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Windward Expands Virtualization Services, Partners With VMware

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Windward IT Solutions, a US-based infrastructure and management systems engineering firm, announced today its certification as a VMware Authorized Consultant (VAC). As a VAC partner, Windward provides professional services that transform the leading VMware technologies into powerful solutions.

Windward

“Today, organizations must find ways reduce space, power and cooling demands in their data centers, while improving efficiency of applications and increasing the speed of application development and deployment,” said Michael Biddick, executive vice president of solutions. “Windward helps its clients solve these challenges through the design, implementation and management of a virtual infrastructure.”

More from the press release:

“Like any major technology infusion, implementation of virtualization can be slowed or halted due to many factors, including organizational resistance, complexity, security, physical and logical IT infrastructure issues, outdated plans, or fear of disrupting the business or mission. Windward’s virtualization services help its clients move beyond these challenges and begin reaping the dramatic benefits of VMware Virtualization Infrastructure technologies.”

Dell Now Offers Five Server Platforms Based On Quad-Core AMD Opteron

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AMD today announced that Dell is now offering five server platforms based on Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors. This news follows last week’s announcement that Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors are generally available, and brings the number of available global OEM platforms based on the new processors to 13. Additionally, AMD is announcing today that VMware has completed qualification of Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors for use in VMware ESX and ESXi hypervisor deployments, enabling customers to leverage the latest in VMware virtualization on these server systems.

Dell

Dell servers now supporting Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors include the PowerEdge SC1435, 2970, M605 blade server and 6950 platforms, as well as the new PowerEdge T605 tower server. The T605, aimed at SMEs or remote locations, offers features such as hot-plug hard drives, remote management and redundant power supplies, resulting in high-availability systems that help prevent data access loss and increase uptime.

“Dell is delivering on its vision to simplify IT by providing customers with a seamless and simple upgrade path to Quad-Core AMD Opteron processors on PowerEdge servers,” said Brad Anderson, senior vice president, Dell Business Product Group. “The combination of AMD’s most advanced processors running on Dell PowerEdge servers provides an optimal balance of performance and energy efficiency across a variety of customer solutions, from general purpose and remote office to high-performance compute clusters and virtualized data center environments.”

[Source: Hardocp]

VKernel Announces Availability For ESX Virtualization Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer

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VKernel Corporation, a provider of virtual appliances for managing virtual server environments, today announced general availability of its Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer Virtual Appliance. Other than being a mouthful, the Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer immediately identifies current and future capacity bottleneck issues in VMware ESX environments, which can lower the cost of each virtual machine while ensuring
higher performance.

VKernel

From the press release (PDF):

“VKernel’s patent-pending technology continuously monitors CPU, memory, and storage utilization trends in VMware ESX environments across hosts, clusters, and resource pools. VKernel’s quick-to-install virtual appliance model gives users a simple, single-screen management dashboard that displays detailed capacity information to effectively plan for the addition of new hosts, clusters, and resource pools. By customizing capacity thresholds, users can receive alerts via email and SNMP.”

“When properly detecting capacity bottlenecks, organizations can increase performance and reduce downtime problems that lead to escalating business and IT costs and negative perceptions of virtualization within business units,” said Alex Bakman, founder and CEO of VKernel. “The real challenge for IT staffs is finding a solution that helps them identify capacity bottlenecks without wasting countless man-hours sifting through hundreds of management reports. Within minutes, our Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer can show exactly where capacity bottlenecks are today and where problems are likely to occur to maximize virtual machine utilization.”

The VKernel Capacity Bottleneck Analyzer Virtual Appliance is currently available with pricing starting at $199 per CPU socket. You can download a full production 14-day trial version of the VKernel virtual appliance here.

[Source: Server Virtualization Blog]

VMware Releases Upgraded Virtual Disk Development Kit 1.0

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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.

VMware

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]

    Egenera BladeFrame Systems Now Come With VMware Virtualization

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    Egenera today announced the general availability of VMware virtualization on Egenera systems with full support from Egenera and its resellers. Under the companies’ original equipment manufacturing (OEM) agreement announced in 2007, customers can purchase VMware Infrastructure 3 with the Egenera BladeFrame system, a platform designed to support large-scale virtualized deployments of critical applications with high levels of availability and scalability.

    Egenera

    The Egenera BladeFrame system combines diskless server blades with PAN Manager software, an infrastructure virtualization product that virtualizes data center infrastructure and delivers a highly available, flexible computing platform. Using VMware virtualization, customers can create and run virtual machines on the BladeFrame system to partition Egenera Processing Blade modules and run multiple OS’s and applications on a single blade.

    “VMware and Egenera offer complementary technologies. We’re pleased that customers can now deploy VMware virtualization on the BladeFrame platform with the peace of mind that their investments are fully supported by Egenera,” said Brian Byun, vice president of global partners and solutions, VMware, Inc. “As our relationship grows, we see additional areas for collaboration in managing both physical and virtual assets. We hope to further extend the business value of VMware virtualization and continue providing joint solutions that enable customers to reduce operating expenses, improve business continuity, strengthen security and go green.”

    Egenera recently inked an OEM deal with Dell. Dell has agreed to resell and ship Egenera’s Processing Area Network (PAN) Manager I/O virtualization software on its PowerEdge servers by June of this year.

    [Source: Marketwire]

    Pano Logic Expands Virtualization Offering, Adds Support for WAN And VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM)

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    Startup Pano Logic today announced a major new software release for its desktop virtualization solution. By leveraging existing virtual infrastructure and integrating hardware at the desktop with software in the data center, Pano Logic aims to provide the most complete and easiest-to-use virtual desktop solution on the market.

    Pano Logic

    The new release, Pano Virtual Desktop Solution (VDS) 2.0, can be deployed in new environments and network topologies, providing support for wide area network (WAN) deployments, dual monitor requirements, and offering certified support for wireless bridges and USB devices. Also, as a further extension of the partnership between Pano Logic and VMware, Pano VDS 2.0 fully integrates support for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM), giving users even greater deployment flexibility.

    “Desktop virtualization solutions that leverage existing server virtualization infrastructure represent an opportunity for IT organizations to extend the value of their investments. Hosting virtual desktops on servers enables IT departments to eliminate the PC for portions of their userbase, thereby significantly reducing help desk support costs,” said Michael Rose, an IDC research analyst covering virtualization software. “We are seeing these virtual desktops increasingly being made accessible to users on the edge of the network, and as such the new WAN support available in Pano’s VDS 2.0 can help provide a more realistic and flexible environment for many users leveraging Pano Logic’s devices.”

    The new features in Pano VDS 2.0:

    • Optimization for wide area network (WAN) deployments – enabling organizations to deploy Pano Logic at remote offices while keeping the desktop virtual machines and data storage secure in the corporate or regional data center.
    • Support for VMware Virtual Desktop Manager (VDM) – allowing for easy integration into existing desktop virtualization deployments which use the VDM interface for management, ensuring that users can leverage existing investments and use the management tools familiar to them.
    • Dual-monitor support – enabling easy administration of dual-monitor groups, providing users with the ability to easily roam to and from a dual-monitor workstation while optimizing their display settings.
    • Certification for wireless bridge and USB devices – allowing for wireless bridge certification which enables and certifies compatibility with a number of low-cost and widely available third-party wireless to Ethernet bridges, as well as extending support for composite USB devices such as personal digital assistants, cell phones, and combination printer/flash card readers. This new support enables Pano devices to replace PCs in critical support intensive point of service and point of sale environments.

    [Source: eWeek]