validated configurations online for virtualization deployments before purchase.

Through Dell.com/VMwareNow, customers can now upgrade PowerEdge servers purchased with VMware ESXi 3.5 to full VMware Infrastructure 3 enterprise licensing in a single click. Dell will also offer in coming weeks factory integrated VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition across a broad range of PowerEdge servers, including the PowerEdge 2950, R900, 1950, 2900, M600 blade and M605 blade.

The PowerEdge R805 offers 2X the memory and I/O capacity of Dell’s previous generation 2 socket servers. With a choice of VMware ESXi 3.5 or Citrix XenServer Dell Express Edition integrated hypervisors, the PowerEdge R805 and R905 servers can deliver the optimal platform for virtualized environments.

Dell EqualLogic storage arrays offer new advanced SAN-aware integration with VMware Site Recovery Manager for data protection and disaster recovery for virtualized environments at no additional cost in management tools.

Dell and Egenera are making virtualization and data center automation a reality beyond the blade chassis. The Dell PAN system is built on PowerEdge 1950 and 2950 servers and Dell/EMC storage, with Citrix XenServer and factory integrated as a complete, turn-key solution that consolidates and virtualizes server compute-resources into an entire Processor Area Network to be managed like hard drives in a SAN. The Dell PAN system can deliver rapid provisioning and re-deployment “in minutes”.

Dell today announced the expansion of its virtualization services to include:

Virtualization Simplification Workshop – for customers looking to determine which options are the most suitable for their specific business needs today, their technical environment and to meet future growth.
New Virtualization Operational Assessment and Process Automation accelerates selection of the right virtualization technology for their needs and define processes and tools to automate the management of virtualized environments.
New Virtualization Healthcheck – reviews existing virtualized production environments to identify technology, process and people issues impeding virtualization scale out and provides an actionable, results oriented plan.
Expanded Virtualization Assessment – taking into account multi-vendor virtualization considerations, advanced storage options, as well as green IT data center energy efficiency improvements.
Dell PAN Accelerator Service – integrating a full Processing Area Network within the customer environment to help ensure production readiness.
Expanded Design and Implementation Services – which features the latest Virtualization technologies, in addition to best-of-breed disaster recovery tools and techniques.
ProSupport Remote Advisory Services – fast access to technical experts for consulting on virtualization implementations.

These offerings are available today from Dell Global Infrastructure Consulting Services.

NetWrix Aims To Simplify Management of Virtual Machine Environments

April 17, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

NetWrix Corporation, a provider of identity management, compliance and change management solutions for Active Directory and virtual machine environments, announced that it has broadened its scope in the IT change management solutions by offering two new products that simplify the ability to manage virtual machine environments while supporting both the VMware Infrastructure 3 and Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager platforms. Titled Change Reporter for VMware Infrastructure 3 and Change Reporter for Virtual Machine Manager, the new software products are designed to expand the capacity to audit, manage, monitor, analyze and report any changes made to virtual machine environments. The new products will become a part of the integrated NetWrix Change Management Suite.

“The decision to enter into the virtualization software market allows NetWrix to best meet the needs of its ever-expanding customer base,” said NetWrix President and CEO Michael Fimin. “We understand that change auditing is an important process for controlling the management of growing virtual machine environments and introducing the unified change auditing and change management processes will help to enhance the effectiveness of IT departments. Hundreds of customers already leverage our change management platform for Active Directory and we just applied the same proven technology to VI3 and VMM-based environments.”

Both products are available for free. In addition to the free version, NetWrix also offers a commercial version of these products that further expand the reporting capabilities. The upgraded version allows IT managers to monitor the activities of all personnel within the department and provides them with a detailed summary of all changes on a daily basis. This version records all administrative activity and e-mails daily reports to IT managers, detailing every change in virtual environment configuration, including containers, resource pools, and all other objects. Collected audit data is archived and can be stored for years. The archiving function allows organizations to analyze any policy violations, adhere to security best practices and ensure regulatory compliance.

[Source: press release]

Egenera BladeFrame Systems Now Come With VMware Virtualization

April 14, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

Egenera today announced the general availability of VMware virtualization on Egenera systems with full support from Egenera and its resellers. Under the companies’ original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement announced in 2007, customers can purchase VMware Infrastructure 3 with the Egenera BladeFrame system, a platform designed to support large-scale virtualized deployments of critical applications with high levels of availability and scalability.

The Egenera BladeFrame system combines diskless server blades with PAN Manager software, an infrastructure virtualization product that virtualizes data center infrastructure and delivers a highly available, flexible computing platform. Using VMware virtualization, customers can create and run virtual machines on the BladeFrame system to partition Egenera Processing Blade modules and run multiple OS’s and applications on a single blade.

“VMware and Egenera offer complementary technologies. We’re pleased that customers can now deploy VMware virtualization on the BladeFrame platform with the peace of mind that their investments are fully supported by Egenera,” said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions, VMware, Inc. “As our relationship grows, we see additional areas for collaboration in managing both physical and virtual assets. We hope to further extend the business value of VMware virtualization and continue providing joint solutions that enable customers to reduce operating expenses, improve business continuity, strengthen security and go green.”

Egenera recently inked an OEM deal with Dell. Dell has agreed to resell and ship Egenera’s Processing Area Network (PAN) Manager I/O virtualization software on its PowerEdge servers by June of this year.

[Source: Marketwire]