VMware Infrastructure

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]

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.

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]

VMware Publishes An Official Guide For Creating VI Client Plugins

April 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware has shown a great deal of commitment by publishing an official (yet experimental) guide to creating VI Client plugins.

“With the release of VirtualCenter 2.5, VMware offers third-party developers and partners the ability to extend the VMware Infrastructure Client (VI Client) with their own product-specific menu selections or toolbar icons that provide access to external, Web-based functionality. These extensions, or VI Client Plug-ins, comprise the set of configuration files, URLs, icons, and Web-server-hosted resources that work together to display extended menu items, icons, and other user interface (UI) items in the VI Client and provide access to the external functionality.”

In related news, Andrew Kutz (who also posted his thoughts about the guide and how it relates his own unofficial guide) is publishing a book with O’Reilly on “Programming and Managing VMware Infrastructure“.