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StorMagic Gets SM Series Certified on VMware ESX 3.5 and ESX 3i

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StorMagic, a developer of iSCSI SAN management software, today announced that the StorMagic SM Series has been certified with VMware ESX 3.5 and ESX 3i. The StorMagic SM Series is now listed on the VMware Storage / SAN Compatibility Guide, allowing joint customers to benefit from the latest VMware server virtualization features while being able to easily manage shared storage in their existing virtualized environments.

The StorMagic SM Series software brings enterprise-level iSCSI SAN capabilities to customer environments without the high price tag, allowing organizations with limited IT resources and growing data storage demands to store, share, manage and protect data through a single, easy-to-use interface. Mission-critical storage functions such as data migration, consolidation, and management are now accessible at a lower cost without compromising on performance and without the need for specialized storage skills.

This certification is part of the VMware Storage Certification Program, which is available to VMware Technology Alliance Partners. StorMagic is a Select VMware Technology Alliance Partner (TAP).

VKernel Ships Capacity Analyzer 2.0 Virtual Appliance

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VKernel Corporation announced today the company is now shipping its Capacity Analyzer 2.0 virtual appliance.  New features and functionality include Disk I/O statistics, a more intuitive user interface, and enhanced scalability to ensure the optimal performance of the most demanding VMware ESX environments.

Capacity Analyzer continuously and proactively monitors shared CPU, memory, and storage resource utilization trends in VMware ESX environments across hosts, clusters, and resource pools.  By quickly identifying current and future performance-impacting capacity bottlenecks, Capacity Analyzer provides the critical resource utilization data to properly plan and grow the virtual server infrastructure, ensures optimal service level agreements (SLAs), and lowers the cost per virtual machine to realize a faster return on investment (ROI).

VKernel’s patent-pending Capacity Analyzer technology provides users with a unique single-screen dashboard view of their complete VMware environment and dynamically updates as additions and changes are made.  From the Capacity Analyzer dashboard, users have the advanced analytics to monitor and manage shared resource capacity, allocation, and utilization.

The VKernel Capacity Analyzer virtual appliance is currently available with pricing starting at $199 per CPU socket for the standard edition. There’s also a free, full-featured 14-day trial version available from the VKernel website.

VKernel

Altor Networks Introduces Virtual Firewall, Integrates With ArcSight, Juniper, Mazu and VMware

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Altor Networks today announced the availability of the Altor VF (Virtual Firewall), and announced its certified integration with products from ArcSight, Juniper Networks, Mazu Networks and VMware.

The Altor VF is a software security appliance that runs in a virtualized environment and enforces security policy on a per virtual machine (VM) basis. Unlike existing firewalls designed for physical networks, the Altor VF virtual firewall can secure Live Migration – a technology designed to trigger automatic movement of VMs across physical servers, but capable of inadvertently moving an application to a less trusted network. The Altor VF was purpose-built for the virtual environment – enabling tighter security policy and greater ease-of-use than existing virtual firewalls adapted from their physical firewall counterparts.

The Altor VF extends the functionality of traditional firewalls. Traditional firewalls not only provide security to physical networks, they also provide visibility to the traffic running through them and export some of that data to 3rd party products to aggregate and correlate data across the network. However, traditional firewalls cannot see into the virtual environment. The Altor VF extends visibility into the virtual environment – providing NetFlow statistics, Sys Log, and other network statistics on a per application basis and exporting that data to 3rd party products such as those from ArcSight and Mazu Networks (Please see separate releases for details).

Similarly, in existing physical networks, some companies also employ an Intrusion Detection & Prevention System (IDS/IPS) to further secure their physical networks. Through its partnership with Juniper Networks, the Altor VF enables Juniper IDP appliances to extend their protection into the virtual environment (Please see separate releases for details).

The Altor VF brings to market a number of industry firsts to dramatically improve virtual network security management:

— VirtualCenter Integration — The Altor VF includes out-of-the-box integration with VMware’s VirtualCenter, enabling the automated deployment of virtual firewalls on ESX hosts. The product further applies a default policy to all new virtual machines — helping control virtual machine sprawl.

— Security Policy per Virtual Machine — VMs on a virtual server can serve different purposes — ranging from development and test to various types of production applications. The Altor VF locks down each VM to its specified use, insuring no communication among VMs with mixed application trust levels.

— Support for Live Migration — When VMotion moves a VM to a different physical host, the Altor VF ensures that its security policy and active sessions move along with it. Therefore, companies can obtain the full benefits of Live Migration while maintaining security within their virtual network.

The Altor VF is available immediately with prices ranging between $1,500 and $2,000 per server depending on volume.

Altor Networks

VMware Creates GoVirtual.org, Community Site for Virtualization Academics and Researchers

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VMware has created a new community site specifically for virtualization researchers and academics, dubbed GoVirtual.org. The website contains technical papers, courseware, software, and other tools needed to facilitate global knowledge-sharing around the topic of virtualization.

According to VMware, the new community site is intended to provide research and instruction on virtualization-related topics by enabling the sharing of ideas, results, materials, and tools among its members. The site is described as a comprehensive resource and knowledge base where members of academia can go to find the latest research and interact with leading researchers.

The community supports blogs and discussion forums for members to communicate with each other. It also provides a list of academic- and research-oriented virtualization conferences. To help educators and students with their virtualization research projects, the site includes a download section with source code and software tools. And it also includes a collection of several technical papers as well as freely available courseware. The 25 free courses currently being made available include concepts such as the basics of virtualization, interpretation and binary translation, I/O architectures of virtualization, and binary optimization.

Universities such as Carnegie Mellon University, Ecole Polytechnique Federale De Lausanne (EPFL), Georgia Tech, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and University of California at Berkeley are said to be already benefiting from the VMware Academic Program.

VMware

VMware Buys Blue Lane (Updated)

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VMware went shopping and came back home with Cupertino-based Blue Lane Technologies. Despite the lack of press releases, this transaction was confirmed by Mary Ann Gallo, VMware’s head of Global Public Relations. Unfortunately she could not disclose the financial details.

Update: according to Brenon Daly from The 451 Group, the price was around $15 million, and Blue Lane was in search for a buyer since last Summer because of lack of sufficient capital. He also mentions Blue Lane raised “some $18.4m in two rounds of funding”, but our information keeps it at $13.4m.

The acquired company provides solutions that secure virtual and physical data centers. Its solution secures servers and VMs by controlled code execution in the network and taking appropriate countermeasures against traffic aimed at known software vulnerabilities (without signatures).

Blue Lane was quite silent after releasing VirtualShield 4.2 last April. We interviewed Greg Ness, former VP of Marketing with Blue Lane (and avid blogger) and Thierry Evangelista, Technical Director Europe for the company at VMworld Europe earlier this year.

This acquisition confirms VMware’s commitment to virtualization security or VirtSec in short.

Blue Lane was founded in 2002 and has raised $13.4 million to date in two financing rounds from Benchmark Capital, DAG Ventures and Matrix Partners. According to Greg Ness, who left the company last July to join Infoblox, Blue Lane has around 40 employees.

Below, you can find 3 embedded videos encompassing a long interview we did with Ness last June when he was still with the company.


Interview BlueLane Greg Ness 1/3 from Toon Vanagt on Vimeo.


Interview BlueLane Greg Ness part 2/3 from Toon Vanagt on Vimeo.


Interview BlueLane Greg Ness 3/3 from Toon Vanagt on Vimeo.

Thanks to Virtualization.info for the news.

Blue Lane Technologies

Bomgar Introduces B300v Virtual Appliance to Enhance Remote IT Support

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Bomgar is expanding its Bomgar Box family to include the B300v virtual appliance. Deploying the B300v within a VMware ESX infrastructure gives enterprises the flexibility to increase the capacity and manageability of IT support operations, while seamlessly ensuring that the help desk meets an organizations failover policy. IT administrators can also adapt to the changing support needs of today’s enterprise networks, leveraging the B300v to efficiently resolve computer-related issues in both virtual and physical environments.

Bomgar’s B300v provides IT organizations all of the robust features of its physical enterprise appliance, including integration with trouble ticket systems and security functions (i.e. session logging and reporting) with the versatility to deploy on a virtual server. This agility better aligns with disaster recovery initiatives as Bomgar’s virtual appliance can be replicated with ease for back-up and redundancy purposes. Additionally, the B300v enables organizations to take advantage of the virtual infrastructure and utilize pre-deployed networking, storage and servers.

Inherently, Bomgar’s products are purpose-built to provide IT support reps with secure access to any desktop via a secure Internet connection to resolve computer issues quickly. Bomgar provides enterprises of all sizes with the resources required to identify and resolve costly technology and business issues that cycle through the help desk.

The Bomgar B300v is currently available and technical specifications can be found on the Bomgar website.