Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

vmware

BMC Software Launches Virtualization Management Solutions In Partnership with Microsoft, Sun and VMware

by 1 Comment

BMC Software today announced nine new, integrated solutions specifically designed to help customers eliminate the rising risk and operational expenses associated with inadequate management of virtualized IT environments.

The new solutions are grounded in a BMC-invented, highly automated set of Closed-Loop Change and Configuration Management (CLCCM) process workflows that reduce the latency, cost and risk associated with change management by as much as 75 percent.

BMC virtualization management solutions give customers a holistic, unified approach to IT planning, control, automation and management for today’s virtualized, multi-vendor IT environments.
BMC has extended its Service Assurance and Service Automation portfolios — key components of its leading Business Service Management (BSM) platform — to deliver virtualization-specific capabilities. The nine new offerings have been optimized to support goals for performance, compliance and enterprise visibility by addressing some of the most pressing challenges created by virtualization.
All of these new offerings are architected to support both virtual and physical infrastructures, further reducing cost and complexity by allowing IT operations organizations to use a single set of management solutions across their entire IT infrastructure.
As part of this new virtualization management offering, BMC has completed full solution integration with long-time partners Microsoft, Sun and VMware.

Icomasoft Breaks Out of Stealth With VI PowerScripter

by 1 Comment

Icomasoft, a Swiss pioneer of agent-less software solutions, today announced general availability of its first product: VI PowerScripter. This is a VMware VI Client plug-in with integration of PowerShell scripts into VMware Virtual Infrastructure 3.5 objects.

The plug-in contains some scripts for standard admin tasks. Users can, however, create dozens of self-made scripts and access them through a dynamic context menu in VI Client. At general availability of version 1.0, icomasoft intends to sell a repository of a large number of standard scripts and workflows.

Functionality

  • Execution of PowerShell scripts through a dynamic context menu (usually no customization required)
  • Use of VM or host-based PowerShell scripts
  • Execution of scripts on single and multiple objects(Cluster, Datacenter)
  • Choice between debug and silent mode
  • Use of local scripts or network scripts
  • User-defined and almost unlimited extension of VI Client and VirtualCenter functionality
  • Execution of all PowerShell scripts with correct VirtualCenter permissions
  • Logging of all script executions
  • Use of standard icomasoft® scripts

User’s Benefits

  • Integration of self-created scripts into VMware’s standard management software
  • Reduction of required resources for administrative tasks
  • Easy monitoring and analysis of the virtual infrastructure behavior
  • Sustained permissions structure during the execution of PowerShell scripts
  • Increased security as no users profiles and passwords are being used
  • Mass configuration and individual configuration can be executed with one single script
  • Almost unlimited extension of the basic functionality of VMware infrastructures and free ESXi
  • Use of existing scripts with minimal or no customization

icomasoft VI PowerScripter (Beta 1) is available for free download.

VMware Releases Server 1.0.7, Workstation 6.0.5, Player 2.0.5 and ACE 2.0.5

by Leave a Comment

Closely following the recent release of a number of RC versions for a number of products, VMware has put out several versions with minor updates: VMware Server 1.0.7, Workstation 6.0.5, Player 2.0.5 and ACE 2.0.5.

The updates are expected to solve a number of security vulnerabilities. More information on this can be found here.

VMware

ExaGrid Teams Up With Vizioncore for VMware Backup Solution

by 1 Comment

ExaGrid Systems today announced support for Vizioncore’s backup and recovery solution, vRanger Pro (which recently got an upgrade). Both ExaGrid and Vizioncore offer products and solutions that streamline the management of data backup and recovery processes for VMware users.

Vizioncore is a provider of a comprehensive set of solutions that extend and enhance the capabilities of virtualized environments. ExaGrid offers VMware customers using Vizioncore’s vRanger Pro with the industry’s fastest backups and restores, along with high data de-duplication ratios.

Vizioncore’s vRanger Pro solution offers full image level and differential backups of virtual machines to enable faster, more efficient storage and recovery of virtual machines. ExaGrid’s Disk-based Backup systems serve as the backup target for these virtual machine images, using high-performance, post-process data de-duplication to dramatically reduce the disk storage capacity required for backups versus standard disk storage.

Egenera To Offer A Technology Preview Of Its New Capacity-on-Demand Solution at VMworld 2008

by Leave a Comment

Egenera today announced an upcoming technology preview of its capacity-on-demand solution developed jointly with VMware. Recently, Egenera had already picked VMware’s virtualization technology to power its BladeFrame Systems.

Set to be unveiled for the first time on the show floor at VMworld, the new joint capacity-on-demand solution will provide VMware VirtualCenter users access to PAN Manager by Egenera processing resources directly through VMware VirtualCenter. With capacity-on-demand, customers benefit from the automatic deployment of ESX hosts onto “bare metal” in response to overutilization that can adversely affect virtual machine performance.

With Egenera’s capacity-on-demand solution, new ESX hosts are automatically registered to VirtualCenter as part of the resource pool, while underutilized ESX hosts can be automatically powered off to reduce energy consumption. In addition, VMware features such as Distributed Resource Scheduling (DRS) and High Availability (HA) will rebalance virtual machine workloads within the changed environment.

Egenera

[Source: VMblog]

Trading Activity In NetApp, VMware Spikes

by Leave a Comment

According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, stocks of both NetApp and VMware have been trading at unusual volumes yesterday.

Trading in NetApp spiked to four times the normal level, with investors picking up 38,000 calls that allow them to buy the company’s stock and 5,000 puts that allow them to sell it. NetApp shares closed at $25.55, up 6.1%.

Fueling activity in VMW trading was the recent chatter that Cisco could be interested in acquiring VMware. With calls outnumbering puts by seven to one, traders gravitated to September $45 calls. The contracts are priced at 70 cents and make money if VMware shares jump above $45.70.

They closed at $38.49, up 4.1%.