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FrontRange Solutions Launches Enteo v6 SR2

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FrontRange Solutions, the developer of business software solutions, has announced the launch of its latest Client Lifecycle solution, Enteo v6 SR2, which helps organizations extend management of their IT systems to include secure zones and software virtualization based on VMware Thinapp.

While Demilitarized Zones (DMZs) have become a key feature of many IT organizations’ operations, managing the IT assets located in this secure area of the network has presented a number of problems. FrontRange Enteo Client Lifecycle Management solution eases the management of these vital systems without the need to change firewall or other security settings. This allows IT staff to maintain and update systems located in the DMZ far more quickly than was previously possible, ensuring a higher level of availability and productivity.

Enteo v6 SR2 also enables virtualized applications to be deployed and managed in the same way as physical operating systems, applications and patches. This enables organizations to more easily take advantage of the benefits of software virtualization, while also eliminating the need to separate configuration management systems to manage both physical and virtual assets.

Enteo v6 SR2 also introduces a wealth of additional new client management features, including support for Windows 2008 Server deployment, integration with the latest FrontRange ITSM solution and the ability to directly import IT asset data from the Centennial Discovery audit solution.

Enteo v6 SR2 is available with immediate effect.

Rackspace Acquires Cloud Providers Slicehost And Jungle Disk

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Rackspace Hosting today announced it has acquired privately owned VPS provider Slicehost, and storage provider Jungle Disk. (hat tip to TechCrunch)

The purchase price of the combined acquisitions is approximately $11.5 million payable in cash and stock, with the potential for up to $16.5 million in additional payouts of cash and stock based on certain performance criteria.

Rackspace is one of the largest providers of dedicated servers. Recently it has also moved into the virtualization world through partnerships with VMware and its own “cloud” division Mosso. Today’s announcement further shows that traditional hosting companies anticipate a growing importance of virtualization-based solutions.

Slicehost is one of the leading providers of Xen-based virtual servers. They cater mostly to developer crowds. In two years they have managed to build a customer base that runs more than 15.000 virtual servers.

Jungle Disk is a provider of storage software that works in conjunction with Amazon’s S3 storage platform. Rackspace announced that it will gradually move over new customers to its own storage systems, but will continue to support Amazon S3 as well.

Rackspace owns 8 datacenters in the United States, Hong Kong and the UK, and further has sales offices througout Europe and South Africa.

VMware Earnings Call: Solid Q3, Maritz Not Afraid Of Microsoft

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VMware reported better than expected financial results today and said it was standing by its forecast for the rest of the year, albeit at the lower end of its guidance.

Revenue for the third quarter was US$472 million, up 32 percent from the same period a year ago. That’s slower growth than VMware has reported in the past, but still ahead of the $463 million that financial analysts had been expecting, according to a poll by Thomson Reuters.

Net income was $83 million, or $0.21 per share, up from $65 million, or $0.18 per share, in the third quarter last year. That too was ahead of the analyst forecast, which called for earnings of $0.20 per share.

VMware maintained its forecast for 2008 revenue growth of 42 percent to 45 percent, but it cautioned that the economic uncertainty makes it difficult to predict demand for its products. It said there was “an increased likelihood that 2008 revenue will be at the lower end of the guidance range.”

VMware CEO Paul Maritz called the figures “solid” in the face of a “challenging economic environment.” During the call with financial analysts, Maritz also said VMware has not seen its sales drop off since Microsoft introduced Hyper-V into the virtualization market in June. Maritz is also confident that VMware’s product roadmap is a full 12 to 24 months ahead of Microsoft’s virtualization roadmap.

VMware and Patent #6397242 Go Back About 10 Years

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Nice catch by Andrew Dugdell: it’s about 10 years ago that Scott Devine, Edouard Bugnion and Mendel Rosenblum filed patent #6397242, “Virtualization system including a virtual machine monitor for a Computer with segmented Architecture”.

Filing date: Oct 26, 1998
Issue date: May 28, 2002
Inventors: Scott W. Devine, Edouard Bugnion, Mendel Rosenblum
Assignees: VMWare, Inc.
Primary Examiner: Majid Banankhah
Attorney: Jeffrey Slusher
Application number: 9/179,137

Abstract
In a computer that has hardware processor, and a memory, the invention provides a virtual machine monitor (VMM) and a virtual machine (VM) that has at least one virtual processor and is operatively connected to the VMM for running a sequence of VM instructions, which are either directly executable or non-directly executable. The VMM includes both a binary translation sub-system and a direct execution sub-system, as well as a sub-system that determines if VM instructions must be executed using binary translation, or if they can be executed using direct execution. Shadow descriptor tables in the VMM, corresponding to VM descriptor tables, segment tracking and memory tracing are used as factors in the decision of which execution mode to activate. The invention is particularly well-adapted for virtualizing computers in which the hardware processor has an Intel x86 architecture.

SolarWinds Debuts Free VM Monitoring Tool

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SolarWinds, provider of downloadable network management software has released a new free tool, SolarWinds VM Monitor, and an update to its flagship Orion Network Performance Monitor (NPM) that will allow IT professionals to take advantage of the key characteristics of SolarWinds’ solutions — enterprise-class performance combined with affordability, quick deployment and ease of use — to manage and monitor their virtual deployments.

SolarWinds VM Monitor delivers an intuitive, desktop dashboard that continuously monitors a VMware ESX server and the associated virtual machines by providing real-time monitoring of ESX health indicators.

The SolarWinds VM Monitor is free and available for download on the SolarWinds site. Orion NPM is available now and pricing starts at $2,475 (USD) for 100 monitored elements including first year maintenance. Orion NPM customers, currently under maintenance, get the 9.1 updates for free.

Isilon Systems’ Cluster Storage Systems Certified With VMware ESX 3.5

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Isilon Systems today announced that Isilon IQ X-Series clustered storage systems have been certified and integrated with VMware ESX 3.5. Isilon’s clustered storage systems create a high performance and highly scalable, single, shared pool of storage – delivering up to 20 Gigabytes per second of performance and 2.3 Petabytes of capacity in a single file system and single volume – to enable instant access to critical business information, while dramatically reducing the costs and complexity of managing storage growth. By combining Isilon clustered storage with VMware Infrastructure and VMware ESX 3.5, enterprises can eliminate traditional storage as a bottleneck and create a scale out, virtualized infrastructure – from servers to storage – which increases data center flexibility and utilization while reducing costs.

Using VMware ESX 3.5, enterprise businesses can streamline their IT infrastructure into single points of management for both server and storage, maximizing the utilization, flexibility and value of these resources. As a result of deploying these virtualized computing environments, the performance, ease of use and cost reduction requirements for enterprise storage increase and serve to considerably amplify the challenges of traditional SAN and NAS storage systems.

By combining VMware Infrastructure 3.5 with Isilon X-Series clustered storage systems, enterprise businesses can obtain the efficiency and high availability that VMware Infrastructure 3.5 offers in the storage environment and eliminate the barriers associated with traditional storage. This integration delivers a scale out, virtualized IT infrastructure with servers, network connections, and storage all consolidated into single points of management, significantly improving scalability, performance and ease of use across the entire data center, while dramatically reducing IT overhead.

Powered by OneFS, Isilon IQ X-Series delivers the industry’s first single file system that unifies and provides instant and ubiquitous access to the rapidly growing stores of file-based data, setting the standard for scale out file storage. OneFS is a unified operating system software layer that powers all of Isilon’s award-winning IQ family of clustered storage systems including the Isilon IQ 1920, 3000, 6000, 9000, 12000, Accelerator-x, and EX 6000, 9000 and 12000. Isilon also provides a robust suite of software applications including SnapshotIQ, SmartConnect, SmartQuotas, and SyncIQ that leverage OneFS and clustered storage, providing the highest levels of data protection and automated data management.