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PHD Virtual Extends esXpress Support To VMware vSphere 4

July 23, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

PHD Virtual Technologies, provider of the esXpress data protection and recovery solution for virtual machines, today announced that esXpress has been extended to support VMware vSphere 4.

This new release of esXpress version 3.6 also includes significant enhancements for all versions of VMware’s ESX platform version 3.0.2 and above. An optimized deduplication engine dramatically increases backup speeds and fuels performance for file-level restores, as well as VMDK restores and data archival via a Windows Share.

esXpress, with new support for vSphere 4, performs backup and recovery using the virtual environment itself. By creating virtual backup appliances (VBAs) – small virtual machines – the solution can be deployed in minutes on VMware servers, and provides the most scalable environment for backing up virtual machines. New performance enhancements include:

Improved file level restore speeds are now up to four times faster
Data Restoration and Archival via Windows’ Shares are now up to four times faster
Improved PHDD deduplication image-level restore speeds up to twice as fast
Accelerated deduplication engine provides initial backups that are seeded at double the previous rates

esXpress continues to support up to 16 concurrent backup/restore streams per host and all backups can be self-restored without using esXpress or other proprietary virtual machine infrastructure. esXpress’ block level backups are de-duplicated source side, ensuring data is compressed and deduped before it every leaves the host. This ensures that network traffic is kept to a minimum even while backing up over a WAN link.

Release: Veeam nworks Management Pack for MSCOM 5.0

July 23, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Veeam Software, provider of systems management tools for VMware virtual datacenter environments, today released version 5.0 of its nworks Management Pack for Microsoft System Center Operations Manager and Smart Plug-in for HP Operations Manager.

The products allow customers to leverage their investments in Microsoft Operations Manager and HP Operations Manager to monitor and manage VMware vSphere virtual environments from within the enterprise management console already in place.

With version 5.0, Veeam has improved the operational aspects of the products for enhanced scalability and a lower total cost of ownership, all while remaining agentless on the ESX server. A new component called the nworks Management Center dramatically improves scalability, high availability and load balancing by managing multiple instances of the nworks Collector in large enterprise deployments. Expanded support for VMware vSphere and enterprise-class centralized administration ensure that these VMware Ready Optimized nworks solutions from Veeam are “future proofed” and optimized for the world’s largest enterprise deployments.

New features in version 5.0 include:

Full, native support for vSphere 4 – Preconfigured monitoring of new features in vSphere 4, including Distributed Power Management, Host Profiles and Virtual Applications (vApp).
New nworks Management Center – a new web-based administrative interface dramatically improves scalability, high availability and load balancing, and simplifies the deployment configuration and usability of multiple instances of the nworks MP and SPI throughout the enterprise.
High availability – the centralized license and configuration features of the new Management Center make it possible to create “hot standby” nworks Collectors. Any nworks Collector “heartbeat” failure automatically triggers redistribution of the failed Collector’s jobs to a standby Collector, assuring no lapse in monitoring availability.
Load balancing – in enterprises using multiple instances of the nworks Collectors, monitoring jobs are automatically assigned using the Balance feature, optimizing workload distribution and eliminating the need to configure individual Collectors.
License server – now a pool of licenses is shared across all enterprise instances of the nworks Collector, greatly simplifying deployment in large, dynamic environments.

The nworks MP and SPI from Veeam have both been qualified through the VMware Ready testing process and are certified as VMware Ready Optimized products. The nworks MP and SPI are VMware endorsed solutions for VMware management per the VMware Ready Management program, providing customer assurance that these Veeam products not only offer lower integration costs today, but also will support VMware infrastructure future directions.

The Veeam nworks MP and SPI 5.0 are both available immediately, with North American pricing remaining at $450 USD per socket for the MP and $690 USD per socket for the SPI.

Industry Moves: Patrick Malaperiman New VP and General Manager, EMEA For Univa

July 23, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Univa UD has named Patrick Malaperiman as its new Vice President and General Manager, EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

Malaperiman has over 15 years experience in technology strategy and sales for some of the most successful IT companies in existence, including VMware and Novell. As head of Univa’s operations in EMEA, Patrick Malaperiman will oversee strategic business and sales in these key regions, where Univa is experiencing significant increases in demand.

Before joining Univa, Malaperiman was VP EMEA at PlateSpin, which was sold in 2008 to Novell where Malaperiman stayed on as VP EMEA for Novell’s Systems & Resource Management (SRM) business unit. At PlateSpin, Malaperiman was the first EMEA employee and in 3.5 years grew the team to 35 people, a team that accounted for 40% of global revenue. At Novell, Malaperiman led their SRM business unit, which included Novell’s ZENworks systems management portfolio in addition to PlateSpin and Managed Objects.

Prior to PlateSpin, Malaperiman was one of the first 15 employees in EMEA at VMware where as Channel Director for Northern Europe he defined the overall channel strategy and was responsible for identifying, recruiting and driving revenue with distributors and resellers within the geography. In less than a year he established a committed enterprise channel delivering significant revenue for the fastest growing software company in IT history.

Prior to VMware, Malaperiman held senior-level channel and business development positions at Hewlett-Packard, Compaq, Digital Equipment Corp., and several other global technology companies.

VMware Global Partners Support Distributed Power Management (DPM), Part of vSphere 4

July 21, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

VMware today announced VMware global partners, including Dell, Fujitsu, HP, IBM and NEC have announced their support of using VMware Distributed Power Management (DPM). VMware DPM, part of the VMware vSphere 4 platform, lowers power consumption in the datacenter by aggregating unused capacity and powering off unused servers without disrupting service levels, helping customers slash energy consumption by as much as 20 percent.

VMware virtualization has received acclaim for enabling customers to reduce energy costs and consumption in certain cases by as much as 80 percent through server consolidation and dynamic migration of virtual machines across physical servers. VMware DPM provides up to 20 percent additional reduction in energy usage on top of what is possible with consolidation by automatically placing all virtual machines on the fewest number of physical servers and powering down the physical servers that are not necessary to guarantee service levels to applications. A typical use case would be powering down physical servers at night or on weekends when the application loads decrease; as application loads increase at the beginning of the working day, VMware DPM would power on servers and again redistribute the applications.

Devon IT Thin Client Models Now VMware View 3.1 Certified

July 21, 2009 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Devon IT has announced that its TC2, TC5, and SafeBook LVO thin client models are VMware View 3.1 Desktop Virtualization (VDI) certified.

This designation indicates the models have completed the VMware Hardware Certification Program testing criteria for use with VMware View 3.1 and are now listed on the VMware Hardware Compatibility Guide. The VMware Hardware Certification Program enables VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP) program members to provide mutual customers with jointly supported hardware solutions.

Passing the extensive certification testing helps ensure that Devon IT is compatible with VMware technology and ready for deployment in customer environments.

The VMware Ready program is a VMware co-branding program for qualified partner products and is a benefit of the VMware TAP program. With more than 1,000 members worldwide, the VMware TAP program works with best-of-breed technology partners to provide them a comprehensive set of VMware technical and marketing services, support, tools and expertise to deliver enhanced value to joint customers.

Trend Micro Expands Virtualization Security Portfolio

July 16, 2009 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

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.