VMware virtualization

Terremark Debuts vCloud Express Service

September 7, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Terremark recently announced the addition of the vCloud Express service to its suite of VMware Virtualized offerings.

vCloud Express is a new class of service based on VMware’s powerful virtualization platform that allows software developers and other users to easily access computing resources in a pay-as-you-go model. vCloud Express will provide customers with flexible computing on demand, with the power and control to configure resources as needed. It uniquely offers users compatibility with their internal datacenters, as well as Terremark’s Enterprise Cloud offering, enabling users to move applications to the production environment of their choice.

Customers will be able to easily sign up for the service online with a credit card and immediately begin provisioning computing capacity using Terremark’s intuitive Web console. Integrated firewalls, load balancing and network management features allow users to easily customize their cloud environment to their specific needs. Users will also be able to access their cloud computing environments via the VMware vCloud™ API, enabling interoperability across internal and external clouds. A Terremark vCloud Express community website featuring expert blogs, support forums and product documentation will provide customers with an interactive platform to receive up-to-date information and insights from Terremark’s team of cloud computing experts.

With the addition of vCloud Express, Terremark is expanding its suite of industry-leading infrastructure-as-a-service solutions. These solutions will leverage VMware’s robust and advanced enterprise-class platform and Terremark’s top-tier, massively connected datacenter facilities to deliver high-performance cloud computing services to the developer market.

Terremark’s strategic move into the cloud computing market began with the June 2008 launch of the Enterprise Cloud, a highly reliable and secure platform with the power to dynamically provision computing resources for mission-critical applications. Designed to meet the high security and regulatory standards of large enterprises and Federal government agencies, the Enterprise Cloud leverages a full suite of managed security services and unique “burst” option to offer customers a highly secure and elastic platform to meet their IT infrastructure needs.

Terremark’s vCloud Express will initially be launched in a limited-availability beta program, with a full launch scheduled by the end of 2009.

VMware Introduces New Partner Programs

May 7, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

At VMware Partner Exchange 2008, VMware today announced new and enhanced strategic enhancements to its partner programs. The enhancements build on initiatives announced in February 2008 to enhance the VMware VIP Partner Program, helping VMware’s more than 13,000 partners around the world that resell VMware virtualization solutions “by accelerating partners’ expertise, profitability and opportunity in VMware virtualization.”

New program enhancements include:

Expansion of the VMware Authorized Consultant Program
A new VMware Alliance Affiliate Initiative to accelerate profitability through joint solution selling with VMware’s technology alliance partners
New programs designed to capitalize on the market opportunity of VMware virtualization

“These new benefits take the value proposition of VMware virtualization to new levels,” said Steve Houck, vice president of worldwide channels at VMware. “We continue to enable our business partners to build VMware virtualization practices that are profitable, offer customers advanced training for sophisticated VMware deployments, and deliver increased opportunity. VMware’s business partners are poised to lead the way for new and existing customers of all sizes in the rapidly growing virtualization market.”

As for the company’s training and education programs:

The enhanced VMware Authorized Consultant Program enables VMware to better offer its channel partners the resources necessary to build and expand their VMware services practices quickly. New features include access to important tools and resources, such as the VMware Service Acceleration kits—which help partners fine-tune their services offerings for chargeback, configuration management and FDA compliance—as well as technical training that helps partners develop robust services offerings. The program will also provide partners with access to the VMware Authorized Training Center (VATC) program in North America during the second half of 2008. This enables VMware VIP partners that meet certain criteria to become a VATC to offer additional value to customers by providing extensive training options.
VMware PartnerPath, the VMware partner training roadmap, has been further enhanced with a family of four new whiteboard training modules called SolutionTrack Whiteboarding. SolutionTrack Whiteboarding consists of flexible education options from instructor-led training classes to a selection of self-paced online courses. This training helps partners work with customers to develop a successful strategy for virtualizing their datacenters and desktops. For consultants, VMware is also introducing the Services Enablement Framework, a common and standard way of mapping services assets and tools to training and business development activities to improve partner engagement.
VMware will be launching the VMware Certified Design Expert (VCDX) program for VMware Infrastructure 3, which is an advanced certification program for VAC partners who are already VMware Certified Professionals (VCPs) and who want to take their VMware virtualization expertise to the most advanced level. This program is for architects who design VMware enterprise deployments. The program measures technical professionals’ abilities to assess their customers’ needs and teaches them to design VMware Infrastructure deployments for an enterprise datacenter as well as implement, test, document and present the design. This certification program provides the highest level of technical expertise in VMware virtualization.

VMware Releases Upgraded Virtual Disk Development Kit 1.0

April 15, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Recently, VMware quietly released version 1.0 of its Virtual Disk Development Kit, a collection of C libraries, code samples, utilities, and documentation to help you create or access VMware virtual disk storage.

The release notes tell us this enables a wide range of solutions, including:

Creation of virtual machine disk files to store backup of physical images.

Read access to virtual disk to enable off-line centralized scanning of virtual machines for anti-virus.

Write access to virtual disk to enable off-line centralized patching of virtual machines.

Read access to virtual disk to enable off-line software package analysis of virtual machines.

The new API supports managing two kinds of disks; Managed Disks (local virtual diskfiles) and Hosted Disk (virtual disk files on you ESX/VMFS systems). This means the API will allow you to access disks remotely and opens a low of new opportunities for companies making virus scanning software, backup, forensic, etc.

To obtain the software, navigate to the VMware Developer Center and under the heading SDKs and APIs, click Virtual Disk. For download you will need to provide your email address and registered password.

The relevant VMware Community can be found here.

[Source: Run-Virtual]